Abstract
The widely held belief that emotional and psychological processes affect our physical health, mental health and general well-being are central to a holistic view of the individual, and as such, it is a useful foundational concept in integrative medicine. The purpose of this paper is to review substantial amounts of the latest research and recent findings on this issue to enable us to throw some light on how inhibitory factors to emotional expression and experience can endanger our health, both physically and psychologically including our general wellbeing. In addition, the connection between repression of emotion and certain mental disorders like depression and scientifically proven healthy ways to manage issues bordering on emotion was outlined. The information contained in this paper is just as important to health care providers and also to the patients they deal with
Highlights
Repression of emotion is an aspect of emotion regulation
Reviews from available research indicate that both anxiety disorders and depressive symptoms are implicated as risk factors for people with cardiac abnormalities [6]
Patients with difficulties in managing their emotions subject their health and well being into gross negligence and as a result are more likely to display a history of substance abuse, poor nutrition, and disordered eating, lack of exercise, abnormal sleep patterns, poor compliance with medical interventions and behaviors that are injurious to one self
Summary
Repression of emotion is an aspect of emotion regulation. It is a concept that is based on individual’s knowledge of emotions, which includes causes of emotion, sensations of the body and about behavior that are expressed, and their possible means of modification [1]. Effective regulation of emotion enables the individual to adaptively cope with a broad range of environmental eventualities. When it goes uneven or lopsided, it becomes increasingly recognized and its negative consequences may pose danger to emotional and cognitive health. It may become a potential development or maintenance factor in mental or physical disease conditions [3,4,5]. It becomes important to understand the positive and negative consequences of different emotion regulation strategies In this respect, controversy is ongoing in the field about the repercussions of deliberate attempts to repress emotion, defined here as intentional attempts to down-regulate the inward experience and outward expression of undesired effect. Contradictory predictions arise from normative and clinical works of literature concerning the consequences of such repression of emotion
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