Balancing Emotions

The idea that it is healthy to "let it all hang out" when it comes to strong emotions has become quite popular. It is an idea that needs to be seriously qualified. For one thing, it can be damaging when people use it as an excuse for anti-social behavior, a licence to vent anger on the people around them. Some professionals who should know better actually recommend regular expression of anger as a beneficial measure.

Two students I know of were the victims of this advice. One, a girl with a very disturbed brother, was required to arrange herself with her mother and sister, on the opposite side of the lounge from her brother each evening for a ventilation of his (always destructive) feelings. A social worker gave this guidance.

The other case involved a socially poised but quite sensitive and brittle young woman, who was obliged to be the victim of her mother's screaming rages because a Psychiatrist had said it was good for the mother. Whatever the personal consequences of extreme emotional expression such extreme behavior may have to balanced against the social consequences – the effects on other people - of the pattern of emotional behaviour. Clearly such behaviour is potentially destructive for other people. Interestingly, research evidence suggests it may be destructive for the individual making the fuss too.

It is not always a good thing to express powerful emotions in a totally uncontrolled way, and indeed even having strong emotional responses too frequently can be damaging. At the physiological level the anger response is identical with a stress response. Of course it is well established that excessive stress – and excessive anger - have a variety of harmful physical and psychological effects, including negative immune outcomes.

The health area where excessive anger is most closely associated with problems is coronary vascular disease. People who have been classified as “True Type A" personalities - typically hostile, impatient, grumpy, stressed out people - are prone to heart disease. By contrast, those people who are easy going, less easily upset, and basically more relaxed (Healthy Type B), have a relatively low rate of coronary vascular disease.

The central issue here is the importance of balance one's emotional life and the need to prevent overreaction to life's events. One kind of lack of balance is getting angry too often. Another is suppressing anger so that you never get angry at all. At first glance you might think that the extreme suppression of angry feelings and other such powerful emotions is the lesser of the two emotional overreactions, but it seems that it may be even more dangerous than too much anger expression. There are two major sources of argument that lead us in that direction. The first is that people who over-suppress extreme emotions seem more likely to get cancer.

The second line of evidence concerns experimental studies showing that chronic emotional suppression is physically damaging. Explanations of these things suggest that for most of us there will be times when our emotions build up to a level that requires some kind of "discharge" or overt emotional expression. For instance we might lose our temper and scream and shout for a while. It seems as though this can reduce the internal consequences of the anger build up at least in the short term. By and large, occasional expression of intense emotions seems to be helpful to health and emotional stability.

Quite paradoxically it seems that suppressing emotions that are caused by daily stressors can actually lead to a build up of the effects of those stressors. The body never has the opportunity to get back into balance again. This lack of balance may be shown in a whole variety of areas such as extreme tiredness and poor sleeping, general breakdown in day to day physical capacities (like sexual function), and higher susceptibility to infection. In the physical health context it has been argued that extreme suppression of emotions may lead to a weakening of the immune surveillance system thus leaving the system more open to invading infections of one kind or another, or to the effects of spontaneously occurring or environmentally produced cancers.

In case you are wondering what extreme emotional suppression actually involves, let me point out that in studies of women with undiagnosed breast lumps one of the questions that has been asked concerns the number of times the person has lost her temper in the last three years. Some people say “never” to this and other such questions (imagine what kind of saint you’d think they were) and so are likely to be classed as suppressors of emotion. You can see that this really is a pretty extreme pattern, and even then it must be recognised that only a proportion of people who respond like this end up with identified health problems.

Extreme emotional expression and extreme suppression are not really very far apart in terms of their possible harmful effect on the system. They are both signs of poor coping behavior. In the former case learning to gain the co-operation and support of others, and to be less self-centred through some outward reaching activity seems to have some health benefits. In the case of emotional suppression, learning to attend to the body's emotional responses and to express emotions in a socially acceptable way seems a productive solution.

More readings will be added to my blog from time to time. Have a quick look now to see the first posting on my blog PSYC1PLUS