By Luke Coutinho

New Delhi, Apr 24 (IANSlife): When we spend time diagnosing and reflecting back at the lifestyles of people who have cancer, diabetes, hypertension, autoimmune diseases, we find emotions are one commonality among 90 per cent of the cases. Even in our consults, there is one question we ask almost every patient of ours-- Do you have any suppressed emotions? What happened in your life six months back or the time when you first got diagnosed with this issue?

And, believe it or not, we find that each of them did have some kind of stress or emotional downfall in their lives. Most of them begin to open up and share how they have been living with unresolved emotions for years, some since childhood. Unforgiveness, anger, guilt, resentment, jealousy, grief, hurt -- pent up over years altogether.

Emotions literally translate into energy in motion. Any emotion -- negative or positive is energy at the end of the day and it is supposed to flow. Suppressing the energy and allowing it to bottle up can affect our health in a huge way. Even science has established that unprocessed emotions manifest in the physical body in some or the other way. If you're feeling low, depressed and are struggling with emotions, you lack the ability to express.

Express, express, express... it is everything and it is very natural. No matter what it takes. It could be via talking, writing, recording your own voice note and the deleting, journaling or even setting up a consult with an expert life coach or emotional counsellor. Simply by sharing supressed emotions, clients start to feel so much better, so imagine what expressing emotions on a regular basis can do.

As humans we are designed to communicate and this is the building block of life.

The first step in this is to learn how to be okay with not being okay. It is okay to have a bad day. It is okay to fail. It is okay to have a fight or argument in a relationship. Feel every emotion you are going through. If it makes you cry, cry and shed those tears. There is a reason why humans have the mechanism of crying, when we are sad. Its only when we feel these emotions, do we allow them to die their natural death. We think that using external aids like drinking, binge eating, drinking, watching, drugs, shopping, etc. is the solution, but in reality, it isn't. It is only pushing your real emotion deeper and deeper within you, rusting your soul.

Expression is true liberation and freedom.