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The Concept of Health -- Dr. Manish Bhatia |
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Emotional
Health
Our brain is the part which regulates both our mental and emotional faculties. So these two are highly related. In fact, most of the people who suffer from some psychological disease are both mentally and emotionally ill. But in this part, I will specifically focus on the emotional health. Technically speaking, our emotions are neuro-hormonal reactions occurring in response to some physical or mental stimulus, which in turn, affect our response to the same stimulus on the physical and mental plane. This may sound like a very unromantic explanation, but it is a fact. Emotions do not come from our heart, they are generated in our brain. All the emotions we feel - love, joy, hate, anger, sorrow etc. are nothing but some primitive algorithms that are processed to generate response on the physical and mental level. Let me give an example. Suppose somebody abuses you. Afterwards you feel angry towards that person. The question is how is this 'anger' generated? And why only 'anger' is produced? Why do not you fall in love when somebody abuses you? First, let me answer the second question. What kind of emotional response is generated depends on two factors - our subconscious mental awareness and, through social learning. Our subconscious mental awareness is probably a mental reflex action that comes without learning. For eg, a young child also shows reaction to anger and shouting. This is what is inherent in us. The second thing that affects our emotions is our learning. Through social learning we are taught the meaning of love, joy, hate, anger etc and we are taught to differentiate them. Now I come back to the first question as to how 'anger' is generated. The moment somebody abuses you, your mind perceives it as a threat or offence based on its social learning. To counter this threat, the mind needs to prepare the body and itself for some reaction. Based on the perception of stimulus, some neuro-hormonal reactions are generated which create 'emotions'. What we perceive as 'anger' is the after result of that processing. Our mind generate negative thoughts towards the concerned person. The concentration level of mind increases and it is focused on the current situation. Our eyes become prominent. The winking rate decreases, muscles in face and the other parts of the body become tense in anticipation of further action.. In this state we say a person is 'angry'. But this is the primary response occurring as a reflex phenomenon. There can be a secondary phenomenon like you can also hurl abuses or hit the person, or just walk away. This secondary reaction is based on the intensity of emotions and the integrity of the regulatory mechanisms in our brain. Other kind of emotions are also generated in a similar way. There is a primary stimulus which generates the 'emotions' based on the perception of stimulus, and which leads to appropriate physical and mental response. I have delved deep into the probable mechanism of emotions so that it becomes easy to understand how our emotional health can fail just as our physical health does. As the physiological reactions taking place in our liver or lungs can go awry, so can they go wrong at the emotional level. Our brain can produce too strong an emotional response for a small stimulus or it may produce a very weak response against a strong stimulus. The response may persist for too little a duration or too long a duration. Let me give some real life examples to explain this. It is normal to be angry when somebody abuses you. But if you can't let that anger go for a very long time, then everything is not right with you. It s normal to feel sad when somebody close to you passes away. But if you try to kill yourself after that, then you are not emotionally healthy. If you always feel elated (not just happy) without any good reason then you are not emotionally healthy. These are only a few raw examples. Our emotions show very fine variations from person to person. There is no measurable way to define emotional health. The three basic attributes that can be given to an emotionally healthy person are: An emotionally healthy person is -
There are so many people around us who are unable to cry when they need to; who are unable to fight when they need to; who fear every passing wind; who lose their ability to reason when they fall in love. These people do not have any 'disease' and yet these people are not 'healthy'! The
Triune
So far, I have discussed the three components of health as separate entities to understand each one of them more thoroughly. But emotional health, mental health, and physical health are not separate entities. You cannot have a healthy mind without a healthy body or healthy emotions and vice-versa. The degree to which one of these components is affected can vary from person to person, but ultimately it is the person as a whole that is affected. This understanding of the human being is why I like Homeopathy so much. And this is the reason why Homeopathy is so different from every other system of medicine. The dominant medical school still has to realize that just as the parts of a human body can not work in isolation, they also can not fall ill in isolation. There can not be a disturbed liver or a damaged lung unless and until there is a primary disturbance which affects the person as a whole. We can not forget that every part in our body and every cell in those parts has come from a single cell. A cell which had a life force of its own. How can any one dissociate the body parts which have all come from one single cell? Leave aside the differentiation of parts, even the classification of health as emotional, mental, and physical is not totally true. These are components which can not be separated - neither in health, nor in disease! |
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