emotional trauma

Scientists Reveal How “Broken Heart Syndrome” Is Linked to Emotional Trauma

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“We are convinced we will find the answers of the underlying mechanism primarily in the brain.”

The connection between emotions and health is becoming more clear, but nowhere is it more evident than in patients with broken heart syndrome. This heart condition, brought on by intense emotional trauma, is a famous example of the toll that grief can take on the body. Scientists in Switzerland, however, believe that the beginnings of a broken heart can be traced back to the brain.

Patients who suffer from broken heart syndrome, also called takotsubo cardiomyopathy (TTS), describe symptoms similar to those of a heart attack — shortness of breath, or sudden chest pain. The left ventricle of the heart tends to swell, and generally, the heart continues to struggle as it weakly pumps blood through the body. Strangely, these symptoms tend to occur after intense suffering or trauma, suggesting that there is a connection between the brain and the heart that underlies the disease. In a paper published in European Heart Journal, Dr. Jelena Ghadri and Christian Templin, Ph.D., both at University Hospital Zurich’s Cardiovascular Center, believe that they’ve found the center of that heart-brain connection.

“Takotsubo cardiomyopathy is in fact a brain-heart-syndrome,” Ghadri tells Inverse. ”One major problem in TTS research is that cardiologists usually focus only the heart. However, TTS is a multifacated disorder that is much more than the ‘broken heart syndrome’ and clearly involves interactions between the brain and the heart, which are not very well understood.”

heartbreak
Patients with broken heart syndrome usually develop heart problems in response to traumatic life events. 

After examining brain scans collected from 15 people with confirmed cases of broken heart syndrome and 39 healthy participants, Ghadri and Templin noticed that patients with the condition had less connectivity between certain networks in their brains. In particular, broken heart syndrome patients had decreased connectivity in their limbic systems, the network that helps process emotion and the network that controls the autonomic nervous system, which controls autonomous bodily functions like breathing and heartbeat.

Templin and Ghadri were particularly interested in several “key nodes” — brain structures within these networks that they believe hold the secrets to the “brain-heart connection.” They narrowed in on several structures, including the amygdala, hippocampus ,and cingulate gyrus. Alterations to these structures, adds Templin, may change how stressful events manifest in the brain, which could lead to problems with the heart.

“Importantly, the regions we’ve identified as communicating less with one another in TTS patients are the same brain regions that are thought to control our response to stress,” Templin said. “Therefore, this decrease in communication could negatively affect the way patients respond to stress and make them more susceptible to developing TTS.”

Ghadri adds that this represents a new way of looking at broken heart syndrome. Maybe, she says, it’s a condition that begins with problems in the brain but manifests by altering the function and even shape of the heart. “We know that an emotional event triggers TTS and emotions are processed in the brain; therefore it is conceivable that the TTS orgininates in the brain with top-down-influences on the heart,” she explains.

When it comes to helping identify the disease before it can strike, she believes that the brain is where she’ll find the true warning signs.

“One major question for the future,” she says, “is ‘Who is at risk, and why?’ And can we prevent and treat TTS? We are convinced we will find the answers of the underlying mechanism primarily in the brain”

How to Heal Emotional Trauma

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Why is it so difficult to heal emotional trauma? Maybe it is because we do not understand what our emotional wounds really are, and therefore we go about healing in ways that can never work.

When I was young, I was in a horrifically abusive relationship for over a year. Even though I was able to eventually “get out” and save myself, it took me many years to figure out how to heal the deep emotional wounds.

trauma

Understanding Emotional Wounds

We tend to think of an emotional wound as the original traumatic experience – as the “thing” that happened to us, but the wound is actually the dis-empowering belief that we developed as a result of the traumatic experience.

In the search for emotional security, our natural response to any traumatic event is to make sense of it. We “make sense” of things by creating beliefs. Beliefs that we develop in response to traumatic experiences are Traumatic Beliefs. Because Traumatic Beliefs are disempowering and painful, they become emotional wounds.

The reason many people don’t heal is because they try to heal the original traumatic experience and not the Traumatic Belief. By understanding that emotional wounds are actually the Traumatic Beliefs that we hold about ourselves and/or the world, we have the power to heal.

When a child experiences himself as abandoned, for example, that child forms beliefs around abandonment in order to explain why he was abandoned. The child may answer the question, “Why?” by creating a belief that he was not good enough. The abandonment is the not the wound. The wound is the belief in unworthiness. In this case, healing involves releasing the Traumatic Belief of unworthiness.

Two people can experience the same trauma and have completely different responses, because they develop very different beliefs about the experience.

Traumatic Beliefs Create Emotional Needs

Traumatic Beliefs always create corresponding emotional needs which must be met in order to heal. The catch is that a Traumatic Belief also creates an invisible barrier that keeps the emotional need from being met. For example, if the Traumatic Belief is, “I am not worthy,” the emotional need is feeling worthy. If you could feel unconditionally worthy, the wound would heal. The problem is, if you believe that you are not worthy, you will block the feeling of worthiness because it does not align with your beliefs about worth. This is also why healing is so challenging.

Traumatic Beliefs are Self-fulfilling and Self-Sabotaging

When we have been wounded, we feel justified in holding onto Traumatic Beliefs. Part of us may even think that these beliefs keep us from getting hurt again, and the thought of releasing them makes us feel very vulnerable – without these beliefs, what will protect us? But, Traumatic Beliefs do not protect us in the first place. In fact, these beliefs are self-sabotaging by being self-fulfilling. When we look closely, it becomes apparent that these beliefs actually cause, attract and create more of what we do not want. All beliefs effect the quantum field that creates our reality, but Traumatic Beliefs have an even stronger influence on reality because they are fueled with intense emotional energy. Therefore, if we believe we are powerless, we attract situations to us that support that belief.

Take Full Responsibility

An essential key to healing is taking complete responsibility for your life and for your wounds. As long as you blame the outside world for your pain, you give away your power to heal. This is not about letting others off the hook who have harmed us. This is about empowering yourself to be whole. If you cannot find a way to take responsibility for your life experiences, then begin by taking responsibility for your beliefs. Regardless of what transpired in the outside world, you are the only one who thinks your thoughts and therefore you are responsible for creating and believing any Traumatic Beliefs. This means that you also have the power to release these beliefs, and, therefore, you can heal yourself.

Why are Traumatic Beliefs so Painful?

Traumatic Beliefs disconnect you from who you really are because your true self could never believe that you are powerless or unworthy. When you accept these disempowering beliefs, you experience separation from your true self and this is the cause of pain and suffering. The pain is your inner guidance system alerting you to the disconnection so that you can heal by releasing incongruent beliefs.

The Higher Purpose of Traumatic Experiences

The higher purpose of traumatic experiences is to point our attention to hidden or underlying beliefs that already exist in our psyche. The traumatic experience activates the hidden belief so that we are aware of it, in order to heal. This is the point. You cannot heal something that you are unaware of. The pain directs your attention to the belief that needs to be healed in order for you to awaken.

Four Traumatic Beliefs

In order to heal, it is important that you uncover the Core Traumatic Belief(s) of the wound. There are four Core Traumatic Beliefs: Victimhood, Powerlessness, Worthlessness and Loss. All Traumatic Beliefs fall into one or more of these four categories.

Victimhood

When I was in that horrifically abusive relationship, the greatest of the wounds was the belief that I was a victim; causing me to live in great fear for many years, even after the abuse had ended. Because I was desperate to heal and have my life back, I finally looked deep into my own self. Eventually, what I understood was that I was feeling like a victim well before that relationship had ever manifested. The relationship overtly demonstrated my inner beliefs in the outer world in a way that I could not ignore.

Later, as an adult, the healing was remembering, at the deepest level, that I was responsible for my own life, and that my life was a reflection of all my beliefs. I discovered that the opposite of victim is not survivor. The opposite of victim is creator. When I remembered that I was the creator of my life, victimhood could no longer exist – and the wound was permanently healed.

The key to healing the Traumatic Belief of victimhood is waking up to who you really are and remembering that you are the creator of your life. Maybe you don’t understand how you created something, and you would certainly not consciously create a traumatic event that would make you feel victimized, nonetheless, we unconsciously create from hidden subconscious beliefs, and physical events in our lives give us clues to these underlying beliefs.

Once we become aware of theses disempowering beliefs, we have the opportunity to consciously heal them, by over-turning them, declaring their falsehood and turning toward a higher truth. In this case, the higher truth is I am the creator of my life. True power comes from learning to be a conscious creator, but this can only happen as we flush out unconscious beliefs and we align with the truth of who we really are.

Powerlessness

Even before we experience any traumatic events, most of us are socialized to believe that the world has power over us. So, when a traumatic experience does unfold, the idea of being powerless is already in our belief system, therefore, powerlessness seems an appropriate way to make sense of a negative event.
Healing from the Traumatic Belief of powerlessness is embracing ones intrinsic power – not the power that comes from control, but rather the power that originates in the core of your being and connects you to the universe and all that is. Healing the Traumatic Belief of powerlessness is an emotional journey from powerless to powerful.

Worthlessness

Of all the Traumatic Beliefs, worthlessness runs the deepest. We are programmed to believe that we are unworthy from the time we are very young. So when we experience trauma, and we search internally for a belief that will make sense of the experience, unworthiness quickly answers the question, “Why did this happen to me?”

Of course, unworthiness is a false belief and therefore it must be exposed in order to be released. When it is hidden, there is no need to pay attention but once it causes pain, you must do something about it. The good and bad news is that the pain will not go away until the false belief of unworthiness is released and you cease seeking proof of your worth in the outside world. The world cannot give or take away your worth because your worth is intrinsic and guaranteed. Absolute healing is attained when you discover and claim your unconditional worth.

Loss

Often, when we have an emotional wound, we believe that someone has taken something from us. No matter how hard we try, it appears impossible to retrieve what has been stolen. This search often keeps the wound alive – believing that we have lost something and it must be retrieved keeps us locked in a vicious cycle of perpetual hurt.

Loss does not necessarily create an emotional wound. We all experience loss – loss of an aging parent or loss of a relationship, for example. Loss is part of the flow of life. Grieving is a natural response to loss and it is the process of letting go. However, if we do not let go, loss can turn into an emotional wound. This occurs when a Traumatic Belief is formed about the loss; for example, beliefs like, “no one will ever love me again,” or “everyone I care about leaves me.” Again, it is the Traumatic Belief that creates the emotional wound and not the loss itself.

When loss creates an emotional wound, we often close down and cut ourselves off from the very thing that could heal us. If we develop a Traumatic Belief around losing love, we not only block potential new relationships, we cut ourselves off from self-love and even higher love. In other words, we do to ourselves what we fear others might do to us.

The healing is remembering that the Source of who you really are provides all that you need, if only you ask, allow and receive – by trusting something greater than the physical self, you align with the rhythm of the universe where the idea of loss does not exist. Inherent in all Traumatic Beliefs is the absolute truth of your existence.

How do we actually heal Traumatic Beliefs?

Release Identification with the Wound

When we develop and feed wounds with our attention over the course of years, we begin to identify with the wound, or, better said, we create an identity around the wounded-self. So, now we are not just releasing a wound, we are letting go of our identity. The thing is, you are not and can never be a wounded identity. This is a false belief and a false identity. In order to heal, it is important that you begin to release the identification with the wound, and that you begin to see yourself as whole – not the wounded self, but the whole self. Who are you without this wound? This is who you really are, and this is who you must become again.

Meet Your Own Emotional Needs

Emotional wounds are often left open because we continue to look to others to meet our emotional needs. In order to heal, we must take responsibility for our own emotional needs and we must find ways to meet them. So, instead of looking to others for love, for example, we must love ourselves. By giving ourselves love, we fill the wound, and we heal.

Transformational Forgiveness

Transformational Forgiveness is not about forgiving another or forgiving ourselves, as much as it is about letting go of the beliefs that keep us trapped – as the prisoner of unhealed wounds. Ask yourself, “Do I want to heal more than I want to hold onto these beliefs?” If the answer is yes, it is time to let go of disempowering false beliefs.

Allow Emotions to Process Through

In order to heal an emotional wound, emotions must be able to “process through” until completion. If we allow our emotions to come up over and over again without resolution, we are actually reactivating the wound and each time we do, it magnifies. Healing requires resolution. This means feeling your emotions completely and not pushing them down or away. The healing comes when you allow your emotions space to be experienced until the process is complete. In order to allow emotions to “process through” you must get in your body. Emotional wounds are stored in the body, and therefore the way to release them is by getting in your body and feeling your emotions until the process feels complete.

Revision

Since the mind does not know the difference between real and imagined, it is possible to go back to a past event and revise it in such a way that the wound automatically heals. The key to successful revision is giving your past-self a new set of beliefs that empower him or her to know your worth, power and connection to who you really are. In this way, you can revise your past-self to speak the truth, set a boundary or exercise personal power in a way that allows your past-self to rise up; ultimately avoiding the emotional trauma or responding to the traumatic event in a way that no wound was created.

Look for a Deeper Truth

For me, my complete healing came from the realization that the person whom I thought hurt me was actually in my life to save me, by physically demonstrating the emotional abuse that I was imposing on myself. Without him serving me in this way, how would I have been able to identify my feelings of victimhood, worthlessness and powerlessness that I carried from childhood? By understanding this deeper truth, my emotional pain transmuted into gratitude. There is always a deeper truth. If you haven’t uncovered a truth that sets you free, go deeper, and keep going until you find it.

Rise Above

Every thought and belief has a coinciding vibration. Fear is at the low end of the vibratory spectrum while love is at the high end. Emotional wounds are low vibratory beliefs about oneself and/or the world. The wound exists at a low vibration and it keeps you stagnated at this low vibration. If you were to consistently raise your vibration to a higher vibration and keep it there, the wound could not exist. In other words, if you turned your full attention toward love and forgiveness, the wound would dissolve because it cannot exist at a high vibration.

The Commitment to Heal

Healing requires commitment and consistency. Because trauma wires your brain for disempowering beliefs, emotional healing requires the re-wiring of your brain for empowering beliefs; this involves the development of new conscious thought patterns that are consistently practiced over a period of time.

Enlisting the help of a healing professional to assist you may exponentially quicken the healing process, but in the end you must do it for yourself. In healing yourself you discover the strength, courage and power to live your life the way it was intended to be lived. If you are here to help others heal, maybe you access the skills to do so, that could not have been acquired in any other manner than going through the process yourself.

The ultimate healing is the awakening to your power and worth. You cannot remember that you are unconditionally worthy and intrinsically powerful and still maintain emotional wounds. There is nothing that cannot be healed through the power of knowing your Real Self.

Mother’s Fears Are Passed to Children Through Smell, Study Suggests.

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Emotional trauma would seem, at face value, to be a highly individual experience, impacting primarily the person going through the ordeal. However, emotional trauma, fears, and phobias also impact people with close ties to the victim, including their children… even if the trauma happened years before they are born.

So-called hereditary trauma can be passed down from generation to generation, such that children may suffer from the same behavioral issues, fears, and phobias as their parents. A new study in rats took this knowledge a step further, shedding light on one way that a mother’s fears or past traumas may impact her children.

Hereditary Trauma

Story at-a-glance

  • Hereditary trauma can be passed down from generation to generation, such that children may suffer from the same behavioral issues, fears, and phobias as their parents
  • In an animal study, newborn pups learned to fear the smell of peppermint their mothers had been conditioned to fear prior to pregnancy
  • Traumatic stress alters “microRNAs” in mice blood, brains, and sperm, leading to significant alterations in offspring that impact behavior
  • An imbalance in microRNAs in sperm, brought on by trauma, is one way in which emotional trauma is passed down through generations, a factor that is likely triggered when the body produces too much stress hormone

Mother’s Fears Passed to Children Via Scent

During the study, female rats were conditioned to fear the smell of peppermint before they were pregnant. Later, the rats’ pups were exposed to the peppermint scent along with a scent of their mother’s reacting to the peppermint odor.

The newborn pups learned to fear the smell even when their mothers weren’t there, after just a single exposure.1 However, when activity was blocked in the pups’ amygdala, a region of the brain that processes emotions, including fear responses, the pups did not learn to fear the peppermint scent.

So it seems that, via scent, “infants can learn from their mothers about potential environmental threats before their sensory and motor development allows them a comprehensive exploration of the surrounding environment.”2 The impact of scent on fear was so strong that some of the rats tried to plug the tubing to stop the scent from coming in, a habit that the researchers plan to study further.

The Power of Scents

The fact that a mother’s fears can be passed on to her offspring via a scent like peppermint adds further support for the use of aromatherapy, as it’s clear that scents trigger real physical and emotional responses. Just as certain scents can evoke fear, others may trigger calm or even help relieve anxiety. For instance, research shows:

  • A systematic review of 16 randomized controlled trials examining the anxiolytic (anxiety-inhibiting) effects of aromatherapy among people with anxiety symptoms showed that most of the studies indicated positive effects to quell anxiety (and no adverse events were reported).3
  • People exposed to bergamot essential oil aromatherapy prior to surgeryhad a greater reduction in pre-operative anxiety than those in control groups.4
  • Sweet orange oil has been found to have anxiety-inhibiting effects in humans, supporting its common use as a tranquilizer by aromatherapists.5
  • Ambient odors of orange and lavender reduced anxiety and improved moodin patients waiting for dental treatment.6
  • Compared to the controls, women who were exposed to orange odor in adental office had a lower level of anxiety, a more positive mood, and a higher level of calmness. Researchers concluded, “exposure to ambient odor of orange has a relaxant effect.”7

Anxiety, of course, is only one use for aromatherapy. Other potential uses include:

  • Green apple scent for migraines: One study found that the scentsignificantly relieved migraine pain. This may also work with other scents that you enjoy, so consulting with an aromatherapist might be beneficial.
  • Peppermint for memory: The aroma of peppermint has been shown to enhance memory and increase alertness.
  • Nausea and vomiting: A blend of peppermint, ginger, spearmint, and lavender essential oils has been found to help relieve post-operative nausea.8
  • Lavender for pain relief: Lavender aromatherapy has been shown to lessen pain following needle insertion.9

How Hereditary Trauma Occurs

University of Zurich researchers unraveled a piece of the puzzle to show just how hereditary trauma may occur, even in the absence of a conditioned scent trigger. They found that traumatic stress altered “microRNAs” in mice blood, brains, and sperm.10

While some of the microRNAs were produced in excess, others were produced in lower amounts than in control animals. The end result was significant alterations in the cellular processes controlled by the microRNAs. Science Daily reported:11

“After traumatic experiences, the mice behaved markedly differently: they partly lost their natural aversion to open spaces and bright light and had depressive-like behaviours. These behavioural symptoms were also transferred to the next generation via sperm, even though the offspring were not exposed to any traumatic stress themselves.”

It wasn’t only their behavior that was altered, either. The traumatized mice had offspring with altered metabolisms, including lower insulin and blood sugar levels. The study shows that an imbalance in microRNAs in sperm, brought on by trauma, is one way in which emotional trauma is passed down through generations, a factor the researchers said is likely “part of a chain of events that begins with the body producing too much stress hormones.”12

Children of Traumatized Parents May Develop Better Coping Mechanisms

The implications of hereditary trauma are significant. It’s estimated, for instance, that 30 percent of children with a parent that served in Iraq or Afghanistan, and developed post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), are also struggling with “secondary PTSD.”13

Aside from war, emotional trauma may arise from countless scenarios, from acts of terrorism, a loss in the family, crime, and much more. Along with traveling through generations, such traumas are also known to impact people on a societal level.

One aspect that offers promise, however, is a 2013 study that showed children of Holocaust survivors were less likely to suffer from PTSD after experiencing a traumatic event. This the researchers attributed to “post-traumatic growth,” which they described as a “workable coping mechanism” that helped the children develop more positive self-image and greater personal strength as adults.14, 15

What Else Is Passed Through Generations?

Emotional trauma is only one example of how a mother can impact her children even before they are born. Poor dietary choices can also become encoded into the gene expression patterns (epigenome) of your DNA and your gut microbiome, leading to permanent changes in the balance of bacteria in your body – changes that may be passed onto your children.16

As noted in the Nutrition Journal,17 a mother’s diet may shape her child’s taste preferences in utero, skewing them toward vegetables or sweets, for instance. There’s also evidence that children inherit their microbiome from their mother, and part of this may be “seeded into the unborn fetus while still in the womb.”

If a mother has an imbalance of bacteria, she will pass this imbalance onto her child and “thus fails to present the ideal gut flora for a proper immune education during her child’s most critical developmental window… This developmental dysbiosis leaves the offspring’s immune system poorly trained to fight off infections and encourages autoimmune and allergic diseases,” the study’s author, Dr. Myles, noted.

Even a father’s diet plays a role in his child’s future health, as “paternal epigenetics related to methylation of DNA and histones can also be inherited by the offspring and could alter early development of the immune system.” As Dr. Myles explained:18 “Since the information encoded upon DNA is passed from parent-to-child and even potentially from parent-to-grandchild, cells that learn bad habits like ignoring signs of infection or over-reacting to antigens could combine with microbiome shifts to further worsen a child’s immunologic development.” To give children the best start, then, requires not only attention to emotional health but also physical health via your diet, sound sleep, exercise, and more.

Are You a Trauma Survivor?

It’s essential that you help to heal your emotional scars. Guy Winch, author ofEmotional First Aid: Practical Strategies for Treating Failure, Rejection, Guilt and Other Everyday Psychological Injuries, shared five tips for healing your emotional pain that may help:19

1. Let Go of Rejection

Rejection actually activates the same pathways in your brain as physical pain, which is one reason why it hurts so much. The sooner you let go of painful rejections, the better off your mental health will be.

2. Avoid Ruminating

When you ruminate, or brood, over a past hurt, the memories you replay in your mind only become increasingly distressing and cause more anger – without providing any new insights. Ruminating on a stressful incident can also increase your levels of C-reactive protein, a marker of inflammation in your body.20

3. Turn Failure Into Something Positive

If you allow yourself to feel helpless after a failure, or blame it on your lack of ability or bad luck, it’s likely to lower your self-esteem. Blaming a failure on specific factors within your control, such as planning and execution, is likely to be less damaging, but even better is focusing on ways you can improve and be better informed or prepared so you can succeed next time (and try again, so there is a next time).

4. Make Sure Guilt Remains a Useful Emotion

Guilt can be beneficial in that it can stop you from doing something that may harm another person (making it a strong relationship protector). But guilt that lingers or is excessive can impair your ability to focus and enjoy life. If you still feel guilty after apologizing for a wrongdoing, be sure you have expressed empathy toward them and conveyed that you understand how your actions impacted them. This will likely lead to authentic forgiveness and relief of your guilty feelings.

5. Use Self-Affirmations if You Have Low Self-Esteem

While positive affirmations are excellent tools for emotional health, if they fall outside the boundaries of your beliefs they may be ineffective. This may be the case for people with low self-esteem, for whom self-affirmations may be more useful. Self-affirmations, such as “I have a great work ethic” can help to reinforce positive qualities you believe you have, as can making a list of your best qualities.

My Most Highly Recommended Tool for Emotional Healing

Many, if not most, people carry emotional scars — traumas that can adversely affect your health and quality of life. Using techniques like energy psychology, you can correct the emotional short-circuiting that contributes to your chronic emotional pain. My favorite technique for this is the Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT), which is the largest and most popular version of energy psychology.

EFT is a form of psychological acupressure based on the same energy meridians used in traditional acupuncture to treat physical and emotional ailments for over 5,000 years, but without the invasiveness of needles. Instead, simple tapping with the fingertips is used to transfer kinetic energy onto specific meridians on your head and chest while you think about your specific problem — whether it is a traumatic event, an addiction, pain, anxiety, etc. — and voice positive affirmations.

This combination of tapping the energy meridians and voicing positive affirmation works to clear the “short-circuit”—the emotional block—from your body’s bioenergy system, thus restoring your mind and body’s balance, which is essential for optimal health and the healing of physical disease. The beauty about EFT is that it can reprogram your body’s reactions to the unavoidable stressors of everyday life, thereby providing a more lasting effect. More than any traditional or alternative method I have used or researched, EFT has the most potential to literally work magic.

Clinical trials have shown that EFT is able to rapidly reduce the emotional impact of memories and incidents that trigger emotional distress. Once the distress is reduced or removed, your body can often rebalance itself, and accelerate healing. For a demonstration of how to perform EFT, please see the video below featuring EFT practitioner Julie Schiffman. The first video is a general demonstration, which can be tailored to just about any problem, and the second demonstrates how to tap for depression. While this technique is particularly effective for relieving emotional or mental stress and anxiety, it can be used for all manner of physical pain relief as well.

While the video above will easily teach you how to do EFT, it is VERY important to realize that self-treatment for serious issues is NOT recommended. For serious or complex issues, you need someone to guide you through the process, as it typically takes many years of training to develop the skill to tap on deep-seated, significant issues. So if you have a serious emotional challenge, please seek a highly qualified and skilled therapist. Just as you wouldn’t do an appendectomy on yourself if you were a surgeon, self-treatment in this area could be highly counterproductive.

Physical Support for Emotional Pain

Your emotional and physical health are intricately connected. You’ll have an easier time bouncing back from emotional setbacks when you’re physically well, and healthy habits will also help keep your mood elevated naturally in the midst of stress. The following lifestyle strategies can significantly help to support emotional wellness and healing:

  • Eat well: What you eat directly impacts your mood and energy levels in both the short and long term. Whereas eating right can prime your body and brain to be in a focused, happy state, eating processed junk foods will leave you sluggish and prone to chronic disease. My free nutrition plan is an excellent tool to help you choose the best foods for both physical andemotional wellness.
  • Proper sleep: Sleep deprivation is linked to psychiatric disorders such as anxiety and bipolar depression, while getting the right amount of sleep has been linked to positive personality characteristics such as optimism and greater self-esteem, as well as a greater ability to solve difficult problems.21
  • Animal-based omega-3 fats: Low concentrations of the omega-3 fats EPA and DHA are known to increase your risk for mood swings and mood disorders. Those suffering from depression have been found to have lower levels of omega-3 in their blood, compared to non-depressed individuals. Krill oil is my preferred source of omega-3 fats.
  • Regular sun exposure: This is essential for vitamin D production, low levels of which are linked to depression. But even beyond vitamin D, regular safe sun exposure is known to enhance mood and energy through the release of endorphins.