Stuffing your emotions, or keeping it all inside, has led more than one person down the path to trouble. At some point, if you do not express your thoughts and feelings, especially the negative ones, you stay emotionally frozen in time. It's kind of like physically clubbing yourself over the head repeatedly day after day. Of course, we cannot go around randomly screaming at people or speaking before we give ourselves time to think. There are effective ways to open up and share that will lead you to better health and help you to maintain a good relationship with family members and friends at the same time. Journaling is good, as is talk therapy or belonging to a support group. The point is, until expressed, you are stuck with whatever you are feeling. With the passage of time, you might not even be aware of the emotions you are carrying around inside affecting you and your health, as they tend to pile up and become obscured from view.
Adelaide University psycho-neuro-immunology researcher Vikki Knott understands the benefit of letting it all out emotionally, and that sharing and releasing distressful emotions can help a cancer survivor survive cancer longer. Knott will be conducting research in emotion-focused treatments to improve cancer survivorship by charting the physical changes to the immune system before and after talk therapy sessions.
According to Knott, "It's about the link between the mind and the body and how your mind state can affect the disease state in the body." The researchers will be examining three techniques -- journaling, meditation and hypnosis. Previous research has already proven that breast cancer survivors who belong to a support group tend to live longer than their more isolated and disconnected counterparts.
1. Dalene,
That was a wonderful article! Please let me know if you would be interested in a copy of the book, The Secret Language of Feelings, which is a book on understanding how to respond to feelings without pushing them down. I wrote it from the viewpoint of a hypnotherapist who has done a great deal of hypnotic regression work based on bringing up the emotion associated with the problem that the client is experiencing and following it back to the cause (all while in deep hypnosis). This emotional release work has provided a great of relief and healing to so many clients.
Here are some sites on the subject:
http://www.TheSecretLanguageofFeelings.com
http://www.HypnosisCenter.com
And, you may also enjoy my blog where I am going to set up a link to this article.
Cal Banyan, MA
Board Certified Hypnotherapist
Tustin, CA
Posted at 5:43PM on Aug 1st 2006 by Cal Banyan, MA