Announces that avoiding uncomfortable feelings is virtually a
national pastime, according to psychologist Jonathan Shedler. Effect of
psychological distress on heart and death in United States; Three ways
emotional distress is typically played out; How emotions affect health;
Cardiovascular reactivity; Why avoiding uncomfortable feelings is
destructive to health; Self-deception.
By
PT Staff, published on March 01, 1993
Denying Distress
It's as American as peanut butter and jelly and a gun in every
household. We take pride in living individualistic, self-contained lives.
Yet we do not look inward if it involves emotional pain. Avoiding
uncomfortable feelings is virtually a national pastime.
That, reports psychologist Jonathan Shedler, Ph.D., may be costing
us our lives. His studies show that failing to attend to psychological
distress has direct and measurable effects on our hearts and may be a
major factor behind the high rate of death from heart disease in the
U.S.
A professor of clinical psychology at Adelphi University's Center
for Advanced Psychological Studies, Shedler finds that the world of
emotional distress generally plays out three ways. There are those who
overtly manifest distress in the face of negative emotions such as
insecurity, anger, sadness, and anxiety. There are those who conceal
their vulnerability from others, but not from themselves. And there are
those people who are so intent on being invulnerable that they conceal
even from themselves any signs of psychological discomfort.
But what can be kept from the mind can't be kept from the body. In
his studies, among the first to delineate with clarity how our emotions
affect our health, people who defensively deny psychological distress
display a pattern of exaggerated cardiovascular reactivity linked to
coronary artery disease.
Exposed to pictures and phrases known to stir up psychologically
threatening issues, they respond with tremendous flux in heart rate and
blood pressure. Such flux, says Shedler, creates turbulence and "sheer
stress" in the coronary arteries. Over time, such reactivity not only
puts a huge workload directly on the heart, it damages the lining of the
arteries, paving the way for atherosclerosis.
What is particularly striking is that the distress deniers are
considerably more reactive, cardiovascularly speaking, than those people
who are manifestly distressed. And they are twice as reactive as people
who are truly emotionally healthy. "It is not just psychological distress
per se that is a medical risk factor, but rather it is something about
the process of denying emotional distress," concludes Shedler.
Negative feelings may make us uncomfortable, but avoiding them is
downright destructive to health. Our bodies take the brunt of
psychological distress not attended to. "People who deny psychological
distress may be paying a very high price for their
self-deception."
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