Emotions and Depression

Emotions and Depression

Did you know that as much as 50 percent of diseases may be psychosomatic? Therefore, it is not an overstatement that the mind and diseases are interconnected.

Dr. Caroline B. Thomas, M.D., of John Hopkins School of Medicine discovered that cancer patients often had a prior poor relationship with their parents, attesting to the pivotal role of emotions in the development of cancer. In another study by Dr. Richard B. Shekelle of the University of Texas School of Medicine, it was found that depression patients were not only more cancer prone but also more likely to die of cancer than the other patients. If emotions play a pivotal role in cancer, by the same token, negative emotions may also adversely affect the symptoms or prognosis of any human disease. Thoughts of anger, despair, discontent, frustration, guilt, or resentment are instrumental in depressing the physiological processes, including the body’s immune response—a formula for promoting the development of an autoimmune disease.

According to other studies, strong negative emotions, such as anger, can create destructive mental energy that is health damaging. However, it is not so much in experiencing raging anger as in not experiencing it, or not wanting to experience it that may cause diseases. In addition, feelings of hopelessness and helplessness may also aggravate the symptoms of a disease. When one feels being “trapped” with no way out—such as, when the doctor tells you that there is no cure, except controlling the symptoms of any disease you may have, you naturally feel incapacitated in thinking a solution out of the “dire” situation.

The feeling of being trapped is most destructive in that it incapacitates the mind to come up with a solution to resolve the apparently insoluble situation. This may cause the body to conserve too much oxygen—just like holding one’s breath much too long—that ultimately leads to suffocation, and even death. Continuous feeling of being in a deathtrap deprives one of oxygen, and thus inhibiting the recovery process.

Given the critical role of emotions in disease development, evaluate your emotions, and how your mind may affect them. Tao wisdom, the ancient wisdom from China, may provide guidelines on how to overcome your negative emotions that are the underlying causes of human unhappiness. 

Also visit my site: Anger Management.

Stephen Lau

Copyright© by Stephen Lau