Emotions — expressing them and sharing them — can help keep us alive and healthy!
I love research on how emotions and biology impact our health. Recently, I was looking at some studies that talked about the connection between cancer and our emotions, and our ability to express emotions. They found that both in men and women, there was an interesting correlation between emotional expression, and the recovery rates or the death rates.
What the Research Shows About Expression of Emotions
For example, one study revealed that women with early-stage breast cancer who had a strong support system they could express their emotions to, and who also had a great ability to express things like anger, frustration, grief, fear, and any number of emotions, had higher recovery rates.
In fact, women who conversely did not have strong support systems that they could express their emotions, or vocalize, “I’m mad about this,” or “I’m angry about this,” or “I’m afraid of this,” actually had a four-fold increase in death rates, compared to those who had emotional support and were able to express their emotions.
This certainly doesn’t mean that the inability to express emotions is responsible for cancer. There are so many reasons for how we get cancer that we know about and we don’t know about.
The bottom line is if this has such an impact on our health and on our body’s biology to be able to be healthy, then regardless of our situation, regardless of our circumstances, if we are intentional about having emotional support systems, and people in our lives who allow us to express our emotions and don’t want us to tamp it down, this can truly help keep us going.
And then being intentional and able to express those emotions so that you can do something with them, and then be able to move forward so that your body biology is not just amped up with cortisol, norepinephrine, and all of the things that don’t allow our bodies to heal, restore, rest, digest, and move forward with life.
So, find people for your drive, who allow you to be emotional, to express your emotions, and be able to move forward as a result.