Emotional pain is often challenging, and heartache is perhaps the hardest to deal with.
When battling heartache or difficult feelings, it’s important that we take our emotional health seriously to ensure that we can embrace the issue, and focus on resolving it properly.
This means tackling stressful situations head on, embracing different emotions, and cultivating a high level of self awareness. We know that emotional distress and depression may make you feel like you have a heavy heart.
If your heart feels burdened, don’t worry. The pain is usually a result of the emotional stress that you feel, which sometimes produce physical sensations. Here’s what to do if you feel like you’ve got a heavy heart.
Why Does Your Heart Feel Heavy With Emotion?
First things first, let’s make sure we’re on the same page. If you’re experiencing severe physical symptoms over a period of time, please make sure you contact a doctor.
However, what we’re talking about here is a heavy heart, sometimes referred to as broken heart syndrome. If you’ve just been through a breakup, received bad news or found out your crush is dating your best friend, you may feel your chest tightening or shortness of breath as a reaction.
Again, if this is over an extended period of time, get in touch with an expert and ensure that you’re not in any physical danger. However, intense emotions can result in a physical reaction like muscle tightness and a rapid heartbeat.
Tap Into Your Support System
When pain feels too overwhelming for you to deal with alone, talk to someone that you are confident about disclosing your current circumstances with. Talking things over with someone else can help you to deal with your personal heart ache and help to lift a heavy heart.
Research shows that social connections increase physical and mental health, and this may relieve a heavy heart. Tell them about your feelings and how you feel. Typically, a family member or friend can often offer an alternative perspective for coping with your feelings.
You can speak to your friends or family, or if you don’t have anyone to talk to, you may be able to get in touch with a therapist to discuss your issues. Or, you can take advantage of online communities to others that may have been through similar situations.
The point is that you should let your feelings out, as when they’re trapped inside, they can make you feel worse. Speaking to another person about your heavy heart may be the one thing that you need to do to alleviate it.
What emotional symptoms can look like
Often, the symptoms that you may show from having a heavy heart may begin to show themselves physically as well as emotionally, and they can even occur long after an injury has healed.
This may involve emotional changes such as regret, fear and guilt. However, a few emotional symptoms are confusingly similar to cardiac symptoms, such as a tired feeling, heart palpitations or difficult breathing properly. Unfortunately, these anxious signs are also signs of a heart attack, and many people find it difficult to differentiate between the two.
It is even common for both physical issues and mental issues to cause chest pain – research shows that anxiety can itself cause mild chest pains. If you’re feeling something in the chest area, this could be a sign of something more serious, so you may want to think about visiting your local doctor.
Can You Physically Hurt From Sadness?
Sadness can be the emotion caused by loss or depression, but some people wonder whether that can actually cause physical pain from within the body. According to WebMD, this is called psychogenic pain, a pain disorder that causing physical pain from the emotional pain you’re feeling.
Also, when you are experiencing emotional pain, this can cause both anxiety and physical stress, which has an effect on your nervous system. This may increase your heart rate or blood pressure, which leads people to feel like they have a “heavy heart”.
The best way to deal with this is to get in touch with mental health services or a professional that can help you through the struggle. Dealing with mental pain is one thing, but if that later develops into physical pain, this could be a sign of a deep rooted issue that needs to be resolved.
How Can I Stop Hurting Emotionally?
Embracing emotion and resilience can help you to stop hurting emotionally from sadness. This includes things like getting enough rest and relaxation, as this ensure that a lack of sleep isn’t at the root of your anxiety.
Studies also show the benefits of exercise in helping people feel more relaxed during stressful periods in their lives. So if you face emotional distress, it’s likely worth trying to get out of the house, even if it’s just to go for a walk outside of the city.
You can also relieve your feelings through partaking in your favorite hobbies. Whether this is painting, singing, sketching, gardening, a project or doing something you have been dreaming about for a long time – they can all be part of the healing process of a heavy heart.
They can be extremely useful tools to help distract yourself for a short while, and enable you to get out the emotions that are holding you back. Embracing your emotions whilst finding something else to put your energy into could be all you need to heal.
Conclusion
We all feel sad from time to time. It is often challenging and difficult if you encounter painful things, but it is important that we learn from them so we can deal with them better in the future.
If you learn to manage your emotions, you can learn to deal with pretty much any situation, reduce impulsive emotional reactions and lead a fulfilling life.
Not all people who suppress their emotions face physical and mental issues, though those who are prepared and ready to deal with them are often the winner in the long term.
