negative emotions

Anger Hurts Your Heart: Negative Emotions Impact Blood Flow.

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Summary: Remembering past anger can significantly impair blood vessel function, crucial for maintaining healthy blood flow. The study involved 280 adults who underwent emotional tasks that induced feelings of anger, anxiety, or sadness, and their vascular responses were measured.

Findings revealed that while anxiety and sadness did not affect vascular function, recalling angry memories caused a temporary impairment in blood vessel dilation, lasting up to 40 minutes after the emotional trigger. This underscores the profound impact negative emotions, particularly anger, can have on cardiovascular health, reinforcing the importance of emotional regulation in heart disease prevention

Key Facts:

  1. Specific Impact of Anger: Among the negative emotions tested, only anger led to a noticeable impairment in the ability of blood vessels to relax, highlighting its unique cardiovascular risks.
  2. Methodology: Participants were subjected to different emotional stimuli, and their vascular health was assessed through non-invasive imaging that tracked changes in blood flow and vessel dilation.
  3. Health Implications: The study emphasizes the connection between emotional health and physical health, particularly heart health, suggesting that managing anger could be crucial in preventing cardiovascular diseases.

Source: American Heart Association

A brief episode of anger triggered by remembering past experiences may negatively impact the blood vessels’ ability to relax, which is essential for proper blood flow, according to new research published today in the Journal of the American Heart Association.

Previous research has found that impairment of blood vessels’ ability to relax may increase the risk of developing atherosclerosis, which may, in turn, increase the risk of heart disease and stroke

“Impaired vascular function is linked to an increased risk of heart attack and stroke,” said lead study author Daichi Shimbo, M.D., a professor of medicine at the Columbia University Irving Medical Center in New York City.

“Observational studies have linked feelings of negative emotions with having a heart attack or other cardiovascular disease events. The most common negative emotion studied is anger, and there are fewer studies on anxiety and sadness, which have also been linked to heart attack risk.”

In this study, the researchers investigated whether negative emotions — anger, sadness and anxiety — may have an adverse impact on blood vessel function compared to a neutral emotion.

The 280 adults in the study were randomly assigned to one of four emotional tasks for 8 minutes: recalling a personal memory that made them angry; recalling a personal memory of anxiety; reading a series of depressing sentences that evoked sadness; or repeatedly counting to 100 to induce an emotionally neutral state.

This protocol, “Putative mechanisms Underlying Myocardial infarction onset and Emotions (PUME),” was described by the researchers in a previous paper.

Researchers assessed the cells lining each study participant’s blood vessels before the tasks and at several points after, looking for evidence of impaired blood vessel dilation, increased cell injury and/or reduced cell repair capacity

The measurements taken before the emotional tasks were repeated after tasks were completed.

Measurements were taken for each participant at baseline (0 minutes) and at four different timepoints after experiencing the assigned emotional task: 3 minutes, 40 minutes, 70 minutes and 100 minutes. The analysis found:

  • Tasks that recalled past events causing anger led to an impairment in blood vessel dilation, from zero to 40 minutes after the task. The impairment was no longer present after the 40-minute mark.
  • There were no statistically significant changes to participants’ blood vessel linings at any time points after experiencing the anxiety and sadness emotional tasks.

“We saw that evoking an angered state led to blood vessel dysfunction, though we don’t yet understand what may cause these changes,” Shimbo said.

“Investigation into the underlying links between anger and blood vessel dysfunction may help identify effective intervention targets for people at increased risk of cardiovascular events.”

According to an American Heart Association 2021 scientific statement, Psychological Health, Well-Being, and the Mind-Heart-Body Connection, mental well-being can positively or negatively impact a person’s health and risk factors for heart disease and stroke

“This study adds nicely to the growing evidence base that mental well-being can affect cardiovascular health, and that intense acute emotional states, such as anger or stress, may lead to cardiovascular events,” said Glenn Levine, M.D., FAHA, writing committee chair of the scientific statement, and master clinician and professor of medicine at Baylor College of Medicine, and chief of the cardiology section at the Michael E. DeBakey VA Medical Center, both in Houston.

“For instance, we know that intense sadness or similar emotions are a common trigger for Takatsubo cardiomyopathy, and events such as earthquakes or even as a fan watching a world soccer match, which provoke stress, may lead to myocardial infarction and/or to arrhythmias.

“This current study very eloquently shows how anger can negatively impact vascular endothelial health and function, and we know the vascular endothelium, the lining of blood vessels, is a key player in myocardial ischemia and atherosclerotic heart disease.

“While not all the mechanisms on how psychological states and health impact cardiovascular health have been elucidated, this study clearly takes us one step closer to defining such mechanisms.

Study background and details:

The study’s limitations included that participants were young and apparently healthy, “making it unclear whether the results would apply to older adults with other health conditions, who would most likely be taking medications,” Shimbo noted.

In addition, participants were observed in a health care setting, rather than in real-world situations, and the study only assessed the short-term effects of evoked emotions.

8 simple steps to handling negative emotions

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Emotions can be the best things in the world, especially when you are feeling love, happiness, and ecstasy.

But they can also be your living nightmares when you experience the worst of the worst: anxiety, depression, anger, absolute loneliness.

When we are children, we are taught to seek out for the positive emotions and hide away from the negative emotions.

This leaves us emotionally stunted as adults, because we end up without knowing how to handle negativity in a healthy manner.

We lose jobs, partners, relationships, and everything we’ve built at times, simply because we didn’t know how to handle negativity the right way.

So the next time you experience negative emotions, here are 8 ways you can make the most of your situation:

1) Identify the Emotion

The first thing you need to do is identify the emotion that’s causing you stress.

After all, if you don’t know what the problem is, how can you ever figure out how to solve it?

In some cases, this might be easy: you might understand right away that your pain is caused by loneliness or grief or stress.

But in other cases, it might not be so straightforward. You might have caused a thunderstorm of chaos in your life, but you still need to find the single emotion where everything started.

2) Ask Yourself: How Has the Emotion Changed Your Life?

Now that you have identified the emotion, it’s now time to figure out exactly what it has done to your personality and behavior.

Maybe you have become more subdued and quiet, or maybe you now lash out at friends and push away anyone who tries to help.

We all handle and react to emotions differently, and there is never a set formula for this.

The way you might react to sadness could be different to the way your partner handles sadness. Figure out how you are behaving differently because of the emotion.

3) Repeat to Yourself: This Will End

The one great thing that any emotion can do is convince you that it will last forever.

Whether it’s happiness or sadness, the brain has this odd ability to believe that the current emotion will be your state of mind for the rest of your life.

In some cases, this isn’t an issue: a bout of excitement might only last for a few minutes, and then you can move on.

In other cases, this can ruin your entire life; depression might last for weeks or months, and in that time it could feel like a lifetime has passed before it goes away.

So repeat to yourself: this will end. This will pass. Like every other emotion you have ever felt, this will eventually blow over and you will be able to live without it once again. When? That’s up to you.

4) Find the Source of the Emotion

You know the emotion, and you know how it is changing your life. You have convinced yourself that it will someday end.

Now it’s time to start your journey towards that end, and the first step is to identify the source of the emotion.

While it might seem like abstract chaos going on in your head, there will always be a physical source for your stress.

It might be the death of a loved one, getting fired from a job, or a bad break up, but one way or another, there will always be something.

Find out what that “something” is. Don’t pretend that it isn’t affecting you just because you want to feel strong. Only until you find the source can you start working on it.

5) Accept

You now know the source of your pain. It’s time to get over it and accept. Accept that your life went in a direction that you didn’t expect and you didn’t like.

But time won’t stop for you; the world isn’t going to go on pause just because you feel emotionally fragile.

It’s time to pick your pieces up and put yourself back together, because what’s happened has happened, and the longer you let it get to you, the longer you let it continue to exist.

6) Again, Remind Yourself: This Will End

Once more, take a deep breath and say to yourself: This. Will. End. Do this for as many times as you like, until the weight in the chest begins to lighten up and until the clouds over your head begin to part.

7) Get Back in the Present

Here is one thing you won’t realize until you snap out of your negativity: for all this time, you have been living in the past.

You’ve been tied to that single, terrible event that rocked your world, and you haven’t been able to live in the present since then.

Your mind has been obsessed over it, whether you are aware of it or not.

Only by getting back in the present can you begin to leave it behind. Do whatever it takes: go out and party, read a book, enjoy yourself for the first time in a long time.

8) Learn and Move On

This is it, the final step. Just because you know the emotion and you’ve snapped back to reality doesn’t mean your work is done.

Just because you are feeling good again for the first time in weeks or months doesn’t mean the lesson is over. The truth is, the lesson has just begun.

It’s time to learn. Take the time over the near future to understand what happened. See yourself in retrospect: the terrible event that set off your negative emotions, how you lost yourself in the storm of negativity, why you lost yourself, and how you picked yourself up again.

How can you handle yourself better next time? How can you prepare yourself? What was missing in your life that made you collapse so suddenly to this negativity?

Ask yourself these questions, and do your best to learn from them. Now it’s time to move on, with the knowledge that you can take anything the world throws at you.

How Anger and Other Negative Emotions Affect Your Body

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Have you ever been so angry that your face turns red, your body starts shaking, or you feel like you just want to hit something?

You can imagine anger like a volcano, building up pressure until the top just blows off. Or, if you’re like me, maybe you remember Bugs Bunny cartoons and watching the characters blow steam out of their ears. Lol!

When we experience the emotions of anger, there’s actually a whole series of biological effects that take place in the body. Here’s a really cool 2 1/2-minute video on the science of anger.

Anger is a natural emotion and it should be acknowledged. It can also be a catalyst for positive changes, like when we see an injustice that should be righted, when we witness another being hurt, or maybe if we’ve been taken advantage of.

But when we hold on to this emotion, or if we are quick to anger all of the time (like someone cutting you off in traffic) it can actually be toxic and degrading to our overall health.

That’s why we need the proper tools to release it, and to bring our bodies back into balance.

If you’d like some help with releasing anger, I encourage you to check out this Tapping Meditation. It’s great to use in the moment, and when used repeatedly, it can train your brain and your body to be less prone to anger.

 

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Let Go of Negative Emotions: Guided Meditation

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Let Go of Negative Emotions: Guided Meditation

When you let go of negative emotions, you communicate to yourself and the whole world that you are serious about creating a healthy, happy, and fulfilling life and that you no longer want to settle for less than you are worth. And that’s when all kind of wonderful and miraculous things start to happen To you, because of you!

Let Go of Negative Emotions

If you are willing and ready to go of negative emotions and take the first step in creating a life that is filled with joy, purpose, clarity, love, and fulfillment, this powerful guided meditation will be a great place to start.

Use this guided meditation to let go of any negative emotions you might be holding onto and transform them into feelings of love, kindness, compassion, forgiveness, health, and well-being,

Before you begin, remember to first, find a quiet place where you won’t be disturbed for the next 12 minutes. Second, find a comfortable position to sit – it can be in a chair, crossed legged or on your knees, or lay down and when you’re ready, press play. Once the meditation session is over, you can share your experience with all of us by commenting below.

Enjoy 🙂

Let Go of Negative Emotions: Guided Meditation

💫

P.S. “If you don’t think your anxiety, depression, sadness, and stress impact your physical health, think again. All of these emotions trigger chemical reactions in your body, which can lead to inflammation and a weakened immune system. Learn how to cope, sweet friend. There will always be dark days.”

Psilocybin inhibits the processing of negative emotions in the brain

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When emotions are processed in a negatively biased manner in the brain, an individual is at risk to develop depression. Psilocybin, the bioactive component of the Mexican magic mushroom, seems to intervene positively in the emotion-processing mechanism. Even a small amount of the natural substance attenuates the processing of negative emotions and brightens mood as shown by University of Zurich (UZH)  researchers using imaging methods.

Emotions like fear, anger, sadness, and joy enable people to adjust to their environment and react flexibly to stress and strain and are vital for cognitive processes, physiological reactions, and social behaviour. The processing of emotions is closely linked to structures in the brain, i.e. to what is known as the limbic system. Within this system the amygdala plays a central role – above all it processes negative emotions like anxiety and fear. If the activity of the amygdala becomes unbalanced, depression and anxiety disorders may develop.

Researchers at the Psychiatric University Hospital of Zurich have now shown that psilocybin, the bioactive component in the Mexican magic mushroom, influences the amygdala, thereby weakening the processing of negative stimuli. These findings could “point the way to novel approaches to treatment” comments the lead author Rainer Krähenmann on the results which have now been published in the renowned medical journal “Biological Psychiatry”.

Psilocybin inhibits the processing of negative emotions in the amygdala

The processing of emotions can be impaired by various causes and elicit mental disorders. Elevated activity of the amygdala in response to stimuli leads to the neurons strengthening negative signals and weakening the processing of positive ones. This mechanism plays an important role in the development of depression and anxiety disorders. Psilocybin intervenes specifically in this mechanism as shown by Dr. Rainer Krähenmann’s research team of the Neuropsychopharmacology and Brain Imaging Unit led by Prof. Dr. Franz Vollenweider.

Psilocybin positively influences mood in healthy individuals. In the brain, this substance stimulates specific docking sites for the messenger serotonin. The scientists therefore assumed that psilocybin exerts its mood-brightening effect via a change in the serotonin system in the limbic brain regions. This could, in fact, be demonstrated using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). “Even a moderate dose of psilocybin weakens the processing of negative stimuli by modifying amygdala activity in the limbic system as well as in other associated brain regions”, continues Krähenmann. The study clearly shows that the modulation of amygdala activity is directly linked to the experience of heightened mood.

Next study with depressive patients

According to Krähenmann, this observation is of major clinical importance. Depressive patients in particular react more to negative stimuli and their thoughts often revolve around negative contents. Hence, the neuropharmacologists now wish to elucidate in further studies whether psilocybin normalises the exaggerated processing of negative stimuli as seen in neuroimaging studies of depressedpatients – and may consequently lead to improved mood in these patients.

Rainer Krähenmann considers research into novel approaches to treatment very important, because current available drugs for the treatment of depression and anxiety disorders are not effective in all patients and are often associated with unwanted side effects.

The brain can be trained to regulate negative emotions, study reports

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brain

A simple, computer-training task can change the brain’s wiring to regulate emotional reactions, according to a recent study published in NeuroImage by Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU) researchers.

“These findings are the first to demonstrate that non-emotional training that improves the ability to ignore irrelevant information can result in reduced reactions to emotional events and alter brain connections,” says Dr. Noga Cohen. Cohen conducted the study as part of her Ph.D. research at BGU’s Cognitive Neuropsychology Lab under the supervision of Prof. Avishai Henik of the Department of Psychology. “These changes were accompanied by strengthened neural connections between involved in inhibiting .”

The researchers hope to examine the impact of this non-emotional training on individuals who are depressed or anxious. It may also be helpful for those at high risk of developing high blood pressure reactions to emotional information.

“Such future directions carry important potential clinical implications for a large percentage of the population,” the researchers explain. “This cognitive training can be easily employed with different populations, such as children, elderly adults, and individuals with neurological or psychiatric disorders.”

In the study, the brains of 26 healthy volunteers were monitored before and after multiple computerized training sessions using imaging (fMRI). During the training, participants were required to identify whether a target arrow points to the right or to the left, while ignoring the direction of arrows on either side of it. The researchers conducted a “resting-state fMRI scan” to assess connections between brain regions during no specific task and later during an emotional reactivity task in which they had to ignore negative pictures used to study emotion.

“As expected, participants who completed the more intense version of the training (but not the other participants) showed reduced activation in their amygdala – a brain region involved in negative emotions, including sadness and anxiety. In addition, the intense training resulted in increased connectivity between participants’ amygdala and a region in the frontal cortex shown to be involved in emotion regulation,” said Dr. Cohen, who collaborated with Dr. Hadas Okon-Singer from the University of Haifa and the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Germany.

“It is our hope that the current work would lead to further testing and potentially the development of effective intervention for individuals suffering from maladaptive emotional behavior,” Dr. Cohen says. “While acknowledging the limitations of this study, which was based on a relatively small number of healthy participants and focused on short-term effects of the training, this may prove effective for individuals suffering from emotion dysregulation.”

Nine negative emotions that you must master for a great life .

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Every negative or disempowering emotion is a signal towards a problem which needs to be rectified. Emotions are our friends if we learn how to interpret them correctly.

stranger-main

Our ability to handle your emotions can make or break our life.

“When you feel good, you feel God”

Anonymous

Our ability to handle emotions can make or break our life. Unfortunately, there is no school or college that teaches us how to handle emotions. We use a trial and error method to learn emotions and more often than not we fail miserably in our attempts. Most of the people unconsciously developed their emotional reactions based on how their parents, family members and friends reacted to particular emotions.

We all must live in a state of awareness about the disempowering emotions we experience on a regular basis. Here is a list of emotions and the signals these emotions give to us. We must indulge more in empowering emotions and minimize our exposure to the disempowering ones. However, you overpower the disempowering emotions by acknowledging them and taking massive action to cure the problem areas they are directing you towards.

10 disempowering emotions and the signal they give you

Every negative or disempowering emotion is a signal towards a problem which needs to be rectified. Emotions are our friends if we learn how to interpret them correctly.

Fear: Fear signals that you need to develop some skills to breakthrough to the next level. You live in your comfort zone and are afraid to lose what you possess.

fearFear signals that you need to develop some skills to breakthrough to the next level. Doubt: You need to use your reasoning and intuition to take the right step. Doubt is a signal that you need to learn and research more about the issue.

doubtDoubt is a signal that you need to learn and research more about the issue. Guilt: Guilt alludes to the promises you are breaking. We all make some promises to ourselves and to others. When we break our own promises or the trust of people in our lives, we experience guilt.

guiltWhen we break our own promises or the trust of people in our lives, we experience guilt. Anger: We experience anger when someone disappoints us and fails to meet our expectations. We also experience this emotion when we feel hurt or when we are being held responsible for something we did not do.

angerWe experience anger when someone disappoints us and fails to meet our expectations. Gloom: Depression is experienced when we see our problems as permanent. Some people explore depression unconsciously to get sympathy and attention from people around them. Depression is a signal to get out of your helpless state and to find some meaning in your life.

 

depression-main

Jealousy: Jealousy is experienced when you think other people are luckier, happier, richer, smarter or better than you. You only see their success but fail to see their struggle. The world only sees the glory but never explores the story behind the glory. Jealousy is a signal to focus and improve your own life rather than wasting time on other people.

jealousyJealousy is experienced when you think other people are luckier, happier, richer, smarter or better than you. (Source: Thinkstock Images)

Insecurity: Insecurity reflects your lack of self-belief and poor self-worth. You think you do not deserve what you have and hence you fear it will be taken away from you. It is a signal for working hard and improving self-concept.

insecurityInsecurity reflects your lack of self-belief and poor self-worth. (Source: Thinkstock Images)

Sadness: Sadness is a signal that you need to take your life to the next level. You are not satisfied with the results you are producing in your life. It is a call for change.

sadnessSadness is a signal that you need to take your life to the next level. (Source: Thinkstock Images)

Shame: Shame is a signal to strengthen your self-esteem and to meet your expectations. You need to evaluate how much importance you will give to the opinion of others.

If you have ever indulged in emotions called anger, self-pity, fear, self-doubt, crying and worrying, you know that after sometime you will surely regret wasting time and energy on those emotions. This is a clear sign that the life-force wants you to be calm, confident and fearless.

Best way to take charge of your emotions
Every time you find yourself caught in a storm of negative emotions take 10 deep breathes and access the emotion of gratitude. Think about the things and people in your life that you are grateful for. Sometimes, you have to force yourself to be positive but it is worth the effort. There is nothing that you will gain by being depressed and worried.

It is very important to experience as many positive and empowering emotions as you can on a daily basis. Try it to believe it. You can never know how much you can change until you make a sincere and honest attempt to change. A good life is full of satisfaction that comes from action, happiness, gratitude and service.

 

Is Stress Toxic? 9 Reasons Why You Should Give Up Stress.

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http://www.purposefairy.com/4774/is-stress-toxic-9-reasons-why-you-should-give-up-stress/