Dynamics of Emotional Health

One important criterion of emotional health, as I see it, is the ability to access a wide range of feelings, and consciously to be able to express or disengage from them when necessary. Disengaging from an emotion is not the same as the involuntary process of disassociating; rather, it’s a voluntary process of detachment through awareness.

A second criterion is the ability to discern when it is appropriate to give expression to one’s feelings, and when one needs to take the position of the observer. Clearly, one’s own core values and the particular circumstance will need to be factored into this.

Typically, when we are going through a health crisis, we experience a lot of different emotions. The acceptance of what is happening, and all the repercussions – for example, that we have had to stop working and/or cannot be an active member of our household; our needing to depend on others physically and psychologically – may be top of the list. Because acceptance is so pivotal and can be such a big ask, there’s a separate article on it.

Being ill throws you, to a greater or lesser extent, into uncertainty. There may well be a degree of ambiguity about how quickly you can expect to get back on track; or if indeed you will do so. Not knowing is a challenging state to hang in with. You might feel as if the ground is being taken away from where you are standing, or that you are being uprooted. All the usual parameters that defined you and your life are suddenly questioned, or seem irrelevant, or have simply vanished. With your sense of control out the window, you may find yourself confronting issues that you always took for granted, including the very meaning of life.

When we’re facing a really serious illness that is especially so, for the question of our mortality is bound to come up. In times like these meditation can be your most potent and practical resource.

Meditation methods that are especially relevant now are those that enable you to deal with anxiety, despair, frustration, fear, impatience, irritation and anger. When the pent-up energy of these emotions is really strong, really heated – to be able to release that energy in a safe environment can enable you to move towards greater clarity and emotional strength.

I remember a client of mine who had cancer and who realised that any treatment she was having was only able to prolong her life by months, at the most. There were still days when she railed against what was happening, days of rage against her shortened life. Then she would take herself off into the nearby forest. With only the trees and squirrels as her witness, she would throw out all her fury – through shouting, stomping her feet and beating the air with her fists.

Lucky her to have a forest right next door! Most of us don’t, so there is an alternative way of ventilation that is useful (and perfect if you aren’t mobile and have little energy).

                                                                 Gibberish

In this method you start speaking out loud, saying anything...as long as it has no meaning. You might have done something similar as a child: playing with nonsense sounds. Do it for 5 minutes or more and, if you are in a place where you are able to, wave your hands about too! Afterwards, be still, with your eyes closed. You’ll find the mind is a lot quieter.

The very word ‘emotion’ comes from emovere, which means ‘to disturb’. That’s just what strong feelings can do unless we allow them to move! Of course, as already noted, in the name of undisturbing ourselves we don’t want to disturb anyone else.

American psychiatrist, Dr. Jerome Liss, says, “We need to move when we are threatened or under perceived stress; otherwise the whole body goes out of kilter. In medical terms, this is called a parasympathetic knot. I call it the action-rest botch-up. This also explains why, after a deep, emotional turmoil that we do not express, we often fall into a state of depression.”

I like Leunig’s spin on the healthy need for humans to emote:

A clever creature is the snake,

Who spends his winter not awake;

He snuggles on his long thin bed

And brews up venom in his head.

The human is a different sort;

He spends the winter watching sport;

He yells abuse in concrete stands

And empties out his poison glands.

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Immunity has been shown to be enhanced through emotional release. Jane Richards, Ph.D., of the University of Washington, suggests that suppressing emotions may actually hamper our memory. Hiding emotions requires continuous self-monitoring, tying up mental resources critical in forming memories. But defusing emotions at the outset, she maintains, appears to help people pay closer attention.

“These findings hold important implications, especially when both emotions and stakes are high,” she writes, citing the example of a courtroom. “Expressive suppression on the part of the jurors – as they attempt to appear calm in front of an entire courtroom – may drain cognitive resources that are critical for evaluating and remembering instructions and testimony.”

In addition: a study by Dr. Mara Julius, at the University of Michigan, showed that women who had longer- term suppressed anger were three times more likely to have died during the study than women who did not harbour such hostile feelings.

We squander our emotional energy when we try to keep a lid on our feelings. Especially when we are ill we need all the energy we can get, because it is energy that will help us heal.

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If what you’re feeling doesn’t have a lot of heat in it – for example, insecurity, – or you’ve discharged the heat that was fuelling your feeling, as in the example with my client recounted above, you can bring in your capacity to ‘witness’ or silently observe the feeling.

Through consciously watching the feeling in a detached way, you may realise several things that you hadn’t before – at least not experientially, in a felt sense. One insight might be that you are separate from your feelings. You may notice the physical sensation of insecurity – perhaps a fluttering in the belly, wobbly knees, maybe a slight tearfulness – and the fact that you can do that brings home to you that ‘I am not those sensations; I cannot be because I can observe them….I am not the insecurity. It is there, a feeling; I am here; watching.’

The other realisation might be that the feeling is moving; it will pass. You’ve known many other feelings in the past, and they have come and gone; the odds are strongly stacked against this feeling acting in any other way. By its very nature it cannot, unless you forget your capacity to watch your feeling and instead engage in it, and give it your attention.

That’s another characteristic of our thoughts and feelings: We prolong and intensify the traffic of thoughts and the intensity of our feelings by actively cooperating with them, by giving them attention

For example, let’s say I am feeling insecure. Instead of watching it, instead of remaining disengaged from it, I jump right into the feeling, I submerge myself in it. I remind myself of other times when I felt insecure, and how awful that was; or, I tell myself that I am such an insecure type – this is so typical of me, and I will never be any different; that life is always insecure; how can I ever cope? etc. Now, the sense of insecurity will be really flourishing – because I’ve given it so much attention.

Look at it like this: When you peddle a bike up a hill, you are directing your energy into that specific activity, adjusting your input as the incline grows steeper or levels off. Similarly, by deciding to ‘peddle the bicycle’ of insecurity, we keep generating that feeling.

The good news is that the same is true, of course, of the opposite feelings. If we want to be joyful, it is our conscious peddling of energy into the bicycle of happiness that endorses and magnifies it.

Finally: the more energy we give one emotion, the less is available for another. That is why we cannot, for example, be happy and angry, or fearful and loving simultaneously. The happier we are, the less angry can we be – and, naturally, vice versa.

         A Native American boy asked his grandfather, “What do you think of the world situation?”

        The old man replied, “I feel like two wolves are fighting in my heart. One is full of anger

        and hatred. The other is full of love, forgiveness and peace.”

        “So which one is going to win?” asked his grandson.

         His grandfather replied: “The one I feed.”

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