This content was created by Susan Britton MCC. This content was uploaded by Susan Britton MCC. This is a YouTube video titled "How Expression of Emotions Can Save Your Life | Encourage Your Brain" (created 2023-06-02) featuring Susan Britton MCC of The Academies delivering a solo talk about emotions and health. She reviews research linking emotional expression and strong social support to better recovery rates (noting a study showing women with early-stage breast cancer who could express emotions and had support had higher recovery, while those without such support showed up to a fourfold increase in death rates). She discusses biological mechanisms (e.g., cortisol and norepinephrine), cautions that expression is not the sole cause of disease, and advises cultivating supportive people who allow honest emotional expression to promote healing and resilience.
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Susan Britton with The Academies, and I'm talking today about emotions and emotional expression and how it can help keep us alive. I love research around how emotions and how biology impacts our health, and recently I was looking at some studies that talked about the connection between cancer and our emotions, our ability to express emotions, and they found that both in men and women there was an interesting correlation between emotional expression and the recovery rates or the death rates. For example, in one study they found that for women with early-stage breast cancer, that for those who had a strong support system and were able to express their emotions to that support system and also had a great ability to express things like anger and frustration and grief and fear and any number of emotions, that when they were able to express those emotions, that they had higher recovery rates. In fact, women who conversely did not have strong support systems that they could express their emotions with or be able to really come out and express, "I'm mad about this," or, "I'm angry about this," or, "I'm afraid about X," any of those things, that those women actually had a fourfold increase in death rates compared to those that had the emotional support and were able to express their emotions. So this certainly doesn't mean that somebody who can't express their emotions, that that's responsible for cancer. There are so many reasons for how we get cancer that we know and we don't know. Bottom line is, if this has such an impact on our health and on our body's biology to be able to be healthy, then regardless of our situation, regardless of our circumstances, if we be intentional about having emotional people emotional support systems, people that allow us to express our emotions and don't want us to tamp it down or don't want us to get into Pollyanna mode like, "It's okay, it's all right." Being able to express those emotions so that you can do something with them and then be able to move forward so that your body biology is not just amped up with cortisol and norepinephrine and all of the things that don't allow our bodies to heal and restore and rest and digest. And move forward with life. So find people for your drive, allow you to be emotional, express them, and be able to move forward as a result.
