Just now

This reflection came after completing my course with the University of Cambridge on the psychology of emotions and an introduction to embodied cognition.
As I absorbed the research, the science, the theories, I kept thinking: we’ve known this all along.
In holistic medicine, we don’t just study emotions; we feel them, we track them, we heal through them.
This piece is my integration. It’s where science meets soul, where ancient knowing holds hands with academic insight.

Life it’s not just about emotions, it’s about how they live in us, how they shape our organs, our stories, our choices.

Everything that brought me here is part of this.
Every wound.
Every wisdom.
Every word.

WHAT IS AN EMOTION, REALLY?

Let’s get something straight: emotions are not just “feelings.”
They’re not just some mood you wake up with or some hormone fluctuation we excuse when we can’t deal with someone’s “energy.”
Emotions are full-bodied, full-system responses of neurochemical signals.

YES! is all interconnected, including ancestral echoes, cultural downloads, and internal guidance systems wrapped up in one.

Psychologically, emotions activate specific regions in the brain: the amygdala (fear), the insula (disgust), the prefrontal cortex (regulation), and the hypothalamus (autonomic response).
Think of them as buttons on your body’s dashboard, but the wiring? That runs through your whole damn soul.

When an emotion gets activated, your nervous system, your gut, your heartbeat, your muscles, all of it lights up.
You’re not just “feeling” sad.
You are sad. Your shoulders collapse. Your breath shortens.
Your digestive enzymes slow down.
That’s not in your head, that’s in your body, and it does not disappear when you get happy.

This is where Antonio Damasio, neurologist and neuroscientist, drops the mic.

He argued that emotions are the basis of consciousness itself, not the other way around.
In his groundbreaking book The Feeling of What Happens (1999), Damasio basically tells us: if you don’t feel, you don’t know who you are.
Welcome to science catching up with intuition.

WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU IGNORE YOUR FEELINGS

Now, here’s the inconvenient truth.
Most people aren’t actually feeling their emotions.
They’re managing them, stuffing them, spiritual-bypassing them with some positivity meme on Instagram, or worse, projecting them on their kids, partners, coworkers, or strangers on the internet.

When you don’t process emotions, they don’t go away.
They embed in your body.

That tight neck? Grief.
That constipation? Suppressed anger.
That chronic fatigue? Emotional burnout disguised as adrenal dysfunction.
That autoimmune disease? Your immune system is attacking your own cells because your soul doesn’t feel safe in your own life.

Dr. Gabor Maté, the legend of mind-body medicine, has been very clear on this: “When we shut down emotional expression, we lose touch with our bodies and ourselves.”
He’s studied addiction, trauma, and chronic illness for over four decades, and his conclusion is this: the body keeps the score, but it also keeps the story.

THE EMOTION–ILLNESS CONNECTION

Let’s be unapologetically holistic: every illness has an emotional root.

Your diagnosis is the body’s language for what your mouth refused to say.

Dr. Candace Pert, who discovered the opiate receptor in the brain, wrote Molecules of Emotion (1997), where she explained that neuropeptides (emotion messengers) are found not just in the brain but throughout the body, especially in the immune system.
Your liver, your heart, your gut, all of them feel.

So when we say “dis-ease,” we’re not being cute.
We’re being accurate.

Let’s name it:

Liver issues? Rage. Resentment. Especially unspoken, generational rage.

Lung diseases? Grief and unexpressed sorrow. (Hi, COVID era.)

Reproductive imbalances? Guilt. Shame. Lack of self-worth.

Thyroid problems? Swallowed truth. Silence. Fear of speaking up.

Chronic fatigue? Energetic depletion from carrying emotions that were never yours.

This is not spiritual fluff.
This is somatic psychology, and the research backs it up.
According to a 2004 review in Psychosomatic Medicine, up to 80% of primary care visits are related to stress and emotion-based disorders.
The ICD-11 (International Classification of Diseases) even includes “bodily distress disorder” as a diagnosis, linking it directly to unprocessed emotional suffering.

HOW CULTURE, ENVIRONMENT, AND EARTH IMPACT OUR EMOTIONS

Now let’s zoom out. Because no one grows up in a vacuum.

Your nervous system is not just yours; it’s cultural.
It’s collective. It’s historical. It’s epigenetic.

Where you were born matters.
Whether you were raised in a hyper-individualistic Western city or a community-oriented island culture shapes how you feel, and how you’re allowed to feel.

Research shows that in East Asian cultures, emotions like anger are suppressed more than in Western cultures, leading to different expressions of stress and illness.

For example, in South Korea, studies by Chung and Kwon (2009) have shown a rise in depression and somatic symptoms due to emotional suppression.
In contrast, countries like Sweden, where emotional honesty and social openness are cultural norms, have some of the lowest rates of chronic emotional disorders.

But there’s a flip side. In countries with high environmental toxins, industrial stress, and constant performance culture (hello, U.S., Brazil, and India), we see skyrocketing rates of autoimmune disease, chronic fatigue, digestive issues, and anxiety.
The WHO Global Burden of Disease study highlights this: regions with higher urbanization show increased somatization patterns and emotional dysregulations.

Now add this to the mix: soil depletion, air quality, electromagnetic exposure, food devoid of real minerals, and suddenly the emotion-body matrix isn’t just internal. It’s planetary.

THE IMPACT OF EMOTIONS ON BEHAVIOR, RELATIONSHIPS, AND IDENTITY

Let’s talk consequences.

Unprocessed emotions don’t just sit pretty in your liver.
They drive your behavior.
They become your personality.
They distort your perception of others and yourself.

Here’s the kicker: the way other people react to you isn’t always about you. Sometimes it’s a projection of their unprocessed trauma. And the way you respond to that? It’s often your trauma reacting to theirs.

Let that sink in.

Every conversation is potentially two nervous systems in a war of unspoken wounds.

This is why emotional regulation isn’t a luxury — it’s a responsibility.

FIVE HOLISTIC WAYS TO REGULATE YOUR EMOTIONS WITHOUT HURTING ANYONE ELSE

Let’s not just understand this; let’s do something with it.

Here are five ways to regulate your emotions and integrate your body, mind, and soul without burning the world down:

1. Name It to Tame It

Research from UCLA shows that naming your emotion activates the prefrontal cortex, reducing the intensity of the emotion itself. Instead of saying “I’m freaking out,” try “I’m feeling overwhelmed and scared.” It softens the storm.

2. Mindfulness Without Bypassing

Don’t use meditation as a way to silence what needs to be expressed. Mindfulness means observing your emotions without judgment, not escaping it.
Jon Kabat-Zinn’s MBSR method (Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction) has been clinically proven to reduce anxiety, pain, and emotional reactivity.

3. Self-Compassion Over Self-Improvement

Researcher Kristin Neff’s work shows that self-compassion activates the caregiving systems in the brain.
When you comfort yourself instead of criticizing yourself, your cortisol drops. You start to regulate, not rupture.

4. Somatic Expression

Move your body.
Shake your feelings, Dance the rhythm of your emotion, Breathe deep.
Dr. Peter Levine’s work in Somatic Experiencing shows how trauma lives in the body and must be discharged physically.
Emotion = Energy in Motion.

5. Restore, Don’t Perform

Instead of numbing with Netflix or performance healing on Instagram, ask: What does my system need to restore right now? That might be a bath.
A nap. A scream into a pillow.
Rest is a protest. Rest is medicine.

FINAL TRUTH! EVERYTHING MATTERS

You are not just your childhood.
You’re your mother’s heartbreak.
Your grandfather’s repression.
The air you breathed growing up.
The school that praised you for silence.
The city that ignored your pain.
The country that told you to smile when your soul was screaming.

This is why holistic psychology matters.

You can’t separate the psyche from the body.
You can’t separate the body from the land.
You can’t separate healing from the environment.
And you sure as hell can’t separate emotions from illness.

Emotions are not optional.
They are biological codified in our DNA, culturally imprinted, Historical though.
And deeply, deeply human.

So when you feel, feel fully.
Name it. Move it. Witness it.
And most of all, honor it.

Because nothing heals until it’s heard.

Dahiana Naidu