One of the greatest failings of conventional medicine – and indeed our cultural education – has been the downplaying of the importance of emotions. Historically this happened around the 17th century with the so-called Age of Enlightenment, when there emerged a particular kind of linear scientific thinking. This more simple cause and effect reasoning was not at all suited to the emotions.
So the intellect took over and emotions, which defied measurement and became more repressed up into the Victorian age, didn’t really resurface again until the 20th century, when Sigmund Freud argued that many neuroses and health issues had their basis in repressed emotions.
Only recently, through developments in neuroscience, can we measure emotion to an extent, and its effects on both mental and physical health. It is becoming increasingly clear that no thought occurs without an emotion, and that emotions – positive or negative – have a massive effect on our health and the whole way our bodies operate.
Our whole basis of memory, which is how we hold the story of our lives, depends on emotion. Emotions are the basis of the subtlety of human relationships, and relationships are as important to us as water is to fish. We only develop as human beings through relationship and it is developing emotional intelligence that allows us to interact healthily with others, both to get our needs met and to understand the needs of others. Positive emotions such as love and joy, and the ability to resolve negative emotions, is an essential part of achieving optimum health.
Yet the experience of life means that we inevitably accumulate emotional tension and unresolved memories from the past. The more disturbing of these become deep-rooted negative emotional patterns that unconsciously determine how we react to the stresses of life.
The word e-motion comes from the latin – e for exit and motio for movement – so emotion is a natural energy, a dynamic experience, that needs to move through and out of the body. Yet as children, we are often taught not to express our emotions. For example, we might have heard “Boys don’t cry” or “Don’t be a baby”. Or, when we are angry, we are taught it’s not appropriate to express it – “Don’t you dare raise your voice to me”. At some level, most of us are taught that emotions are not okay.
Our task, as healthy adults, is to flush out and let go of the emotional patterns from the past that mess up our lives and no longer serve us. As Fritz Perls, the founder of Gestalt Therapy, often said: “The only way out is through”. It’s not easy, and the vast majority of people deny the symptoms or anaesthetise themselves through work, TV, food, alcohol or some kind of drug. By discharging negative emotions attached to past memories, we become more able to respond spontaneously in any given moment, allowing us to be more present in our relationships and to the gifts of the world around us.
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The body expresses what the mind represses
What is a healthy emotional response?
Emotional patterns of behaviour are learnt
What childhood teaches us
Exercise: Identifying your negative emotional patterns of behaviour
Transferring the past to our present
It’s okay to feel
Emotional hijacking of the rationale mind
Exercise: Tracking emotional patterns
Action plan for letting go and learning from the past
Exercise: Breathing out the emotion
Exercise: Writing down the emotion
Exercise: Journaling
Exercise: Moving it out of your body
Exercise: Read these books
Emotional therapy
The Hoffman Process
