The human body is not comprised of merely skin and bones, but of secrets, lies, pain and emotional baggage that can directly influence our overall health. Unresolved or unaddressed issues of an emotional nature can over time cause us to become burdened with residual emotional baggage. Since self-management is an inside job, monitoring our emotional processes and learning to understand them in an honest and truthful nature can become one of our greatest weapons. An example of this phenomenon is in how we choose to study and react to the emotional pain others may have caused us. Anger is a natural defense mechanism against pain, so when an individual usually says ‘I hate you,’ it truly can translate to ‘you hurt me.’ When we choose to understand this natural defense mechanism, we can begin to free ourselves of any resentment we may be carrying and instead, open ourselves up to communicating more efficiently with both ourselves and others. Through this practice, we gain access to a deeper awareness of our feelings and improve our ability to label our emotions properly, inherently improving our emotional processing skills while decreasing our risk of experiencing anxiety, resentment and anger. Let’s make an honest effort to free ourselves of any emotional baggage we may be harvesting.
Written by Student Doctor: Navpreet Singh Badesha
©04/16/2018 All Rights Reserved.
Photo Credit: An oil painting by Brazilian artist Fábio Magalhães
This research on “Emotional Processing and Panic” was published in the U.S. National Institutes of Health’s National Library of Medicine (NIH/NLM) in November of 2004. Article Link
