Everything You Know Is Wrong – The Real Truth Behind Emotions and Health
In order to take control of your health, you have to erase everything that you’ve ever been told about how your health is affected by emotions. Eliminating the myths and misconceptions will help you get to the truth behind the matter so that you can make the right moves with your emotional health. Although you might have found a gem or two of useful information along the way, it’s safe to assume that most of what you’ve read or been told isn’t accurate or helpful in giving you the power and control over your emotions that you deserve.
It’s not all about physical fitness, and when it is, your success is directly related to your emotional intelligence. People who are aware of the role that their emotions play in their well-being are far more likely to be healthy. You cannot do anything successfully without having your emotions in the right place. They are the driving force behind everything in your life, good or bad. It’s up to you to use them for good.
Forget the self-help gurus and motivational speeches. Visualization, positive thinking, and rationalization have no place in your emotional well-being. These so-called “tools” are generally going to have far more negative effects on your health than helping you in the first place. The majority of what you hear in self-help guides is information that basically serves as lipstick and mascara, if you will, in comparison to actually dealing with your emotional health. To understand this, let’s look at cognitive therapy in comparison to the three self-help tools listed above:
In an example from “Mind Over Mood – Change How You Feel by Changing the Way You Think” (Dennis Greenberger, PhD, Christine A. Padesky, PhD), Ben feels sad after returning home from spending Thanksgiving with his family, as it seems they don’t need him anymore. This is a negative automatic thought, and one that is inaccurate.
Positive thinking would suggest Ben to replace this thought with “they need me more than ever”, thus ignoring the actual changes going on in his family that needed to be addressed.
Rationalization would have given him a greater feeling of isolation and sadness by accompanying his initial thought with “what do I care?” or something similar, defeating his attitude.
Visualization, or focusing on what he wants, would have simply caused Ben to gloss over the actual issues and changes and only focus on the positive outcome, not how to get there.
With cognitive therapy, Ben was able to correctly identify evidence that countered his negative automatic thought. Then, he was able to explore and understand the experience as a whole to improve his connection to the family and alleviate his sadness from a place of genuine understanding.
It all boils down to one thing: getting outside of your emotional comfort zone and being flexible in your emotions and behaviors. Avoiding emotions simply leads to a lack of proper coping skills, and is no way to live a healthy life. Self-help gurus sound good, but the advice they offer is often like slapping a coat of paint on a 75-year-old building and calling it “new”. Instant Emotional Power is a series of workbooks and theta audio sessions that guide people through negative emotions, teaching them how to properly turn them into positive emotions. This leads to:
- Increased confidence
- Increased emotional fitness and intelligence
- Expanded emotional comfort zone
- Stress reduction and heightened emotional sensitivity (from theta audio)
- And more!
You cannot be well if your emotions are out of shape. By working from the inside out, your sense of well-being will be greater and your overall health and fitness will benefit in many ways. Think back to the analogy of painting the building. Imagine how much longer that building would last if you tore it down to the studs and renovated it instead of just painting over the old and replacing a few fixtures. Instant Emotional Power is the renovation that your body needs.