An emotion is a conscious mental reaction, subjectively experienced as strong feeling, usually directed toward a specific object, and typically accompanied by physiological and behavioral changes in the body. Joy, anger, melancholy, grief, worry, fear and fright are the basic ones.
Joy is the emotion evoked by well-being, success, or good fortune or by the prospect of possessing what one desires. A smile is its universal facial expression. Its body languages include: looking up; hands folded behind the head; and dancing, tapping feet to a rhythm, swaying from side to side. When sitting, the legs may be casually flung open, planted straight on the ground or crossed, but there is no tension in the muscles.
Anger is the emotion characterized by antagonism toward someone or something that you feel has deliberately done you wrong. Its facial expressions are pulled down eyebrows, pulled up upper eyelids and lower eyelids, rolled in margins of lips, tightened lips, clenched jaws, and grinded teeth. Reddened skin, a sudden rise in voice volume, clenched fists, posture change, breathing shift, body shake or tremor are often noticed.
Grief is a strong, sometimes overwhelming sadness stemming from the loss. Few forms are more suggestive of a particular emotion than the brow of grief. It is an action of restraint. In the most intense cry, the eyes are closed and the frowning is made. When distress is less intense, horizontal middle-brow wrinkles and pulling up on the inner end of the eyebrow are shown. People tend to move and shift as they cry publicly. You may seem to see the waves of grief wash through them again and again. Sometimes they curl up in a protective snail like posture. They may shake when they cry.
Melancholy is the sadness that lasts for a long period of time, often without any obvious reason. Inner corners of eyebrows raised, eyelids loose, and lip corners pulled down when it occurs. The eyes or head is generally lowered (this is sometimes referred to as the head “hanging”), and the person often slouches or hunches over, as if folding in on themselves. They may physically move away from people spoken to.
Worry is a feeling of being unhappy and frightened about something. The eyebrows are pulled to the center or slightly raised and there are two vertical lines above the bridge of the nose. A worried person often wrings the hands together or rubs the palms together, bites the side of one lower lip or a finger, fidgets and shifts weights a lot while sitting.
Fear is an unpleasant, often strong emotion caused by anticipation or awareness of danger. Eyebrows pulled up and together, upper eyelids pulled up, mouth stretched. Pale face. The heart beats quickly and violently. Cold sweating. The hairs on the skin stand erect; and the superficial muscles shiver. Scream. All the muscles of the body tremble, and tremor is often first seen in the lips. Wetting the pants without knowing it.
Fright is the emotional reaction that arises in the face of a dangerous or potentially dangerous situation or encounter. Fright differs from fear in that the danger is usually immediate, physical, concrete, and overwhelming and the reaction to it can be much stronger.
From Chinese Medical perspective, the emotions are the response of the body to external stimuli, and the internal organs are responsible for them. In other words, if one particular organ is stimulated, one particular emotion is expressed. Joy is from Heart, grief and melancholy from Lungs, worry from Spleen, fear and fright from Kidneys and anger from Liver.They do not cause a disease normally.
However, if emotional stimuli are too severe, continuous or abrupt for the body to adapt, Qi and Blood of the internal organs can be disrupted and its physiological functions can be affected, especially when there is a preexisting overreaction to them. Thus, they are called emotional factors, causing health problems.
Different emotional factor tends to affect the circulation of Qi and Blood of a specific organ. Joy injures the Heart, as it causes Qi to move slowly. The main symptoms are characterized by palpitations, insomnia, dream-disturbed sleep, physical weakness and mental confusion. In severe cases, episodes of sudden uncontrollable and inappropriate laughing or singing, excessive self-boasting or talking with nonsense and mania can happen.
Anger injures the Liver, as it causes Qi to rise up. Its main symptoms are characterized by distension and pain in the hypochondriac region, sighing, the sensation of a foreign body in the throat, diarrhea, dizziness or vertigo, facial flush, irritation and irregular menstruation. In severe cases, bloody vomiting and hemorrhagic stroke (internal bleeding in the brain) can occur.
Worry injures the Spleen as it causes Qi to stagnate. Its main symptoms are characterized by depression and lack of appetite.
Grief and melancholy injure the Lungs as they drastically consume Qi. Its main symptoms are characterized by pressure in the chest, rapid and shallow breathing, intermittent speech with week voice and feeling spiritless.
Fear injures the Kidneys as fear causes Qi to decline. Its main symptoms are characterized by abdominal heaviness and bloating, frequent urination or bowel movements or both, urinary or fecal incontinence or both, fatigue, and rectal or uterus collapse.
Fright causes Qi to be deranged. Asthmatic breathing, palpitation, sweating and deliriousness are its main symptoms.
Though any of those five organs may be impacted on, the Heart, Liver and Spleen are most closely involved with pathological changes resulting from those emotional factors and those factors can affect them individually or more than one organ.
Is there anything that can be done to prevent or minimize the damage of the emotional factors? Yes. At least those things followed can be done: indifference to fame or gain, managing anger to minimum or zero and keeping mental tranquility.
Fame and gain can trigger a person’s envy and desire to own them. You may spend a lot of time and energy thinking of how to get it and working on it. Frustration can be involved. After achieving it, you may be worried about how to keep it and be afraid of losing it. You may feel sad, angry or down after you really lose it. Being over excited by a sudden gain or being frightened by a sudden loss. If you are indifferent to them, they will not bother you or at least that much.
No anger to yourself and others. Anger can be easily out of control by letting it rip. To suppress it is not good either. You can’t get rid of, or avoid, the things or the people that enrage you, nor can you change them, but you can learn to control your reactions through anger management by reducing both your emotional feelings and the physiological arousal that anger causes.
Through each day, acknowledging your emotion(s), asking yourself honestly what the trigger is and letting it go. Gratitude, forgetting and forgiveness must be involved. The more you do it, the easier for you to calm down and to maintain the inner tranquility. Be patient to yourself and keep doing it. It is really worthy of doing so, as emotional factors can really mess up the circulation of Qi and Blood and functions of the internal organs and are causative of most health problems.