Our Emotions Affect Our Gene Expression
12 ways to help up-level our emotions for better health
As originally published in Change Your Mind Change Your Life on Medium.com.
Image: francescoch on iStock
How many times have you heard someone say, or even said yourself: “I have bad genes” as a way of explaining a given physical condition? As it turns out, however, we have the power to influence and affect how our genes express themselves. This article explores how our well-being is within our control, and 12 ways to take the reins.
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This article is also an expansion on insight #8 of my recent article “Quite Possibly the Only Knowledge You Need To Change Your Life” after multiple requests to expand on the insights with ways to implement the lessons learned.
We Can’t Outsource HealingWhen life isn’t going according to plan, the easiest explanation is to blame someone or something else.
We don’t see things how they are. We see them how we are.
It’s easier to place the responsibility for our health and happiness on someone or something else’s shoulders than to acknowledge and deal with the underlying root cause of our issues.
But when we do this, we give away our power. We give up control of our life. It’s a choice that we make — over and over again — albeit most often subconsciously.
I did this for most of my life, in many areas of life. But the most profound impact surfaced through my romantic relationships.
I was desperately unhappy but did everything in my power to convince myself it wasn’t so. I needed to believe I was happy so I kept trying to ‘fix’ the situation. I’d invested so much love, time, effort and energy into the relationship. The thought of it not working out, of having to start over, seemed inconceivable.
Because starting over would have meant confronting my deep-seated fear of rejection, fear of abandonment, and fear of being alone.
These fears are, at their root, primal survival fears, usually from an early age. And these fears are the primary drivers of co-dependency, one of the hardest victim mentality patterns to handle and the best one to overcome to come home to our sovereignty.
Codependency is the excessive emotional or psychological reliance on a partner
— Oxford Language Dictionary
Fear leads to tunnel vision — where we can no longer see the forest for the trees.
But responsibility = an ability to respond.
Being able to respond equates to taking our power back.
With great responsibility comes great power. When we take responsibility for how we feel, we have the power to make things better.
Jim Kwik
Taking responsibility for our health and happiness is the first step towards emotional intelligence and independence. And this is critical for our well-being.
Image: Revival Health GmbH
The Emotional Signature Is What Signals the GeneUnprocessed negative emotions linger. Time doesn’t heal. Time conceals.
Lingering emotions create our mood. If the emotions are left unattended, this mood becomes our temperament. If left unattended even longer, this temperament becomes our personality. And our personality becomes our personal reality. And for most people, this is not the reality they actually want.
According to the World Health Organisation, 76% of all deaths are predicted to be caused by chronic non-communicable diseases (NCDs), and this figure is expected to increase to 86% over the next 15 years.
The term NCDs refers to a group of conditions that are not mainly caused by an acute infection, result in long-term health consequences, and often create a need for long-term treatment and care. These conditions include cancers, cardiovascular disease, diabetes and chronic lung illnesses.
— The Pan American Health Organization (PAHO)
Living in constant states of stress causes us to live in fight or flight mode. This state causes us to use all our energy to respond to the external environment (think back to when people were chased by wild animals and needed to fight or flee). When all our energy is directed to our external environment, there is none left for our internal environment — none left for growth and repair and the internal environment of the body begins to break down.
No organism in nature can tolerate the effects of living in emergency mode for extended periods of time. We cannot create anything new from this state either.
Long-term effects of the hormones of stress disregulate and downregulate genes to create disease.
Disease = Dis-ease
Our thoughts and emotions alone can make us sick. In turn, they can also make us well. It’s the ultimate mind-body connection.
And I experienced this first hand — over and over again. Because faking it is not the same as making it.
But ultimately my body could no longer keep up with my willpower. I was dying — slowly but surely. I was depleted, emaciated, and chronically fatigued. I had brain fog and short-term memory loss, and my eyesight was deteriorating. I suffered a seizure. A disc in my lower spine herniated leading to near paralysis and emergency back surgery.
If you listen to your body when it whispers, you’ll never have to hear it scream.
Cherokee Proverb
Well, I didn’t listen and so my body started to scream.
So how can we regulate our emotions to positively affect our wellbeing?
Our Inner World Is the Key to Our Outer WorldA lot of people struggle because they’re running around like a headless chicken trying to make everybody around them happy — their boss, spouse, parents, children, everybody.
Excuses…..
Because here’s the deal. Everybody else’s needs and desires change constantly, so if that is what we’re focused on, we will never get around to getting what we want out of life.
If we want to feel good about ourselves and our lives, we have to go a little deeper and look at our patterns and beliefs, and then look within to find out where they come from.
Before anyone else can make us feel the feelings we seek, we need to be able to give ourselves those feelings. Inner work is all about the relationship we have with ourselves — and our outer world will always be a reflection of this.
Everything is energy and that’s all there is to it. Match the frequency of the reality you want and you cannot help but get that reality. It can be no other way. This is not philosophy. This is physics.
— Albert Einstein
We cannot control what other people do, say, or how they feel. But we can control our own thoughts, feelings and behaviours.
Image: Revival Health GmbH
That sense of hiding. That fear of judgement. That fear of rejection we think about keeps us stuck in the shadow of others. Clarity is what resolves it. Clarity is what dissolves it. Because everything becomes so much easier when we don’t have to show up wearing a mask.
So, clarify…
Vision
As we move towards creating a new and much-improved life for ourselves, we need to be able to imagine what this new life looks like and more importantly, how it makes us feel.
Values
Most people think they’re clear about what they value, but they’re not.
You probably know what you’d like your life to look like, but when we’re not clear on our values, we’re not able to effectively make decisions that serve us.
Our values define us, and what matters to us. They help us increase our self-worth because they determine what we will accept or tolerate — and what we will not. They determine the boundaries we set or don’t. They (should) determine our priorities, and, subconsciously, they’re probably how we measure if our life is turning out the way we want it to.
When what we do and how we behave matches our values, life is usually good — we’re satisfied and content. But when our thoughts and actions don’t align with our personal values, that’s when things feel wrong. Making decisions in alignment with our values allows us to feel integrity and authenticity.
Clarity on our values helps us know exactly what we do, who we do it for, and it’s the only piece that we need to focus on to see positive change happen in our lives almost immediately.
Boundaries
Boundaries (or lack thereof) are often a reflection of self-worth. When we have healthy boundaries in place, those who are unable to respect those boundaries will move on to someone else whom they can control, leaving us to continue focusing on building a beautiful life, with people worthy of being part of it.
Purpose
Clarity on our purpose allows us to live a fulfilling life that is true to it. Because if we have no idea where we are going or why, we’re a lot more likely to get lost along the way!
Priorities
Mastering the relationship we have with ourselves allows us to put checks and balances in place that ensure we remain our number one priority. Always. And no, that’s not selfish. It’s essential. And not just for us, but also for those who love us or even depend on us, like children.
Think about it, if we are stressed out and exhausted all the time, that affects our patience. And in turn our temper. And ultimately even our ability to be productive and effective. In all likelihood, that anger will rear its ugly head at work, with our children, or other important interactions. When it does, we’ll feel even more frustrated. And once we start spiralling, it’s hard to stop.
Statements of Truth
Often referred to as positive affirmations, I prefer the term “Statements of Truth” because phrases such as “I am enough”, “I am lovable”, and “I am worthy” are, in fact, true.
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And practice…
Grieving
We all have a story. We all have trauma and hurt in our past. But if we hold on to this for too long, it will begin to fester. Our body loves us. So if we hate our life, our body will help us die.
It’s up to us to do the work so that we may move beyond old thoughts, beliefs, and habits that no longer serve us. A memory without the emotional charge is called wisdom.
Forgiveness
No doubt we all have people in our past or present who could use our forgiveness. But for me, the most important and often the hardest person to forgive is oneself.
As we heal and evolve into better versions of ourselves we come to realise that we, and only we, are responsible for our health and happiness. This realisation often brings with it waves of shame, guilt, anger, frustration and a slew of other negative emotions. It’s OK. Lean in. Self-forgiveness is a skill. And like any other, it takes practice.
Gratitude
For having survived thus far. For the progress we’ve made. For the lessons learned. For all that we have the opportunity to still become.
What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Meditation
Our conscious mind is where there is logic and reasoning. The purpose of meditation is to get beyond the analytical mind and tap into our subconscious, where our habits and behaviours reside.
Meditation means “to become familiar with”.
We don’t meditate to heal. We meditate to change.
Self-parenting
Of all the skills I’ve learned throughout my healing and self-evolution journey to date, this one is by far the most valuable and essential.
When we can become the loving parent to our inner child, the shackles of co-dependency begin to disappear.
Self-love & care
We cannot be more connected to other people than we are to ourselves.
Brené Brown
To clarify, that does not mean that nobody else can love us until we love ourselves. Of course, they can. But we will never truly feel the way we want to feel until we feel that way about ourselves first.
Wounds Are Not Lost. They Are Embodied.Our emotions have the power to drag our bodies to their genetic destiny.
So it’s not only in our best interest but also our responsibility, to make sure that destiny is the one we want.
Every thought you think has an emotional response and a physical reaction.
Marisa Peer
The journey then is about learning to feel all the emotions we wish to feel — continuously — without our external environment necessarily reflecting our desired situation just yet.
Image: Revival Health GmbH
In Dr. Joe Dispenza’s words: Believe. Behave. Become.
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To learn more about the root cause behind our negative beliefs and self-sabotage, have a look at “Why We Feel Like We Are Not Enough.”
