How We Feel Becomes How We Heal
The opposite of peace is disharmony in mind, body, soul, and spirit or in all four of these areas. We all know the feelings of unease that can plague us. These feelings can produce tremendous stress. Using a different prefix (“dis” instead of “un”), we formulate the word, dis-ease. As surveys show, millions of people all over the world are suffering from dis-ease. What we feel emotionally often becomes how we feel physically.
To be sure, not all disease is caused by stress but doctors are finding that a good percentage of physical maladies are caused by emotions that are out of control. These deadly emotions can damage us and in some cases, destroy us, as human beings.
If we would keep a running record of all the things that annoy, irritate, upset or make us angry in one day, we might begin to understand how stressed we feel at the end of a day.
Maybe you have just bought something new for your home and after a few days, the item may begin to fall apart or doesn’t work they way you expected. You call a repairman to fix your washer but he can’t come until the weekend, charging you overtime. Your boss chews you out while letting others get by with similar actions. You go to a sports game and the weather is ugly. You talk to someone and they ignore you. Someone is putting on airs, being the biggest hypocrite on earth. Someone brings up your latest boo-boo in front of others. Someone makes a nasty remark about your driving. Someone fails to return a valuable book that you have lent them. Plaguing doubts about our abilities, painful memories about our failures, anger and hatred of those who have hurts us can produce disharmony of soul and spirit.
The list can go on and one. How we handle our emotions in these times of distress can mean the difference between peace and unrest. Can we admit to ourselves that, for the most part, we are responsible for how we feel physically? It is much easier to blame a virus, bacteria or genetic predispositions for our poor health. We have to face the diagnosis if we are to tackle the problem. Scientific research shows that between 75 and 90 percent of all visits to primary care physicians result from stress-related disorders.
Most people, if they are diagnosed with a terminal disease will stop being focused on petty things and will begin to turn the spotlight on things that truly matter to them. Hopefully, it will be on things like love, family, forgiveness, and other aspects of life that will bring them a deep sense of peace and happiness. It may be too late to cure the physical ills but such a change of heart can mend the unease of heart that has brought them so much pain.