What Has Stress To Do With Emotions?

John had recently lost his brother in a road traffic accident. He was himself working as an executive and had a busy life. But he found that the more he did not want to feel sad , the more he felt stressed out. As a result he could not hold himself back. One evening on returning home from work, he cried and cried and cried. After sleeping that night, he woke up in the morning to feel much better than he had felt over previous days.

Emotions produce stress in the body and stress produces emotions. A paradox. Yet it is true. The reason mother Nature gave us emotions was to' cleanse' ourselves by feeling and expressing ourselves. As long as emotions and feelings are held back, they are carried as ‘burdens' by the body. The word ‘baggage' is appropriately used for such experience.

When too much stress is experienced, we become emotional. Our body wants to get rid of what it is holding on to. If we consider this experience as negative, we start fighting it. The moment we start fighting emotions, we start getting emotionally blocked. The emotional block then increases the nervous drive in our body. Again it has to be let out or it affects our thinking. It is not coincidental that most of the people who are emotionally blocked have an aggressive streak in them. They usually are physically stressed out but may present to the world at large as active, ‘practical' , on-the-go people. These people do not allow themselves to cry or to feel any emotions. The resulting pressure on the human body then results in illnesses that are physical or psychological in nature.

So the more stressed out we are, the more emotional we could feel. The more emotional we feel, the more stressed out we are. So the solution is to let the steam out regularly and not to hold back any emotions, to the extent possible.