Pent Up Emotions

Big boys don’t cry. Man up. Don’t be a cry baby. Don’t wear your heart on your sleeve. Never let them see you sweat. Don’t let them get to you. Just do it and let the cards fall where they may. We push down our emotions and push forward but those pent up emotions can kill you.

Pent up emotions are the leading cause of mental and physiological decline and lead to loss of quality of life, if not certain death.

You are endlessly coached by family and peers to bottle up those negative emotions and bury them somewhere deep inside because that’s what we all do. To the best of your ability, you comply and do the best you can to ignore the emotions while they simmer and cook, tearing at the very fabric of your soul, and suppressed emotions kill you.

Check out the stats for yourself, if you have suppressed anger, anxiety, or hidden depression, you probably already know you’re prone to heart disease and cancer. It’s solid science, all those pent up emotions erode who you are, what you are, what you cam here for until there’s nothing left to live for or with.

Your immune system fades away, and you’re prone to catch or develop whatever disease may come your way.

If you have no method of letting these pent up emotions out, working through your emotional wreckage, and letting go of emotional bondage, the pressure builds in the dangerous powder keg inside you. If you keep cramming and pushing down these emotions, she’s gonna blow, and if you don’t let it out it will take you out. You must figure out how to release pent up emotions.

Even the pervasive Positive Thinking community which suggests always putting on a happy face no matter what, can have negative side effects, if “positive thinkers” are developing toxic levels of stress in order to present themselves as continuously optimistic.

In an effort to “be in the flow” worthy of the good things in life via the Law of Attraction, or the desire to maintain a high vibrational state of consciousness, well-meaning people may be doing more harm than good, if they’re not paying attention to suppressed anger, resentment, fear, or other toxic negative emotional baggage you think is carefully hidden away.

It’s the attention to the accumulated stressors which we’ve denied in an effort to “get by” without making a scene or drawing attention to ourselves, which is part of the deep inner work which is being done in conscious circles of awakening.

The main point is to find some way to work through the issues which have haunted you that have been piling up since you were born (if not before). If you don’t, they will be the death of you.

Anger and sadness are key components in your health, growth, and evolutionary metamorphosis. These are powerful indicators of adjustment, changes, and adaptations which need to be progressed through so that you can continue to grow and evolve.

Want to add even more years to your life?

Start expressing positive emotions more. Find reasons to be happy and celebrate life. This actually builds up your immune system and adds years to your life.

You are an emotionally equipped amazing person with all the power of the universe at your fingertips but you cannot deny who or what you are and fully enjoy the unlimited possibilities which lay ahead, waiting for your arrival.

That greater part of you is waiting to emerge if only given the chance.

You are amazing!

Energy Healing Treatment Resistant

What if you’ve sought out alternative methods of health care and healing and are not experiencing the healing you expected? You might be energy healing treatment resistant.

Energy healing in all its many forms focuses on energy, represents not only the energy which is the source of all life but as it encounters and integrates with the energy source(s) which is/are active within your holistic being.

We see this in our work with clients who suffer chronic pain over a long period of time. The patient may have such a strong energetic tie to the symptoms and/or pain associated with the malady, that they may not be able to even imagine having a life without it. In this case, the dis-ease has become a part of his or her very being.

Certainly, there may be many reasons for various healing blockages, and it might be as basically simple as one’s refusal to accept that healing is possible at all. This is not dissimilar to having the malady being a part of your identity, except that it is a more conscious blockage to energy healing, consciously refusing to accept healing because you believe it is not a possibility.

The power source of energetic healing is pure love energy which honors the patient above all. You cannot force energy healing on someone who is not in the receiving mode. To receive energetic healing, one must first be receptive.

Advanced energy healers are able to help determine what your blockages might be to healing, and if you are willing to do the work, these blockages may be released or removed so that true healing may commence. Kinesiology, or muscle testing, is one such method which is highly regarded by many practitioners of alternative healing modalities.

Emotional (and possibly long-hidden from one’s conscious mind) wounds and scars may also be responsible for one’s resistance to healing. The underlying emotional trauma, though not expressed openly in everyday life, can be a heavy cloak which shrouds one’s being, disallowing one who suffers from it to enjoy any of the best things this life may have to offer. All this emotional trauma may be released through the process of love’s energy healing.

In most cases,

Repressed emotional wounds are the source of disease

To think that childhood trauma, family dysfunction, fear of the unknown, stress of work or life, an overwhelming sense of unworthiness, victimization, abuse, and pent up emotions could be responsible for major disease may seem beyond belief, but nothing is more critically true.

The continued denial, covering up, pressing down, and suppressing these negative emotions builds up a growing force festering malignancy throughout the entire biological, physiological, and spiritual system that represents our existence in this reality. And your disease becomes more powerful as your ability to fight it declines and the system deteriorates at a more rapid pace.

Simple negative emotions will eventually manifest themselves by making you sick. Even if you do not speak the words and only think the negative thoughts, your immune system weakens and you are more apt to become ill or susceptible to disease.

This is why alternative treatment methods focus on treating the whole person, body, mind, and spirit.

Our modern society and the lives we live and not conducent to living a life in harmony with the energetic frequency of true love’s vibration. Only as the human being brings his or her own full being (body/mind/spirit) into alignment is one able to be fully receptive to the fullness of one’s true birthright.

Maybe it’s time for you to consider a more holistic approach to healing and if you find that you are initially energy healing treatment resistant, maybe it’s time to dig deeper to see what may be lying underneath the surface. It might be time to take a look at any deep inner work you might need to do.

3 Minute Rant

There comes a time in life, when no matter how hard you successfully maintain a state of calm in the face of a hectic everyday life, every once and a while you find yourself overwhelmed by a flood of emotion. Thank God, there’s the 3 Minute Rant.

You’ve mastered the art of digging up the emotional baggage of your past, you’ve done the deep work, and you’re continuing to grow and expand every day, then it happens. Something unexpected catches you off-guard and still, with all the tools you have to master your emotional state you feel that rush of emotions and you’re ready to blow a gasket.

Then you’re quickened by the notion that you’re the master of your emotion, so you push it down with all your might (and good intentions) and try to ignore it’s there.

You know the consequences of harboring pent-up emotions, but you feel like full-on venting is beneath you or immature at this level of your own personal growth and expansion.

Not to worry. Thankfully, you can always take a break from real life and consider letting it out by engaging in the

3 Minute Rant

When you feel like you’ve reached the limit of your capacity for peace, harmony, self-control and you’re triggered to rage, no problem. Let your fury fly, full-on, unrestrained for 3 minutes, then regain your composure.

Ahhh, that feels so much better.

You can take some precautionary measures in preparation for your 3-minute rant. For instance, your rant is probably not fit for public exposure, so you should consider maintaining your composure the best you can until you find an appropriate time and place.

Once you’ve found a safe place to conduct your 3-minute rant and have a pretty good idea that you will have a full three minutes to let it out without being interrupted, have a method to time yourself. You can use a clock, use an egg timer, or set an alarm on your phone for three minutes.

Then let it all out.

Do whatever you need to do to get it out. Stop, hit a pillow (be careful not to permanently damage inanimate obtects), stop, shake your fist at the sky,  cry, scream, cuss, whatever… Just let it all out, without judgment, limiting yourself to 3 minutes.

If you’re like me, after about a minute or so, you’re pretty much done, exhausted, and/or find yourself giggling. If not at the situation which has you all wound up, certainly at yourself.

After you’ve released the pressure you can go about the business of managing whatever details are left to deal with concerning the source of your hurt feelings, anger, or frustration with the tools you have available for you to work with.

There is no need for you ever to harbor ill feelings within yourself,about yourself or anyone or anything else, let it out and let it go.

It is not a perfect solution, by any means, but the 3-minuterantcan get you from here to there bridging the gap between feelong helpless and hope of a brighter future.

Fear not, you got this.

 

How to Release Pent-up Emotions

If you really want to live a better life, your best life and make the world a better place, you’re going to have to learn how to release pent-up emotions. Pent up emotions are highly destructive to the human body, leading to the deterioration of the immune system, resulting in more susceptibility to illness and disease. Pent up emotions are the leading cause of premature death.

How to Release Pent Up Emotions

All that suppressed emotional energy is like a ticking time bomb just waiting to explode. The pressure builds and builds until something has to give, and it’s your physiology which is compromised as you cannibalize your own life force just to make it another day.

A healthy human being finds a way to process energy in a flowing manner allowing the life force to flow to and through the body, refreshing and nourishing in a natural wave of life-sustaining current. Pent-up negative emotions block the natural flow of life and love energy which is healing and allows you to continue to grow and expand in ways only you can.

You need to find a way to release the pressure which builds over time, or else something very bad is going to happen to you or those around you who you care about.

There are many ways to release pent-up emotions. Some are destructive, like when you strike out at someone emotionally in an over-reactive response to something that would have otherwise been innocuous. Embarrassing as this explosive event might have been, you did experience some relief from those pent-up emotions, finding a way to save you from further deterioration.

Certainly, there are more productive ways to release pent-up emotions without having to compromise your circle of influence, potentially causing damage to your social network. If you keep up this destructive method of releasing emotional pressure, it won’t be long, and your friends and family will find other places to be.

Plus, you wouldn’t want your people to think of you as a toxic influence on their life, right?

I have been blessed to discover years ago that there are effective methods to release emotional blockages and to resume healthy energy flow. My path led me first to prayer, followed by Neuro-linguistic Programming, hypnotherapy, then to Reiki, among many other modalities to find healthy ways to let go and get back into flow.

How to Release Pent-Up Emotions

You know when you’re approaching your body’s need to release pressure when you start getting edgy, feeling uncertain, anxious, stressed out, fearful, suspicious, or paranoid. Your subconscious is looking for danger signs to target for release. Any slightest indication of something appearing not to be in perfect order will trigger your (over-reactive) defensive alarm system, initiating an attack with the veracity of a kill-or-be-killed response.

These feelings of uneasiness or fear are your early warning system, notifying you that an explosive event is eminent. Knowing this, you can prepare for more healthy alternatives for releasing your pent-up emotions.
Therapy is a good method. You don’t have to seek out a paid professional, a good friend you can trust, who will allow you to express your emotions without judgment will work. Even an anonymous stranger who doesn’t know you (you don’t have to reveal your identity) can be an angel in human form, who will listen to your story, allowing you to in effect release some of your emotional pressure. You can walk away and let it go.

If you are in your body’s natural energy flow of love, memories and the emotional baggage which accompanies them is able to move about freely through your body, to and through your consciousness and out of your body without having to find places in the body to hide, where the emotional wounds fester, causing the deterioration of the immune system, body systems, and organs.

Accept

To start letting go you must accept that things are just as they are, and even though someone else’s actions or reactions feel like they are focused on you, they never are. When people act or react inappropriately, it is only an expression of their need to express and release their pent-up emotions, it has very little to do with you, except that they know no other way to release the emotional pressure which is causing them discomfort and pain.

Realize that things are just as they are and feel free to express yourself without judgment and realize that you have no need to judge anyone else who is only doing the best they can, just like you. (We’re all in this life, together.)

Allow

Allow all emotional states to be in all people as well as within yourself. Now that you know that your bad feelings are only your pent-up emotions looking for release, you can let them be, allowing yourself to fully feel the emotions and let them express themselves naturally. No need to resist or deny your feelings. If you need to cry, cry. If you need to scream, scream.

Activate

Take action to activate positive energy flow in and through your biology. Engage yourself in any activity which makes your heart sing. Resist stagnation by gently encouraging blood flow and oxygenation of your body. Do a little light exercise to increase your biological flow and your energetic flow will follow.

Absorb

Let yourself soak in the ideas surrounding the basis for your feelings, seeking to understand what it might be like to be in the other person’s shoes, to have lived their life which led to whatever is the source of your discontent. Seek to understand empathetically with compassion, not taking it personally, and let it be. For more severe feelings of angst, you can initiate a form of meditation or prayer.

Appreciate

Find a way (or ways) to use this reminder that the most powerful energy for healing is love. Do something that allows you to appreciate this life, to be grateful, and express compassion and love. When you think of this event or anything associated to it, snuggle a pet, do something nice for someone else, volunteer, or make a donation to a worthy cause.

Take action to memorialize your allowance of “what is” by expressing gratitude and appreciation.

If you feel bad, do something good, and you’ll feel better.

Absolve

Absolution sets you free. If you can understand that the source of your ill feelings really doesn’t have anything to do with you (even though it feels like it was directed at you) you can empathize with the source’s need to do, say, or initiate whatever transpired which resulted in your feeling bad. You may have only been acting as the shock absorber for this person, which helped him or her release some of their own pent-up emotions.

From this perspective of understanding, you can find the love within yourself to forgive this person without judgment or the need to feel sorry (which would be condescending) for him or her.
There is no need for the other person to apologize to you for no crime was actually committed. You do not need to communicate your forgiveness to the other person (because they may not be able to understand it) for this forgiveness is for you, from your heart, filled with love and compassion.

Also, remember to be kind and loving enough to absolve yourself from any wrongdoing, or for harboring bad thoughts or discontent about this. Sometimes feelings may be pushed down and repressed for many years, since very early childhood.

Love and forgive yourself.

And finally,

Let it Go

No need to belabor it. True forgiveness has no need to revisit or reflect on this event, except to appreciate the hidden treasure or lesson which may have been hidden within it.

You are love and you are free.

Feeling Bad About Negative Feelings

It’s okay to feel bad. Sometimes, the motivation to be positive or to consistently be a good influence on those around you can make you feel like you cannot allow your positive persona to be interrupted by feeling negative. If you do have negative feelings, you might like to cover it up or push it down, and for god’s sake don’t let anyone see your emotional falter because you wouldn’t want anyone to misinterpret any upset in your powerful baseline as weakness.

Are you a human being? Don’t you think others might be able to feel closer to you if you occasionally allow your humanity to show through? You are not a deity. You are a man or a woman making your own way through this life, just like anyone else. Yes, you want to remain positive, but you don’t want to separate yourself from the rest of humanity so much that you are no longer a member of the human race.

There are few cases in history where the attempt to do so wasn’t met with severe emotional conflict. A mentor of mine used to say, “Don’t become so spiritually-minded that you’re no earthly good.” Be in the world but not of the world. In essence being here but also maintaining a residence elsewhere simultaneously.

Here, amidst humanity, we all express a wide range of emotions, and you must find a way (or ways) to express these emotions. To not do so is a denial of the human condition, and your psychology and physiology will deteriorate, health will decline, and you may put yourself at risk of disease, psychotic breakdown, rapid aging, or a premature exit from the human condition altogether.

Yes, being positive and maintaining high vibrational states is preferred. St. Paul encourages us to fix our thoughts on what is true, and honorable, and right, and pure, and lovely, and admirable. To think about things that are excellent and worthy of praise (Philippians 4:8) which is integral to the maintenance of higher vibrations of the power of love.

You must also allow for the natural ebb and flow of life, especially if you intend to grow because the greatest growth spurts take place in the time of struggle, when things appear to not be going so well. You need both the good and the bad to move to the next level, sometimes more than others.

This complexity in life gives us the ability to enjoy all the richness this life has to offer. This contrast, as Esther Hicks says, “knowing what you don’t want helps you to know what you do want.” This is the balance of life, enabling you to know what it is that you want less of and what you desire more of in your life. You, then, can make the necessary adjustments in your life accordingly.

Your intention to remain so positive can keep you from seeing potential obstacles or danger. It is prudent to keep one foot on the ground, aware of your surroundings in the “real world” to avoid finding yourself in an undesirable predicament, or to find yourself falling into complacency.

Adversity leads you into growth, allowing you to come to increased clarity about what you want, empowering you to delineate specific goal for further advancement and achievement. In essence, being able to squeeze all the best juiciness out of all this life has to offer, all thanks to those less than desirable moments in this life.

A natural emotional response to not feeling right, or having negative emotions, might be to reject these feeling or to push them away but they are really an attention-getting pique to your awareness if instead, you start to look within, rather than to become defensive.

Since these feelings are in contrast to what you want, it is an exciting opportunity to break your positive flow, which is just comfortable enough that you can glide unaware of your surroundings, in a kind of sacred trance. This interruption can break your state or being just enough to look for new opportunities for potential alternative exploration, growth, or expansion.

The more you push against a thought with your consciousness, the more it expands in your unconscious mind, where the lower vibration undermines your ability to remain in higher vibrations in the background. This is why the Law of Attraction doesn’t care whether you want a thing or don’t want a thing. It is attracted to you whether you want it or not.

It’s like telling yourself not to think of a lemon. The more you resist a thought, the more apparent it becomes either consciously or unconsciously. This is also the nature of nightmares, where your unconscious mind runs rampant, unbridled by your conscious mind’s ability to squash your thoughts.

There is wisdom in inviting and allowing the negativity to flow over you, even to allow yourself to be fully engulfed by negative emotion for a predetermined period of time. In a sense surrendering to it in an effort to fully feel it. After fully expressed, you can examine the source, or look around for new opportunities which may be trying to expose themselves to your awareness.

In some cases, just letting it out and letting it go is all that is necessary.

Looking within yourself when your regular flow of life is interrupted by negative emotions might be the door through which you must pass to become aware of some lingering deep inner work longing to be addressed.

You might want to find or create a safe space or the company of another who will hold the sacred space for your expression of these negative emotions without fear of judgment.

Embrace the fullness of life, the good, the bad, and the potential for change, growth, exploration, and expansion.

An amazing journey lies ahead.

Suppressed Emotions Kill

When you bottle up your emotions, push them down, cover them up, and insist on just going on through life ignoring your feelings and living a life of emotional denial, you are committing murder. You are committing suicide because suppressed emotions kill you.

It’s a socially acceptable manner of suicide, not as blatant or open as hanging yourself, taking a bottle of pills, or as dramatic as throwing yourself off a bridge or blowing your brains out, but your suppressed emotions are killing you.

In his groundbreaking work, Bernie Siegel in Love, Medicine and Miracles: Lessons Learned about Self-Healing from a Surgeon’s Experience with Exceptional Patients, implicitly defines the number one cause of disease and premature death from medical maladies is pent-up emotions.

If caught early enough to reverse the effects of a lifetime of suppressed emotions, the patient who finds healthy ways to express himself or herself, live a better life, and find happiness, become the most exceptional patients, experiencing full reversal or remission of their condition and fatal prognosis.

Most people on Mother Nature’s death row have put themselves there by not wanting to rock the boat, express their feelings, or being proactive in looking after themselves. They accept their lot in life as being in service to others, selflessly, without any regard for looking after themselves.

If you don’t look after yourself, who will?

I pray you are ready to receive this. If you are not, there is no judgment here. After all, we’re all doing the best we can with what we have. If your heart and mind are open, consider this:

If you are living a life with health challenges, consider who you are putting first in your life. If you are not putting your own health, wellness, and happiness first, and not expressing all the emotions you keep hidden away, the things that make you sad, angry, hurt, disrespected, or unworthy, your illness(es) is of your own making.

\This includes all disease (which could be redefined as “dis-ease”). If you’re not happy, your body is not happy, and your immune system disregards your body just as much as you do. If you will not stand up and fight for you, neither will your body, and you will fall victim to disease and premature death. But you will die a hero.

Friends, family, and society will put you on a pedestal after you’ve died and tell stories about how you selflessly served others, even as your own body was suffering in decay. (Even though you may have silently wished for death to come knocking, just so you could get some peace.)

Or, you could become an exceptional patient. You could find the keys to the life you’ve always wanted and deserved, even though you may have denied yourself access to it in the past. You could uncover your unique, purpose, message, passion, and/or mission and start living a better life, your best life, and make the world a better place.

You can enjoy all the good things this life has been holding for you, just waiting for you to reach out for it, including all the love and happiness you’ve ever dreamed of.

But don’t believe me. Don’t believe Bernie Siegel, or anyone else. If you decide to change your life, while there is still time, and live the life that is your birthright, only you can do this thing. Only you can make the transformation from sickness to massively thriving by choosing to become an exceptional patient.

Every day, someone who stood at death’s door awakens and starts to live life with openness, honesty, self-love with ebullient vitality and energy, staving off any self-imposed death sentence, achieving their highest and best.

Let it be you.

You can live a better life, your best life, and make the world a better place.

Today, let it be you.

Emotional Release Method

Whether you’re suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), struggling with emotional pain from a recent/past relationship, or carrying some other type of heavy burden from another time in your past, this Emotional Release Method (ERM) can help alleviate or eliminate the pain from past trauma or drama in just a few minutes.

I’m all about delivering the best and quickest results for my clients and I use my Emotional Release Method for clients, others I love and care about, and myself, when I need to address negative emotional anchors related to trauma or drama.

The method is a meditative tap dance which releases the emotive connection to any event from your past that is causing you emotional pain and/or physiological discomfort. The pain associated with past trauma and drama can be debilitating and my Emotional Release Method can give you the relief you need to get back on your game.

While my ERM is effective for disconnecting the emotional ties to deep-rooted negative feelings, and sorrow associated with distressful heartbreak, stress, drama, or trauma, it does not treat any underlying issues which may need to be dealt with and may be a part of your personal deep work, but you will experience the emotional pain relief now.

Emotional Release Method

To learn my Emotional Release Method, I suggest that you get to a quiet, secluded space, where you can have a bit of privacy to practice my ERM. Get a place where you can sit comfortably without interruption for a few minutes. Once you know how to perform the Emotional Release Method you can do it anywhere, anytime you need emotional relief.

Before you start, reduce the definition of the source of your emotional pain to a single sentence and be as brutally honest and open with yourself about how you feel. For instance, “I hate it when my boss yells at me when I didn’t do anything wrong!” If your emotional discomfort were on a scale of 1 to 10, make sure that when you repeat your defining sentence that it evokes the highest level of emotional discomfort.

In this example, we will assume your sentence (I hate it when my boss yells at me when I didn’t do anything wrong!) rates a 10 on your emotional scale of upset. Now, we can begin applying the Emotional Release Method.

Sit quietly and calmly, place your hand’s open palm in the center of your chest. Take a deep cleansing breath and relax as much as you can. Pause. Take another deep cleansing breath and relax a little more. One more deep cleansing breath will get you to a place where you can initiate the Emotional Release Method.

Using the tips of three fingers, move them in a circle in the middle of your chest gently, round and round, visualizing your regular breaths are going in and out of your heart, as you tell yourself these words, repeat them after me:

“I love you.”
“I would never knowingly do anything to hurt you.”
“I am here for you.”
“I will never leave or forsake you.”
“I love you.”

Continue to visualize and feel your normal breathing as if it were going in and out of your heart.

You are going to gently and repeatedly tap four points on your face, in a sort of sign-of-the-cross fashion, starting with the forehead, followed by the chin, the bone on the outside side of your left eye, then the right.

Tapping on the center of your forehead, repeat your defining sentence, feeling as much negative emotion as you can when you speak the words. Breathe in. Breathe out.

Next, tapping on your chin, repeat the same words, feeling as much negative emotion as you can, associated with your word sequence. Breathe in. Breathe out.

Now tapping on the left side of your left eye on the bone, repeat the sentence that represents your emotional upset. Breathe in. Breathe out.

Finally, the outside of the right eye, on the bone, tap as you repeat those words again. Breathe in. Breathe out.

Back to drawing a continuous circle around the area of your heart, breathe into your heart love and compassion, and breathe out anything that might be not good for you. Breathe in. Breathe out.

Hold your open-palmed hand over your heart and repeat these words:

“I love you.”
“I would never knowingly do anything to hurt you.”
“I am here for you.”
“I will never leave or forsake you.”
“I love you.”

Breathe in. Breathe out.

Now repeat those words, the words that previously rated a 10 on your negative emotional scale. What number does it feel like now?

If it is not down to a 2 or 3, or gone altogether, then repeat the Emotional Release Method again. You will find the negative emotions released more and more every time you perform my ERM.

Now that you know how to apply the Emotional Release Method, you can do it anytime, anywhere when you need an emotional space and a sense of peace about anything that tries to slow your roll.

You are now taking control of your own emotional wellbeing.

Congratulations.

You are loved.

You are love.

How Do You Feel About Things?

How you feel about things in life greatly influences your general state of mind. For the most part, how you feel about things dictates what kind of life you will live, how healthy you will be and how long you will live. Mental and physiological health is keenly attuned to how you feel. The people who have control of how they feel about things, maintaining a more positive outlook, experience a more stable emotional vibration allowing them to have more happiness, good health, love and longevity.

If you are actively taking responsibility for living a better life, you are looking at your mind/body/spirit dynamics and taking care to optimize your life and lifestyle. You’re more conscious about what your relationship with your body is like and you’re more attentive of the food you eat, maybe you’re exercising more, spending more time with Mother Nature, you are taking a more proactive approach to how you conduct your life, but are you making the effort to control how you feel?

A healthy holistic lifestyle includes influencing, taking more personal responsibility and being conscious about your intellectual and social health, physical health and the health of your emotional state. How you feel about things, your emotional state, greatly influences the health of all the other areas of your life.

Life brings you a great deal of opportunities to negatively influence how you feel about things. There are our familial and social relationships and interactions with other people with whom we do not maintain a relationship as life goes on all around us. Other opportunities to affect how you feel include your vocation, finances, your health status, concern about your community, and the world at large.

If you are to get a grip on how you feel about things that are presenting themselves to your awareness, you are more proactive about taking responsibility for what you are exposed to, if you are able.

The amount of stress you are exposed to can have a huge impact on how you feel, so managing stress is a key component in feeling better about life in general. Stress reduction should be of primary concern for establishing a better emotional state and by exposing yourself to fewer stressful situations, you will feel so much better about what life presents to you.

Many techniques are readily available to reduce, manage, or eliminate stress which is felt physiologically including meditation, breathing exercises, positive affirmations and visualization. Only you can determine what best suits your personal taste and resonates with you.

Eliminate media exposure to things that make you feel bad about life, the government or your safety. Most media comes packaged with an infectious negative vibration which affects how you feel about things. Consider turning off the TV, avoiding negative news and Internet feeds, by taking a media hiatus.

Guarding your thoughts to prevent you from focusing on things that are negative will go a long way in feeling better about life. Avoid negative self-talk, which leads to poor self esteem and diminishes confidence, making you feel helpless, if not hopeless, about your life.

Start reprogramming your mind positively. Get into a routine of reciting positive affirmations, and honoring yourself by speaking words of kindness and love about you, who you are, how blessed you are, and how your life may be a blessing to others. As you retrain your mind to think more positively, you will feel better and your physiological health will also get much better. It is a fact of life.

Learning how to let go of negative emotions, like uncertainty, sadness or anger, is hugely beneficial because if you hold these feelings inside they deplete your immune system and you become more susceptible to failing health and disease.

Finding a confidant who you can trust and talk to, as well as writing out in a journal how you feel about things negatively in the past as well as in the present, or even things that may be looming in the future, can be an effective key to releasing pent up negative emotions.

These practices in self-care will make you feel better about living a better life:

  • Engage in stress reduction techniques
  • Eat food that nourishes your body and exercise
  • Wind down and calm yourself for a good night’s sleep every night
  • Limit or eliminate exposure to negative news and media
  • Don’t put off dealing with issues you face in life
  • Practice positive and loving self-talk
  • Do something fun, that you like, every day

And forgive yourself for everything, for after all, you are doing the best you can with what you have.

Big Boys Don’t Cry But They Should

Young boys are programmed not to show emotion as they are growing up, and this programming has been so effective that by the time they are adults, they have become rather emotionally numb and passé about things that might cause them to experience negative emotions, primarily sadness, as it signifies a lack of strength or weakness. To shed a tear is to expose your vulnerabilities, which is undignified, so we train our young men by instilling the mantra, “Big boys don’t cry.” And, for the most part, they comply.

The men in our world, at least 80 percent of them, don’t cry. They bottle up their sadness and lock it away inside to exude more strength, which is a virtue sought after by the opposing sex. This primal instinct makes men more appealing to women, who instinctively are attracted to signs of strength in a potential mate. This instinct hearkens back to a time in the early dawn of man and persisted until about a hundred years ago.

What happens when men withhold tears for years and possibly for a lifetime?

It’s no surprise that men who hide their emotions and pack them down into deep recesses of their mind are potentially walking powder kegs, that could explode at any moment, and many of them do. The explosive nature may express itself in extraordinary fits of rage, which can fuel a soldier to commit honorable acts of violence or create a domestic violence offender. To mitigate the growing pressure, these men may seek refuge in alcoholism or drug abuse to stave off pent up emotional outbursts.

Not crying comes at a great emotional cost and generally results in a shorter lifespan. Human beings who cry occasionally, live longer than their dry-eyed contemporaries.

In contrast to men, women cry more often and live longer than their male counterparts, but if they cry too much, they may find themselves at risk of being diagnosed with any of many neuroses, while women who do not cry might be considered as suffering from alexithymia.

Holding back one’s tears can be likened to willfully and slowly ingesting poison which will result in death, though abstaining from crying can be advantageous, especially in times of crisis. In emergent situations putting off the onset of tears can be hugely beneficial in crisis management and in such professions as military service and law enforcement. In these cases, an emotional release should be encouraged following the sounding of “all clear” or cessation of the crisis.

Refusing to cry and continuing to bottle up your emotions causes stress on the entire biological system and leads to a greater risk of heart disease and premature deterioration of brain function and health. Not crying will also make you more irritable and vulnerable to headaches, high blood pressure, and depression.

Crying is a good thing

The shedding of tears is an essential part of dealing with the wide variety of emotions that we all are blessed with. The ability to cry due to emotional triggers is what separates us from the other lifeforms on this planet, it is an exclusive human gift to be revered. Tears can be an important tool in processing excessive emotions and are likely to appear (if you allow them to be released) in both times of extreme emotional pain or happiness. The enormous outpouring of emotions such as love, compassion, reverent appreciation, or loss can also trigger a tearful emotional release promoting better mental and physical health and well-being.

Even though societal constraints or upbringing may make a tearful expression seem uncomfortable or awkward, nothing could be better for you psychologically and physiologically. Crying is an effective transitional response between emotional overwhelm and a sense of calm, or peace, following a good cry.

Crying allows the release of pent up emotional storages, which are harmful to us as tears release toxins in the body, leading to better health and longevity.

Maybe it’s time you let a tear or two fall, or enjoy a thorough release and let all those emotions careen down your face. It’s okay.

Big Boys Should Cry

and you are blessed if you can.