Repressed emotions cause harm to the body

The deepest recesses of our subconscious mind are where our repressed, negative thoughts and emotions linger, causing harm to both our daily thought processes and our body.

If you want to know why affirmations or positive thinking doesn’t seem to work for you, it’s probably because you’re holding on to some deeper stuff that needs to be released.

When you finally do release those old, unresolved negative emotions, positive thinking happens naturally, and affirmations might actually start working the way you originally intended.

Some people misuse positive thinking. They replace the healing steps they need to take, going into denial and replacing hurt and pain with positive thoughts to avoid feeling bad.

What happens to our body when we repress thoughts and emotions? Emotional suffering is hard enough, but the body can experience physical manifestations of that emotional suffering, too. Positive thinking can sometimes hinder the processing of those negative emotions. 

I’m not against positive thinking. In fact, I highly encourage it when it’s authentic. What I mean is if you have natural positive thoughts about someone or something (where you don’t have to force yourself to think positively), then that flow of thoughts occurs without resistance.

That is when your “thought stream” flows through the channels of your mind easily and effortlessly. That is the natural progression of thought instead of the diversion of your thought stream, where you have to force your thoughts to do something they don’t want to do. Forcing your brain to affirm something that isn’t true creates resistance in your body.

There is the path of thoughts that you allow to flow, and then there is the path of thoughts you try to prevent or redirect. The flowing thoughts are the ones that simply come to mind.

For instance, right now, I’m thinking of a canoe. Now, sex. Now I’m thinking about trying to come up with new things to think about. These are the thoughts that I allow to flow without filtering or judging what comes through. If I had a religious aversion to sex, then I would try to divert those thoughts and attempt to think of other things. This diversion creates resistance.

However, since I freely allow thoughts of sex into my head, they flow easily in and out. I could dwell on those thoughts, taking me out of the present moment, or I could simply allow them to “be” without thinking too much more about them.

When you allow your thoughts to flow, you make your life easier. You aren’t evaluating, self-criticizing, or doing anything that prevents the flow and causes resistance. You feel this flow in your body. It is freeing. You can have bad thoughts or good thoughts; they’re all just creations of the mind. So, really, no thoughts are bad or good; they’re all just concepts or ideas that you can choose to act on or not.

On the other hand, you can have thoughts that you try to prevent. You can try to erase them from your mind because you feel guilty or angry. Or maybe your beliefs don’t support the thoughts you are having, like questioning your own spiritual or religious beliefs because of what you’ve experienced, read, or heard.

When you attempt to prevent, divert, or simply block unwanted thoughts, you create resistance in your mind and body. When you resist an unwanted thought, this resistance actually amplifies the unwanted thought.

Think about that for a minute. When you try to prevent a thought from coming in and try to replace it with another thought, you stop the flow in your body. I realize that sounds kind of silly, but thoughts do alter the body and how you feel. It’s the mind-body connection. When you have a thought that is allowed to enter your mind and exist, the body’s systems keep flowing.

When you have a thought that you prevent from entering your mind, which doesn’t actually make sense, but let’s go with it anyway, or you have a thought you try to push away, the body creates resistance. And you feel this resistance in your body.

Your thoughts alter your body’s internal processes, and I can prove it. Just think of someone you find irresistibly sexy. While thinking of them, think of what you’d like to do with that person. What you want them to do to you?

Do you notice any physical changes in your body? Even though these thoughts are just in our mind, they still affect our physiology. They even affect our overall physical health and happiness.

Try this one. Picture yourself in a kitchen, standing in front of a refrigerator. Open the fridge and grab a bright yellow lemon. Place the lemon on the counter and slice it in half with a knife.

Notice the aroma of that lemon scent in your senses. Notice the juice trickling out of that succulent fruit.

Now pick up the half lemon you cut and take a giant bite out of it so that the juices flow into your mouth.

Is your mouth watering? I know mine is. This is how a thought alters our body. It’s our body’s response to a thought process. It proves our thoughts have a direct correlation with our body.

If the two examples I used made an impact in your body somehow, then imagine all the other thoughts you have and what they’re doing to your body that you can’t even measure. 

Thoughts create changes in the body. I can walk you through hundreds of examples that exemplify this very fact over and over again. The mind is the body, and the body is the mind.

Your feet don’t check in with your brain every time you take a step. The body knows it already. Sure, your brain sends motor neurons down the path to tell your muscles to contract, but your muscles have to know how to contract in order to be told how to contract.

Your brain may be the central intelligence, but the body and the brain work together to create one living, breathing, thinking entity. It’s clear that the entire body is intelligent. Every part of us. So much so that when the body experiences pain, so does our mind. And when the mind experiences it, so does our body.

Yes, it’s a holistic perspective of us as whole beings. It’s the viewpoint that what affects one system affects all systems. And by the end of this article, you’ll learn how negative emotions can be destructive to this amazing, holistic machine we call our body. If we are able to free ourselves from repressed negative emotions, positive thinking flows through us naturally as a result. 

***

I’ve led a very “square” lifestyle for most of my life. I never partied, took drugs, or drank alcohol when everyone else was getting drunk. Because of that, I was typically the outsider in my peer group. Everything I did, I did from a reserved place. I was conservative in my lifestyle choices. I came out of childhood with insecurities and high standards. I was my own moral compass and made decisions not to do many things in life that most people do when they’re young and pushing boundaries.

Unfortunately, because I was so strict about my own lifestyle choices, I was a judgmental person most of my life. I would apply the high standards I set for myself to other people. If they drank too much, took drugs, or just partied too much, I didn’t want anything to do with them.

In many ways, my healthy choices were very good for me. In other ways, they were not so good, in the sense that I used my healthy lifestyle as an emotional weapon against people. It was easy to look down at others because I was on such a high, self-appointed tower that very few people could climb. 

Because of this, I became a bit arrogant. I didn’t think I was arrogant at the time, but I certainly admit to feeling superior in instances where others made what I believed to be unhealthy choices for their lives.

When I met the woman who would be my future wife, then ex-wife, the choices she made in her youth (before we ever met) hit me as unhealthy and wrong. I looked at the choices she made when she was younger were happening in the moment. 

If she told me a story where she drank too much at a party, I became judgmental and even angry. I was angry at her for something she did before we ever met!

If my partners in life told me they smoked when they were a teenager, I would judge them. If they told me they had more sex than I did, I would judge them.

I was really efficient at judging, which is really bad if you want to grow and keep a healthy relationship. I was loving, kind, and respectful most of the time, but other times, when my insecurities rose up and my judgments came out, it caused my partners confusion and hurt, putting them in a tough position. They loved me but didn’t want to be judged by me. They had to wrestle with staying or leaving the relationship. 

You may have experienced a similar relationship in your past as well. If you’ve ever thought perhaps you should leave a relationship because you’re not sure if your partner will ever change, you can probably relate. 

Every judgment I had was basically the same as an emotional trigger. I would see or learn about behavior that didn’t fit my standards which triggered an emotion in me. That caused me to become judgmental. The emotional trigger usually came out in the form of anger. I was also suffering from abandonment and rejection issues.

Every time I was triggered, I would feel a pain in my stomach. It wasn’t exactly a pain but more like a burning sensation. Like most people, anger caused me to feel sensations in my body. Anger may make your stomach hurt. Sadness may cause your chest to tighten. The reverse could also be true. You may feel different emotions in different parts of your body. Regardless, the body is reacting to an emotion caused by a thought.

For me, my stomach was reacting to my thoughts. And the more I resisted those angry feelings, the more my stomach hurt. I even developed chronic bad breath because there was so much acid in my stomach.

Negative thoughts can create a toxic environment inside the body. My thoughts caused me to be angry, sad, and probably other emotions as well. The physical responses to those emotions were causing problems. It got to the point where I could no longer eat garlic, pepper, or onions because when I did, it felt like there was a hole burning in my stomach.

At the time, I didn’t blame it on my thoughts. I blamed it on my stomach. I believed there must be a physical problem I have that has nothing to do with my emotional state. I thought because that’s where the symptoms were, that’s where the solution was.

I went to a doctor, and he prescribed an antacid. Soon, the acid was being neutralized, and the problem went away. For a short while. I addressed the physical symptoms, but I never fixed the root of the problem: My emotional triggers.

My triggers created negative emotions, which caused my body to respond. The antacids did help, but I didn’t want to take antacids all my life. So, I started to monitor my responses and physical state going forward. I started paying attention to the exact moment my stomach reacted.

I was able to narrow down all the foods that caused that burning sensation so that was helpful. But I figured something else out that I didn’t expect. It wasn’t only food that caused my stomach problem, but emotions too.

I started piecing together that food was actually never the real issue. My triggers were. My thoughts that led to negative emotions that led to my stomach filling with acid was the real problem.

Negative thoughts can cause physical harm to the body. 

When all of this came together, I realized that my negative emotions were directly related to both my physical and mental health and well-being. This started my long journey of learning to express and release all the negative thoughts in my mind.

I knew that every negative thought also came with a bad feeling which brought on physical symptoms of some kind. It was an epiphany. Though apparently, this was not very new information. Others have connected these dots too but I’d never run across this information before. Perhaps it just wasn’t a popular opinion. 

It didn’t make sense to me that thoughts could manifest physical symptoms even though over the years it’s been proven over and over again. I’ve had headaches that went away because of a shift in my thoughts.

When I had an acidic stomach, I put together the cause and effect of everything going on. A thought or trigger created the emotion that created the physical symptom.

This is how the placebo effect works. You’re given a sugar pill in place of a real pill. Then, your beliefs create changes in your body, which allows healing to take place. It seems to me that most people could benefit by taking placebos! But maybe because most of us don’t want to change our thoughts, we want to alleviate our symptoms. Even though processing and releasing the stream of negative thoughts would create a lasting effect, the quick fix is simply faster.

When I was able to confront my negative thoughts and start expressing what was really on my mind, instead of leaving them in there to be triggered over and over again, I noticed my stomach issues started disappearing on their own.

Could it be true? All I have to do is release some of the negative baggage I’m carrying around in order to have a healthier, happier body? Would positive thinking do that for me? No, it won’t. 

***

Todd B. Kashdan, Professor of Psychology at George Mason University and author of “The Upside of Your Dark Side: Why Being Your Whole Self – Not Just Your ‘Good’ Self – Drives Success and Fulfillment”,  wrote an article in Psychology Today called “A Secret Weapon in Preventing Anxiety and Depression” In this article, he made a great statement: 

“When we attempt to divorce ourselves from pain, we end up feeling nothing pleasurable or meaningful at all. When we better understand, tolerate, and harness distressing thoughts and feelings and become aware of the situations when they are helpful, we become empowered. We gain vitality. We become whole.”

In other words, there is no pleasure without pain. And the more pain you are willing to express, the more pleasure you will feel. At least, that’s my take on that statement. And just to be clear, it’s the more pain you express, not endure.

Expressing repressed pain and upset is truly a path to positive thinking. I emphasize this over and over again on my show. I encourage finding someone you can trust and telling them the absolutely painful truths buried deep inside you. Even if you don’t believe some of those truths are real. Your mind-body doesn’t care what’s real, it cares about eliminating waste.

It might not sound like a pleasant analogy, but it works. The body is designed to eliminate waste. We already know the various ways it does this, but negative, repressed emotions are waste. They need to be released along with the other waste our bodies get rid of.

When you can speak your full expression of your painful history, whether it happened yesterday or when you were a child, you are giving your repressed emotions a voice. Imagine that for just a moment:

Any residual emotional pain or hurt that you have inside you is in there because it hasn’t been given a voice.

When we speak about what hurts, the pain or upset gets to be expressed and released from the body. The body gets to eliminate this mental waste. This stuff doesn’t have to be childhood trauma either. It can be something that happened to you this morning.

Have you ever gotten mad at someone and then expressed how angry you were at that person to someone else? Remember those times when you said, “Ahh, I feel better having talked about it.” You’ve probably had that feeling at least once in your life.

That method works. It works time and time again. When you do this, you’re giving the fear, anger, sadness, and other emotional pain a voice with which to express itself. If that sounds silly, try it anyway.

I’ve witnessed some really amazing physical changes with the people I’ve worked with. They’ve had lifelong conditions disappear all because they gave their deepest negative emotions a voice. Those deep emotions could be childhood traumas or even something traumatic that happened yesterday.

The quote by Professor Kashdan that I mentioned a bit earlier rings very true when we think about how much we typically avoid feeling pain. Some of us avoid the pain by taking drugs. Others drink. Some smoke, and some eat comfort food. Some people may have sex or gambling addictions. There are many ways people deal with their symptoms, not the cause.

Of course, some people don’t know what the cause of their emotional pain is, so they keep dealing with their symptoms the only way they know how. As you can already speculate, some people do not make healthy choices when it comes to this. Those people never get ahead. They are always using that crutch just to get by.

You don’t want to just “get by”. If you’re like most people, you want to live, thrive, and be happy. You want to heal and have positive thoughts come into your head without having to force them there.

Positive thinking cannot exist until you’ve given all of your negative emotions a voice.

When those deep-rooted, negative emotions are expressed, the pressure is released, and you can move on to the next layer of healing. It sure seems that there are always more layers, but the more you address them, the smaller and less intense those layers get.

Releasing one repressed negative emotion can reveal the next one, but the layers will get thinner and you will reach the light at the end of that seemingly long tunnel. But you do need to go through some of the thicker layers first. 

“When we attempt to divorce ourselves from pain, we end up feeling nothing pleasurable or meaningful at all…”

When we choose not to face the pain we have inside, then all the pleasure we experience can contain an underlayer of unhappiness. That’s no way to live. And positive thinking by itself is not going to be the cure for that condition. 

The biggest changes can happen to you when you express yourself from the deepest, most vulnerable, most safely-guarded places inside you. Next, I’ll share with you a few of the transformations I’ve witnessed all by simply talking to someone.

***

Before I share this first story, I want to tell you I have no medical degree, and I do not diagnose people. I’m just sharing what I’ve personally witnessed when people have expressed their deepest, most painful (and guarded) truths with me. Always seek the advice of a medical or psychological professional for your health and well-being. 

I once knew a woman who learned how to block her past. She did that so she wouldn’t have to remember the pain she went through in childhood. Some people learn how to do this at a young age because of sexual abuse and other traumas they experienced. 

She shared with me that fear ran her life but she didn’t know what she feared. So I asked her, “What do you fear?”

She came up with a few answers, but I could tell they were just surface answers. Surface answers are the kind of answers you know you know. They are the thoughts that are immediately available to your conscious mind. They aren’t buried under years of denial or hurt. They are usually easier to access and talk about than the deeper, more painful truths way down inside.

The kind of answer I was looking for was one she didn’t know she knew. I wanted her to dig way down and find one that was buried under the years of convenient forgetting that she did. Her not remembering what happened was a defense mechanism that she created in order to live without pain.

After asking her a few probing questions, she was finally able to come up with something that she believed may have been a truth for her. She wasn’t sure if it was true, but it felt true. She had trouble coming up with images or sounds (which shows you how well she learned to forget the past), but the feelings were there so she shared those with me.

The feelings were loneliness and abandonment. I realize that “abandonment” may not exactly be a feeling, but to her, it was, so it was important to let her express it as such.

Once she was able to connect with this place inside of her and realize that she had been carrying these feelings around with her for her entire life, she started to question if they were still valid today. When you connect with that deep place inside you with those old belief systems, then evaluate those beliefs today, you may find out they no longer apply.

This is what she did. She suddenly realized those old feelings were attached to old beliefs that she would be abandoned or rejected, just as she felt when she was a child. She processed that for a moment and came to a new understanding of what she’d been holding on to and holding back. 

The next day after our talk, she told me that a yeast infection she was dealing with completely disappeared. And weeks later, she told me it never returned. Even years later, she reported to me that it had not returned. Yeast infections were something she had dealt with for most of her life. But suddenly, after an hour-long conversation, just talking, it was gone.

This was the first time I’d seen anything like this. I thought it was a fluke, but it was uncanny how she felt so much better the day after our talk. Her infection disappeared, never to return.

Years later it may have returned for different reasons, but it went from constant and practically incurable to gone overnight. I was amazed, and so was she. I didn’t even know she had a yeast infection, but apparently, whatever she let go of also allowed the infection to disappear. 

This next story has to do with a friend of mine. We were on a project together in another state. He got a massive headache during the training class, so during the break, I wanted to try something with him. I learned something called Emotional Freedom Technique, or EFT, and had him tap on different parts of his body while saying specific words.

I typically don’t use EFT because I never usually need it (and it’s a really strange process), but I wanted to try it just because I love to find out what works and what doesn’t. I asked him how bad his headache was, between 1 and 10 (10 being the worst pain). He said it was a 9.

As I had him tap on different parts of his body, I made him say the words, “Even though I have this headache and want to get rid of it, I completely and honestly love myself”.

Every time he tapped a spot on his body, he repeated those same words. And I made sure to make him say the words even if he didn’t believe the words he was speaking. That seemed to be a part of the process that made an impact. 

After a round of tapping, I asked about his headache and what his pain level was. At first, he said it went down to a 7. But after another round of tapping, he said it went down to a 1. At that point he was so relieved, he actually didn’t want to go any further. So we stopped.

I asked myself was it the tapping that helped his headache go away or something else? I thought, who cares? As long as it’s gone. He agreed. 

This third story involves a friend of mine with asthma. She shared some pretty deep stuff with me, things that she probably hadn’t shared with anyone else. It was hard for her. She was crying most of the time. But she got through it. And in the end, felt a lot better for being able to share in a safe place.

A day and a half went by, and she told me that her asthma appeared to be gone. I was actually surprised by this because she didn’t mention she was having asthma issues. But that night, she didn’t have the symptoms anymore. I even confirmed with her a few days later, and her symptoms of asthma were still gone. 

She’d been working on her own mental healing and growth for a while before we met, so I’m sure that was the catalyst for whatever we did together. Whatever she did before, I’m sure was a great start and helped to make the process I helped her through have an even bigger impact. Asthma is a scary condition, and to suddenly not have it anymore must be an extremely freeing experience. 

I wanted to share these stories not because I believe there’s a quick cure for what physically ails us but to raise a question in your mind about anything that may ail you.

I was raised my entire life to believe that the only way to get rid of a headache was to take a pill. I was raised to believe that infections had to be treated, not talked about. I had a million references that told me that symptoms and conditions don’t just disappear. They had to be treated somehow.

Is it possible that talking made these conditions go away? 

***

How can we talk about our deepest, darkest secrets and heal after they are expressed? How can we just give our emotions a voice and let them say whatever they need to say and have it affect our body in a positive way?

Does it really matter how? I’ve seen this over and over again. I’ve personally experienced this in myself and witnessed it in others. I’ve seen people’s entire lives change because they chose to be vulnerable. They chose to express themselves in a way they’ve never done so before. I’ve seen addicts stop being addicted in a day. I’ve seen people with allergies suddenly have no more allergic reactions.

This sounds completely crazy when I talk about it, even after all I’ve seen. But science confirms this with drug testing: People’s symptoms go away with sugar pills. The placebo effect does get rid of symptoms. Not with everything and not all the time, but it shows what’s possible. 

This is why almost anything you can think of can work. If you truly believe that energy healing or magic healing crystals will work, they probably will. It’s the power of suggestion. Whether you think you can or you can’t, you’re right. It’s all the stuff we’ve heard over and over again throughout the years. The mind and body know what to do and will do it when there’s a clear path to allow it to happen.

Clearing the path involves expressing the deepest, and sometimes darkest parts of your life. You give that inner emotion and those repressed thoughts and feelings a voice. This can help facilitate the release. 

Many people don’t want to be vulnerable enough to do this, so they hang on to the pain or the secrets. But once they express the deepest stuff, the pain has a doorway to walk through. If the emotional pain can be released, maybe some or all of the physical conditions can go with it, too.

I’m not saying to stop what you’re doing now. If you see a doctor for a condition, or a therapist for your emotional and mental health, or go to church to become spiritually fulfilled, always continue to do what works. And, do this, too. Express the deep stuff. Let it out. 

The tricky part for many people is that they don’t have someone completely safe to express to. When you feel embarrassed or ashamed of something that happened in your past, it can be difficult to share that with anyone. You may not be able to find someone who can be completely present with you and nonjudgmental. This is an important component of expressing yourself. You want to find someone who can stay out of their own head and won’t be critical of what you have to say.

When you can’t find someone safe to express your deepest, darkest, repressed thoughts and emotions, write them down. Writing can be a powerful way to express what’s going on inside you. And when you write, do it as if you are writing to someone safe. In other words, don’t just write, pretend you’re writing a letter to the safest person in the world you can tell anything to.

Write your full expression of self, laying out every negative emotion you feel, including all the words you want to say, even if those words sound immoral or even illegal. Just write everything out. Give your emotions a voice to help bring them out of your body.

After you do that, reread what you wrote and reflect on the words to see if you feel the same way you did before you started writing. Don’t be surprised if you feel differently. 

You may even want to rewrite what you wrote afterward because as you release these things, what you once felt may no longer be how you feel now. But the first step, full expression and getting it out, is most important.

You can feel free again. And it’s important to make sure the path to that freedom is clear. Fully expressing yourself is a path to freedom. I want to make sure whatever is holding you back from complete freedom and happiness gets out to give you a chance to feel wonderful.

The end result of all of this expression is something I started talking about at the beginning of this article: Positive thinking.

Positive thinking happens naturally to the person who clears the path and fully expresses themselves. Positive, happy, optimistic thoughts all occur naturally in the person who doesn’t live in pain, fear or sadness.

Positive thinking cannot be thrust upon you. You must dig a little into yourself to allow some of the deepest layers to rise to the surface. Positive thoughts are a way of life when you release the deep stuff. 

***

In Summary: 

1. Positive thinking isn’t something you do, it’s something that just happens after all the negativity is emptied from your mind and body.
   
   It’s the result of expressing negative thinking, the deepest parts of it, so that your negative thoughts get released from your mind and body. When the thought stream flows naturally, with no obstacles, positive thoughts come easily.
   
   When the stream gets diverted, resistance arises, and you feel it in your body.
   
   
2. Allowing all thoughts to come to the surface to be expressed in some way is the fastest way to keep the positive flow moving.
   
   Though, sometimes you don’t feel safe enough to share in the moment. In that case, share later. Write down what you’re thinking and feeling first. Then find a friend and express yourself to them.
   
   Don’t hold those thoughts and feelings in for too long. If you do, the body starts to feel the effects. The body holds on to negative thoughts. You know this because when you feel bad, there’s usually a part of your body that feels bad too. Whether it’s tightness or pressure or something else. Anger and fear may end up in your stomach, whereas sadness may end up in your chest.
   
   There’s no doubt that we usually feel emotions in our major organs, as that’s where they seem to have the most impact. Though, wouldn’t it be an interesting experiment to ask your body to feel emotions in your thumb or toe? I’ve done this, and I think you should try it too just to see what happens.
   
   
3. Your thoughts create physical reactions in your body.
   
   Pretend you bit into the sourest pickle you’ve ever had and really try not to salivate while you do that. The sour juices are flowing and your mouth is probably watering right now…
   
   You get the picture. Thoughts are directly related to reactions in the body. The longer you hold onto a thought, the longer that reaction stays. If you are holding onto some painful thoughts, that emotional pain finds a way to manifest itself in your body.
   
   It works the other way too. When the pain is dealt with and expressed, and you start holding on to the good thoughts, that also manifests in the body. To distinguish between good and bad thoughts, just ask yourself how a thought feels. If it feels good, it’s a good thought.
    
4. Science has proven the mind and body connection.
   
   If all of this sounds crazy, just remember science proves everything I’m saying with the placebo effect. It sounds like snake oil. It makes no sense that a pill designed to trick the body into thinking it is healing can actually minimize symptoms or even eradicate them for good. But it happens anyway. 
   
   That’s why I believe in belief. It’s no fun not believing in something because belief actually helps the body to heal and grow. Even if you don’t believe in anything, that’s a belief.
   
   As long as you feel good about that belief, deep down, you are affecting your mind and body in a positive way.
   
   
5. Pain is a sign that pleasure is also available to us.
   
   Emotional pain has an opposite just like cold’s opposite is hot. When you express the bad stuff, the good stuff gets a chance to be expressed soon after. And you have a lot of good stuff inside you.
   
   
6. The body is designed to eliminate physical and mental waste.
   
   Our bodies are designed to work this way. By not expressing, it’s like choosing to not go to the bathroom. Imagine doing that for days? How about years? The body will suffer and it will get worse by the day. Emotional pain needs to be released. It requires purging from your system. 
   
   
7. Give repressed thoughts and emotions a voice to allow full expression.
   
   Once you give your pain a voice, let it be heard. Whether with a trusted friend, your spouse, a therapist, or even in a letter you send or not. It just has to come out.
   
   
8. Physical and psychological conditions can disappear.
   
   I’ve seen it again and again. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t still see a medical or psychological professional if you have a condition. My disclaimer is don’t listen to me and go seek professional advice.
   
   Everything I shared in this article is from my own personal experience and may not be your experience. Remember some conditions you may have had for so long that the body developed other problems related to it. So keep that in mind.
   
   I really thought the sciatic nerve pain I had for 15 years may have been psychological, but the MRI I got proved me wrong, and I had to get two back surgeries to fix it.
   
   Mental pain and anguish, in my opinion, can absolutely lead to physical symptoms, but not all physical symptoms are caused by mental pain and anguish. I just want to make sure that’s clear. I don’t want you foregoing treatment for anything. But there’s never anything wrong with full expression, whether you are seeing a professional or not.
   
   
9. Freedom is within. Happiness is within. It’s all in there.
   
   You cannot know pain without pleasure. You cannot know sadness without happiness. Clearing the path of emotional pain is the path to freedom and feeling good. When you express the really hard stuff, the good stuff comes out, and you feel like a completely new person.
   
   On my show, I once shared the story about how I cried my eyes out about all the hatred that built up inside me regarding my stepfather. All of this came out one night when I fell on my knees and screamed and cried about how much I hated him.
   
   That was the start of my journey out of depression. I had pretty moderate depression at the time but was able to get out of it simply by giving my emotions a voice. That’s what I want for you, too.

***

When I started expressing some of the painful stuff from my past, making sure I was sharing with my partner all the stuff I didn’t really want to share (because I was either too embarrassed or afraid to be vulnerable), some of my long-term physical symptoms disappeared.

My stomach stopped producing all that acid and I could actually start eating onions and peppers, and even garlic again (but in very small doses – after years of an acidic environment, my stomach took quite a beating). Ever since then, I’ve been making sure to treat myself well by eating the right foods, and processing and releasing negative thoughts.

Those old emotional triggers can play havoc in your life. An emotional trigger is the upset you go through that creates the physical symptom. Once I got rid of the emotional triggers I was carrying around, I got rid of the symptoms.

Processing and expressing thoughts have helped me release negative emotions in turn creating a healthier environment in my body. Thoughts create emotions. Emotions cause physical changes to occur. We are a fully integrated mind-body, and everything that goes in, all the joys and pains of life, comes out in our behavior, emotions, and physical health.

We are an interconnected system of components that all need positive reinforcement. Does that mean positive thinking? Well, let’s put it this way: Positive thinking works when you feel good through and through, not when you are resisting the negative thoughts that want to be expressed.

Process and release negative thoughts and positive thinking becomes a resourceful way to stay healthy, both mentally and physically.

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Want a flowing stream of thoughts that are helpful to your mind and body? Read The Overwhelmed Brain book! The A to Z of self-empowerment.