Chapter 14. Why Express Feelings?

Before discussing the Expression/Acceptance Barrier, I would like to impress upon you the importance and value of expressing feelings! It's been said,

"When you are angry or disappointed and hold it in, you double the pain; when you are happy and hold it in, you cut the happiness in half!"

Unexpressed, a person's pain might more than double and their happiness might disappear altogether! It's simply a Law of Nature that when you have unexpressed and unresolved feelings, it's very stressful on the body! It doesn't seem to make any difference what the feeling is, the feeling must be expressed or the pain is simply too great!!!

What if I were to warn you, "You must not smile or laugh or show happiness in any way or else!" and then told you the funniest story you've ever heard? Can't you just feel the pain right now? It's really hard to hold back a smile or laugh isn't it especially if you're in a situation where you're not supposed to laugh!

I'll never forget my pain one time, sitting in a church meeting, when I couldn't laugh over an embarrassing (but nevertheless amusing) incident that happened to another person. Whatever the feeling it just must be expressed if we're to reduce our stress level.

The human body was designed to experience feelings and then express those feelings in an appropriate way! If feelings are stuffed and bottled up or expressed inappropriately, it's very stressful on the body and stress symptoms develop. Most people are totally unaware that these symptoms result from the stress of unexpressed and unresolved feelings. Should someone get too close to the truth, they make excuses for their symptoms, like, "Somebody gave me the bug!" or "My boss always gives me a headache!" or "It's you that makes me sick and tired!" or "The teacher's no good and that's why I flunked!"

The human body was created in such a way that a direct connection exists between the feeling center of the brain and nearly every organ of the body. The most stressful thing in all the world is unexpressed and unresolved feelings. This stress can be experienced anywhere in the body and almost always at a point of inherited or predisposed weaknesses.

What if your inherited weakness happens to be your stomach? If you're angry, but cannot express your anger in the right way, and you continually bottle up your anger, you might find yourself at the antacid section of your local pharmacy. Eventually you might develop an ulcer and need antibiotics! The story is told of a medical doctor who spoke at a convention and reported that 80-90% of all his ulcer patients were very angry people. The next doctor who spoke disagreed and said he thought in his practice it was 100%.

What if your inherited weakness happens to be your abdominal area. If you're angry but cannot express your anger in the right way, and you continually bottle up your anger, you might find yourself at the diarrhea or constipation section of your local pharmacy.

What if your inherited weakness happens to be the blood vessels in your head? You might be asking for a headache remedy.

What if your inherited weakness happens to be your immune system? Hans Selye, the world's foremost authority on the biochemical aspects of stress, as early as the 1920's, studying at the University of Prague, demonstrated beyond a shadow of a doubt, that high levels of emotional stress over a long period of time increased a person's susceptibility to illness. The Health News Net website is an excellent source of up to date information on the effects of stress and it has this to say about Dr. Selye:

http://www.healthnewsnet.com/gap.html: "In 1926, a young medical student named Hans Selye noticed that patients in the early stages of infectious diseases exhibited similar symptoms, regardless of the type of disease they had. He later observed a set of three common responses that occurred whenever any organism was injected with a toxic substance: (1) the adrenal glands enlarged, (2) the lymph nodes and other white blood cell producing organs swelled at first then shrank, and (3) bleeding appeared in the stomach and intestines.

In his research, he showed that the stress of unresolved feelings leads to hormonal imbalances that suppress the immune system and that a depressed immune system could not adequately cope with the challenge of destroying abnormal cells as they occur naturally within the body.

 

Next: An Ounce of Prevention is Worth a Pound of Cure

 

Stress Reduction Through Honesty in Communication by John Twelker, Copyright 1986, John Twelker Enterprises, Inc.