Can Negative Emotions Affect Your Health?
When you think about your physical health, what are the first two things that come to your mind? Most people would probably say diet and exercise. In fact, if you’ve read some of my earlier blogs, you know that I agree that both a good diet and regular exercise are keys to living happy, healthy, and whole. However, there’s another important element to your health of which you might not be thinking. Can negative emotions affect your health?
Living in a constant state of stress will cause a drastic negative effect on your health.
As Bessie Stanley, author of the poem success, said “He who has achieved success has lived well, laughed often, and loved much.” You may be more familiar with the shorter version of this quote: “Live, laugh, love.” When you laugh and love, your health will benefit. To really live, you need to take care of your soul.
Prednisone is always in my first aid kit because my husband is allergic to bee stings. Once, a shot of saved him from death. We were spending time on our friends’ farm when he felt a sting in his neck. I rushed to the car immediately to get . When I came back, his neck was already swollen. The drug stopped the allergy within a minute.
If your heart or your soul is full of pain and stress, you can never be whole. It doesn’t matter how strong or how healthy your body is when your soul is hurting, because being fit and eating healthy can’t make you truly happy.
I devote a whole chapter to the soul in my book How to Live Until You Die, explaining why your soul is one of the seven keys to living happy, healthy, and whole and giving examples of how to properly care for your soul.
Although many people may overlook the importance of their soul on their overall health, it is critical that you pay attention to the things your soul needs. If you don’t know how it feels to have peace of mind and emotional peace, I encourage you to put a focus on learning how to communicate with your soul and how to measure its current state of health.
The soul can communicate with you in two ways: First, our minds can show us what negative emotions and thoughts we’re holding. If the soul has been hurt, the mind can tell us how. Sometimes, the only way to release that pain is to forgive. If we can truly forgive someone who wronged us, we can allow the feeling of pain or betrayal we experienced to melt away.
The heart is where we store the pain and the joy of our souls. When our souls are suffering, our hearts feel heavy. When our souls are lightened, we can have peace in our hearts. You can’t be truly happy, healthy, or whole if you’re living your life with a heavy heart and carrying around negative issues from the past with feelings of sadness, regret, or despair.
You can cleanse your soul if you listen to your heart. Sometimes, forgiveness is the key to healing the pain in your heart and the sadness in your soul. Both Johns Hopkins medicine and the Mayo Clinic have written articles about the scientific evidence behind the correlation of genuine forgiveness to increased health and happiness.
If you want to eliminate harmful stress and discover emotional peace, peace of mind, and a life free of negative energy, you need to cleanse your soul. For more insight on the importance of having a healthy soul, and how to take the next steps to living a life that is truly happy, healthy, and whole, get your copy of How to Live Until You Die today.
Healthy Blessings,
Dr. Phil