Part of that is expressing emotions, be it through writing, body language, or talking with other people, and researchers are finding that unlatching the cage and letting those emotional birds fly free could have some real health benefits. Some studies have linked the repression of negative emotions to increased stress, and research suggests that writing about feelings is associated with better health outcomes for breast-cancer patients, people with asthma, and people who’ve experienced a traumatic event. And in a study of people who lived to be 100 years old, emotional expression was found to be a common trait, along with a positive attitude towards life, among the long-lived. [...]
I spoke with the psychologist David Caruso, who is a co-founder of the Emotional Intelligence Skills Group (not the actor with the sunglasses from CSI: Miami), and who trains organizations and schools on emotional intelligence, about overcoming personal and cultural barriers to expressing emotions. [...]
American culture demands that the answer to the question "How are you?" is not just “Good,” but sometimes “Great.” Or—this drives folks around the world crazy, who might be based in another country but they work for an American company—we need to be “Awesome.” There's this relentless drive to mask the expression of our true underlying feelings. It's almost inappropriate. [...]
Caruso: I will now have people tell me, “Oh, David, have you seen Inside Out? Because don't you know that even sadness and even anger can be [helpful]?” It's really made my job so much easier.
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