Before writing this article, it was difficult to settle on a topic. As a psychologist, I have a large arsenal of research material in my head, but what is truly inspiring are the topics you bring forth for discussion in our conversations. Today, I want to voice a feeling of emotional or physical tension that we tend to worry about, but that deserves to be looked at from a different angle. Let’s take a closer look at stress.
Stress is a spectrum
We often hear that stress and negative emotions are our enemies. But are they really? Life is not always predictable, and it doesn’t always go according to the plan that we map out for ourselves. In fact, what makes life interesting is that every experience we face allows us to learn about ourselves. The next time similar situations arise, we know how to tackle them. Emotions have a spectrum, intensity, meaning and purpose and negative emotions deserve as much exploration as positive ones. Negative emotions are also an ESSENTIAL part of a person’s life, and they become harmful exactly when a person does not show them, ignores or restrains them.
What are the difficulties?
You can develop to be a better, more understanding and unified version of yourself with the motivation to face whatever life got in the making.
If negative emotions are properly lived and explored, the process stimulates the production of hormones that make us feel motivated and accomplished. Unfortunately, processing of negative emotions mostly can’t be done alone. If you think about it, some of you are more prone to call up a friend and share about things that are bothering you and just talking about it sheds a different light, and suddenly you feel better. However, some things can’t be shared with friends, or people close to us and processing negativity alone means that people cannot channel this energy in the right direction.
How should I address stress?
Whenever we experience an intense emotion, be it positive or negative, we have to experience the full spectrum. You have to make space for how the emotion affects you and what meaning it has for you here and now. There are 2 steps to process negativity:
- Releasing the pressure
- Sitting with it
Most of us can release negativity through activities such as sport, cooking, cleaning and so on. And unfortunately, many of us stop just there. However, the emotion itself is not lived fully and doesn’t escape your mind and body even if you want it to. Once you feel that you “let go”, perhaps you let go of the immediate impact, but you didn’t activate the hormonal response of feeling good because you didn’t do much mental work to understand what really happened. People are designed in a way that we need to work to feel good. You feel good after doing an activity that you have postponed, after a run or after having a conversation you planned for a while. Working on ourselves is not much different!
What can be the outcome of unprocessed stress?
The research about emotions has been so diverse that we now have evidence of how emotions reflect in our bodies and how people recognize emotions in others. People develop a certain facial expression when recollecting a negative emotion that hasn’t been processed properly. Because of a direct feedback loop, whenever you have such facial expression, you feel the same way, and when you feel that way, you will also have that facial expression. It’s a vicious cycle. There is so much more that you might not know about how some unprocessed negativity is impacting you! For example, unprocessed negative emotions such as stress lead to build of cortisol. Over time, increased cortisol levels caused by stress can inhibit immune functioning, endocrine and heart health. High cortisol levels may also show by rapid weight gain, onset of acne and muscle weakness.
Nothing good can come out of negative emotions?
The problem is that it seems that nothing good can come out of negative emotions, but that’s not true. You can develop to be a better, more understanding, and unified version of yourself with the motivation to face whatever life got in the making. And of course, we can always explore emotions, positive and negative, together! If you have any questions, don’t be shy and say hi@thebeautiful-mind.com.
