Negative Emotions and the Nervous System
Wednesday, February 19, 2020 - Joe Kiedinger
Stress is the #1 health epidemic in America. It’s estimated that 75 – 90% of all primary care visits are stress related. Stress breaks down our living cells and slowly destroys our very biological health. Our negative emotions set off the ten million nerves in our nervous system that rock our bodies and decline our health.
If we can identify the negative emotions we feel and understand how they serve us and how they destroy us, I believe a person can begin to put their head around it and make positive change. In fact, we’ve already proved it with leaders across the country who we have helped drastically reduce stress in their lives and increase their effectiveness at work and home. After all, the more you know, the more you can improve.
One of these negative emotions that the majority of us humans deal with is worry and anxiety. These two go together because they both are focused on the feeling of “imminent” danger.
When you worry, you feel like you are doing something to fix the problem. Most people believe that when you worry, then you care. It makes you a martyr to the situation—falling on the sword of another person’s setback. The reality is, there are painful side effects:
- Alienation of loved ones. When you worry about someone or something you are distracted and you alienate the people who are closest to you. The message your sending is “you’re not important.”
- Lack of focus. It’s hard to be creative and provide healthy energy in a state of worry and anxiety.
- The feeling of caring for someone is false. You cannot care for another by worrying about them. It will not solve the problem; it will only escalate it because most people don’t want to be pitied.
Consider this: You can care for someone and not worry about them. In other words, caring and worry are not related at all. It’s called sympathy. You can care for someone by checking on them, calling them and providing your support without all the worry associated with empathy.
We all feel this emotion and with focus, you can lower your worry mechanism by realizing that caring is sympathetic, not empathetic.
Joe Kiedinger
ACTION PLAN: March 19th at The Marq in De Pere we will be presenting, Slow Down – Discover How You’re Emotionally Wired. It’s our FREE Servant Leaders of WI event. Click on “Workshops/Events” to sign up yourself and your fellow team members. It’s a great way to increase understanding and lower stress.