MIND, BODY & SPIRIT: THOUGHTS, EMOTIONS AND BEHAVIOUR LINK
- Dr Tshidi M Wyllie
- Jul 14
- 6 min read
“As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he”.
You know, if I dwell on negativity, negative thoughts will affect my emotions, then I start feeling either angry or sad, depressed or frustrated, I will become stressed out and In the long run that will affect my body.
I will start developing constant chronic headaches, stomach ulcers, indigestion, you name it; Just because of my pattern of thinking, pay attention to your thoughts.
They become emotions, they become behaviour, they become character, they become you. And before you know it, you start developing health issues.
Why do I keep on talking about this? We are emotional beings. We feel. We either feel happy, excited or unhappy when certain things happen the way we don't like or things we do not like happen to us. We feel angry when rejected, undermined, disrespected or abandoned.
We feel fear when some things happen in our life that are causing instability, stealing our confidence or when we are uncertain about certain things. So emotions such as anxiety and fear have shown a direct tie to heart palpitations, irritable bowel syndrome, tension headaches, and many other diseases. Often when we feel distressed we don't try to look at the underlying trigger to the constant nagging headache that just won't go away.
If you are in a worry drive and you can't stop thinking and dwelling on what has happened, which you had no control over and cannot change, but you keep on saying,
“if only I could have responded that way”,
“ I wish I could have told him this”
“I wish I could have told her that”.
Remember ; the reality is that you did not, and there might have been a reason why you did not. So, getting to the point of acceptance and accepting that, it is what it is. I didn't stand up enough for myself, and it does not necessarily mean that I'm weak. Will release you from stress. Probably that situation saved you from escalating the conflict and the tension.
But then look at what could be triggering some of the symptoms that we experience in our lives; for example, I was talking about stomach problems and tension headaches.
You maybe saying; but is there any good news in this bleak horizon? Somebody said, but you're always talking about negative things, anger emotions and distorted thinking patterns etc. How about you look at the positive side?
Well, I tend to dwell on these because these are the things that are affecting people. These are the things I come across a lot in therapy and there is no way I can just not talk about them as it might help someone out there.
But yes, there is good news. The good news is that you can do a great deal to pull the plug on these toxic emotions that fuel deadly and painful diseases by noticing your thinking patterns, challenging irrational thoughts and not judging your emotions, embracing acceptance and mindfulness. You can do much to improve your physical health by addressing first and foremost, your emotional health.
Therefore, the message of encouragement is that starting today, believe that it is possible to be genuinely happy. It is possible without the use of man-made chemicals and medications and mood-altering substances, to be actually naturally, organically, genuinely happy. It is possible to prevent many of the diseases that we dread, by starting to focus on and/or addressing our emotional health and that starts with addressing our thoughts.
It is possible to live a vibrant, pain-free, disease-free life in body, mind, and spirit. It is doable. It's something that we can do.
I'm not saying that we will not encounter challenges. We will have relationship challenges. We will have workplace, employee, colleagues, relationship challenges.
Most of the issues we encounter that are affecting and impacting our emotions are relationship-based, because we are social animals; we cannot exist on our own. We need other people in our lives.
It is either marital intimate relationship problem or
it’s workplace, colleagues, relationship problems,
or just in the public domain where you’ll encounter people who are just critical or negative of what you do and what you say.
It is part of life; in life you are going to encounter these things, but choose nonetheless, to cope, since it’s not possible to get rid of 100% of challenges in life.
Yes, we are going to have financial problems. We are going to have debt problems.
and often when we do get into debts, we run away from addressing them, blocking the phones rather than sitting down with our creditors and saying;
- at the moment I'm going through a rough patch,
- I don't have the means of addressing this installment that I'm supposed to be paying monthly.
- What can I do, how can you help me?
- What arrangement can we reach?
You know that blocking bankers and the people you owe does not take away the problem, right?. Instead, it increases your stress because they'll change the number and call you from a different one. So, it doesn't solve anything right?.
Why adopt that approach as a coping mechanism then?
Fear?
Anger? ; towards who yourself or them?
But why not go to them and sit down with them to disclose your situation and ask ;
how can I handle this?
How can you help me address the situation?
they may actually come up with a plan and ask you, what payment plan may work best for you seeing that you don't have a job, you lost your job, maybe the loan was actually insured. So find out the details about this because running away and avoiding to talk to your creditors is not going to make the debt to go away. Rather, it will just make them to be rude to you when they call, and find means of finding you, coming to your place to auction off all your stuff when you could have avoided that.
Yes, I know there are realities out there that affect your emotions. Tell me, in a situation like that, if you stay awake the whole night, is the debt just going to all of a sudden disappear? No, it won't.
Are bankers going to stop calling you? No, they won't.
So be proactive; go to them, sit down, acknowledge first and foremost how it is :
- impacting you and making you feel inside,
-how it is impacting you and making you think.
-What are your thoughts like?
Then come up with a decision, because like I previously said:
What's the worst that could happen?
Will they shoot you? No!
Will they kill you? No!
They would rather want to have a dialogue and work out with you how to recover their money, throwing you in jail won’t give them their money back, but they get upset when we avoid admitting that we have a challenge, Whether: we don't have money, we can't pay them, we lost our job, we got retrenched,
or for whatever reason we became negligent; planned poorly or failed to plan, mismanaged our budget etc for example:
over Christmas holidays, we overlooked our debt, over budgeted our holidays expenses, gave priority to non-budgeted impulsive buying or holiday; we chose going to Cape Town/Durban expecting another payment to come through to cover the bank stop order but it didn’t, and whilst in the meantime we spent all the money we had at the time which caused the bank stop order to bounce and fail to go through etc.
When and if such a mistake was made, It helps to own up to the mistakes , admit under estimating and then do something about it; problem-solve!.
Such a challenge is created by way of thinking, excitement o emotions of holiday inn and overspending impulsive Behaviour that creates stress. What's the point of temporary fun-feeling of being in Durban or Cape Town when I know I without proper budgeting?
How does hiding and not addressing the challenges head on creates solving? Doesn’t that just trigger more anxiety, more phones calls from creditors?
Won’t that exacerbates rumination and triggers emotional distress, and probably affect Behaviour, loss of appetite, insomnia, loss of weight, high blood pressure etc.
won’t discussing with creditors release pressure on the mind/thoughts, emotions and reduces stress?
Your thoughts, emotions and Behaviour are interlinked, similarly, behaviour may affect your thinking and your emotions.
Plan rationally, temporary fun based on impulsive shopping spree or holiday may bring you a lot of baggage and a cargo of emotional pain. Nonetheless, everything can be resolved.
Admit the emotions,
accept the mistakes,
problem solve, take action to address the situation; problem solving will contribute to the reduction of anxiety, fear and related issues.
If experiencing financial related stress seek counselling and get a financial coach to help you plan your finances better.
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Disclaimer: We are not financial experts, we advise you to talk to finance advisors if faxing financial challenges. We have seen the psychological distress caused by financial problems.
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