Reflection on Emotions

We are here to experience a spectrum of emotions. We have so many of them. Some of them are relatively simple and some are more complex. Let’s take for example positive emotions. There are joy, gratitude, serenity, interest, hope, pride, pleasure, inspiration, awe and of course love. While scientists have already deciphered some of them, some still are elusive, because they are complex and many chemicals are most likely responsible for the feeling. How do we interpret what it means to have hope? Or what is the experience of awe, this often positive feeling of being in the presence of something vast that transcends our understanding of the world? Scientists know, that pleasure is dominated by presence of dopamine. Serotonin is responsible for pride, but also is a component of other feelings. We know, that oxytocin is the love molecule and GABA is what allows us to experience serenity. Joy, which is related to the flow, is more complex, because partly it is dependent on pleasure, but also on motivation, serenity, interest, and other factors.

Why then it is important to experience a spectrum of emotions? 

 

The modern era of emotion research started, when it became obvious, that emotions are NOT just feelings, or mental states, but are accompanied by physiological and behavioral changes, that are an integral part of them. This has led to today’s view of emotions being experienced or expressed at three different levels: the mental or psychological level, the physiological level and the behavioral level. According to James-Lange theory of emotions, stimuli reaching the cerebral cortex induce visceral changes, which are then perceived as emotion. Perception, or feelings, of the physiological changes, as they occur ARE the emotions. 

 

Personally, I think that such view makes sense. Given many chemicals have been associated with particular emotions, most of which act on our nervous system, it is reasonable to conclude, that they are essential to our health. They not only represent specific emotion, but their workings determine, if we maintain the balance inside our bodies or not. The very fact that, we have two types of emotions, positive and negative, suggests that, there is a feedback loop inside our bodies to maintain the balance. Negative emotions reduce chemicals, that make us feel good and vice versa. In addition, as has been shown with addiction, for which dopamine is mostly responsible, having just one, predominant emotion, even the positive one, can be bad for us. This means that, experiencing pleasure for the extended period of time can be bad for us, probably because we activate only a certain type of chemicals and ignore others. Everything is connected and interdependent.

As for negative emotions, the list is extremely long. It appears that we are in touch more with negative feelings, than positive ones. On the list of negative emotions we will find for example, aggression, greed, control, anger, hatred, grieve, ignorance, anxiety, delusion, arrogance, impatience, shame, depression, impulsiveness, bitterness, indifference, boredom, insecurity, coldness, detachment, isolation, domination, jealousy, complaining, egotism, laziness, fear, confusion, frustration, unhappiness, sadness, vanity, righteousness, of course stress and many others. I believe that, one of the reasons why we have so many shades of negative emotions is, because they represent variations of basic negative emotions in absence of a particular positive one. For example, if we are egotistical, we are probably cold and we overuse motivation and pride at the expense of gratitude, or love. 

 

Prolonged stress, on the other hand, has been associated with feelings of anger, aggression, anxiety, isolation, domination, frustration, unhappiness as well as others. When we under prolonged stress we literally obliterate pathways, which make us feel good. We do it consciously or unconsciously. We activate chemicals responsible for feelings of stress, which remove chemicals of good feelings from our bodies, and after a while, we find ourselves in the world where there is no room for good feelings. We wake up suddenly believing that, there is a justification for us feeling bad. We find proofs everywhere. But what actually happens is that, our internal reality changed, we live in the world of stress chemicals, which run wild inside us. There is nothing to stop them, because we stopped feeling of pleasure, or love. We are no longer calm, proud or have motivation and perseverance. 

 

This teaches us how important it is to have a spectrum of emotions in our lives. It also suggests that, once we change the pattern of our thoughts, from negative to positive, we can change the pattern of chemicals in our bodies. By simply reducing stress, or cortisol, in our bodies we remove the constrains put on expression of feel good molecules. The same probably is true for negative emotions. If we acknowledge them as signals that we need to be alert, focused and vigilant, we will be able to solve problems. However what happened to us is that, we became addicts of negativity and we bathe in it, because we enjoy it. We nourish it and do not alternate between different states of feelings. Negative signals are there to remind us to act and not overuse them. Life is so miraculous, that we should take advantage and experience it to the fullest; we are here to do things, but also enjoy life. Coincidentally, this attitude will lead us towards a healthy life, with few illnesses and disappointments.

I have always thought having kids is a blessing. And now science has thought me how true this is. Those who have kids received a precious gift from life, because they can naturally experience a wide range of emotions. They are stressed, tired, exhausted, but at the same time, they persevere, have patience and feel connected. Each day they should be grateful to life for giving them opportunity to live to the fullest, because they can experience firsthand the complexity and beauty of life. A spectrum of emotions connect us to others and shows us what a miracle life is.

The Good Die Young

Stress has a profound effect on our health. When we take on too much stress, whether at work or in our personal lives, when we are unable to say no because we "simply go with the flow" or are too nice, inevitably our bodies will say it for us and we will develop one type of disease or another.

To be whole is much more than to experience the absence of the disease. While holistic approach to health makes sense and separation of mind and body is an erroneous view which is more and more incompatible with science, the social aspect of our lives is also crucial to our health. Many scientists agree, for example, that the human brain itself is a social organ, shaped in its neurophysiological and neurochemical development by social activities we engage in from early on in our development as well as by social patterns we establish later on in our lives. In one of the scientific articles the following was stated:

"The interaction of genes and experiences literally shapes the circuity of the developing brain, and is critically influenced by the mutual responsiveness of adult-child relationships, particularly in the early childhood years."

So, we human beings are biopsychological creatures whose health or illness reflects our relationship with the world we inhabit. While science shows that people's lifetime emotional experiences profoundly influence the health, mainstream medical practice largely ignores the role of emotions in the physiological functioning of the human organism.

Some doctors are already seeing a relationship between emotional distress and progression of diseases. They say that their patients with chronic disease of all kinds are also characterized by certain emotional life patterns. Among those are the chronic repression of the so called negative emotions, especially of "healthy" anger, an overriding sense of duty, role and responsibility. In addition, we have also noticed on many occasions and been baffled by our observations that people whom we describe as nice or good, people who seem to place the emotional needs of others at the expense of one's own, are at a special risk of developing chronic illnesses and may even die early as the saying says, good die young.

While this self-imposed stress appears to stem in some people from the concept of what it means to be a good person, in others it seems to be the result of materialistic approach to life. Our value depends on what we produce, achieve or consume. We believe that we must continually prove and justify our worthiness and that we must keep having and doing to justify our existence. Yet in others, emotions are repressed because societal pressures of putting others ahead of ourselves is seen as worthy accomplishment. So this compulsive self-disregard and emotional repression is not deliberate or conscious, this is simply a by-product of our materialistic life style and tradition.

We forget that we are whole and each time when we repress emotions, or when we are at their mercy during the moments of rage, we are playing havoc with our nervous system, hormonal apparatus, immune system, intestines, heart and other organs. This is because all is connected and one affects the other. The result, at best, can be acute and this is when we learn to kill it quickly by relaxation but the chronic, unchecked stress, will turn against us eventually resulting in many types of illnesses.

While it is still not widely accepted that illness arise as a result of stress and emotional burden, modern epidemic of addiction, including the obesity, clearly shows that stress may be the main culprit behind our illnesses. This epidemic shows us that our bodies search instinctively for ways to escape the stress and emotional pain and we search for them by succumbing to drugs, alcohol, tobacco, gambling and even food now.

So the epidemic of addiction is nothing else but epidemic of stress and emotional pain. We are sabotaging our lives because we feel hopeless, even the medical practitioners cannot help us because they are not trained to perceive us holistically and emotions are ignored or ridiculed. What are we to do then when doctors who are supposed to be gatekeepers to health care are blind to the basic realities of what generates health and their prevailing ideology of medical response is predominantly pharmaceutical? When their training denies them knowledge of the unshakable unity of mind and body, of emotions and physiology. When they do not recognize that social factors can be far more powerful determinants of health than genetic predispositions?

We read that healing flows from within and to be whole is much more than to experience the absence of disease. Science has already accepted that reductionist approach to biological inquires is limited and realized that in order to study biological processes we need to study them from various angles, we need to look simultaneously at how different parts of the organism actually work together to accomplish a particular task. Medicine will soon follow suit, and hopefully we will have doctors who will be practicing personalized medicine and look at us as a whole.

So far we have learned that nutrition and healthy ecology are important to our health. Our past actions also have shown us that the environment free of toxins and pollution is critical in preserving nature but also it is very important to our health. New observations and studies on stress and emotional negligence imply that health cannot be achieved in separation or alienation from others, it arises from social patterns of interaction, community ties and mutual support. So there is more and more evidence in favor that the sense of wholeness both on physiological and social levels bring joy to our lives, sense of completeness, and health.