Your
emotions could be making you sick.
We often hear about public health crises related to poor diet, lack of exercise, and smoking. But what about chronic stress?
Canadian physician Gabor Maté studies
the mind-body connection. He argues that chronic stress plays a big role in the
development of disease.
It should come as no surprise that that emotions can impact
physical health. When we’re sad, we cry. When we’re embarrassed, we blush. When
we’re nervous, we might have lumps in our throats or butterflies in our
stomachs.
Clearly, our feelings aren’t just experienced in our heads.
When we’re stressed, our bodies release cortisol and adrenaline. These two hormones impact our entire bodies. They stop digestion, suppress our immune systems, and mobilize energy to gear up for fight or flight.
This is extremely useful if you’re faced with a deadly physical
threat, like a predator about to eat you. But it’s extremely harmful if your
organs are bathed in stress hormones day after day after day. It causes
disease.
Many of us are so used to living like this that we think it’s
normal. We interpret the lack of stress as “boredom,” and we often find it
intolerable.
In our society, those who go go go are applauded. Self-care is
discouraged. Taking some time off to recharge is seen as indulgent and lazy,
rather than responsible and healthy.
According to Maté, how we handle our emotions is a key indicator
of health. Healthy individuals consciously feel angry when they’re violated in
some way — and they react assertively to protect themselves.
But many of us bottle up our feelings instead. “It takes
tremendous energy to suppress emotions,” Maté observes. “The act itself is
stress producing.”
That behavior can go all the way back to childhood. “Don’t cry,”
parents might tell children. Perhaps they even shame the child for crying, or
threaten to give them “something to cry about” if they don’t stop. So kids
learn to bury emotion.
“When you’re a child and your parents can’t handle your
feelings,” Maté explains, “you learn to suppress them to maintain your
relationship with your parents. But what was a coping response in the child
becomes a source of illness in the adult.”
On a physiological level, in other words, we don’t cease to feel
the emotions we bury. Hormones are still released — only now the growing child
or adult is unaware of it. This can lead not only to health problems, but to
people taking advantage of them — even violating them — because they don’t know
when to trust their own anger or fear.
I’ve suffered chronic health problems since age 14, despite
never smoking or indulging other obvious no-nos. Improving my diet and
exercising regularly never helped. I saw specialist after specialist with no
progress whatsoever.
But maybe the problem wasn’t with my body alone.
In the past year, with the help of therapy, I’ve learned how to
cry again. I’ve gotten the hang of getting angry again. And I’ve watched my
physical health improve at long last.
The road I’ve taken isn’t easy. It’s painful. I’m feeling all of
the repressed anger, fear, and sadness stored in my body in order to finally
let it go. It’s overwhelming.
But it’s also the most worthwhile thing I’ve ever done. There’s
a richer, healthier, happier life waiting for me on the other side.
Why did it take two decades of searching to find the answer? Why
isn’t this common knowledge among all physicians, or publicized as widely as
recommendations about diet and exercise?
If we wish to become a healthier society, we can’t have tunnel
vision that only focuses on fat, calories, or smoking. Nor should we shame
those who express emotion or practice self-care. As Maté’s work shows — and as
I can tell you firsthand — our minds and bodies aren’t as separate as we think
they are.
OtherWords
columnist Jill Richardson is the author of Recipe for America: Why Our Food System Is Broken and What We Can Do to
Fix It. OtherWords.org.