Emotions And High Blood Pressure: An Unexpected Relationship

High blood pressure is a psychosomatic disease. This means that both physical and mental factors are involved. Therefore, it is possible that there is a relationship between emotions and high blood pressure.

First, high blood pressure is an abnormal increase in blood pressure on the artery walls. Millions of people in the world suffer from this condition. While it is more common in middle age, it can occur at any stage of life.

The exact cause of high blood pressure is still unknown. In addition, it is a chronic disease. This means that we can control it, but it has no known cure. The condition can have serious consequences, in extreme cases it can even lead to heart failure or stroke.

All experts agree that emotional factors greatly influence the increase in blood pressure. This is especially true in the case of very strong emotional states or prolonged stress.

Some professionals, such as researcher Luis Chiozza, go further and say that unconscious processes are important risk factors when it comes to high blood pressure. Let’s take a closer look at the relationship between emotions and high blood pressure.

Emotions and high blood pressure: extreme anger

Franz Alexander was a physician who studied the relationship between emotions and high blood pressure. Using his previous cases as a reference, he concluded that there was a connection between repressed or inhibited anger and this disease.

In his studies, he emphasized that hypertensive patients tend to be very submissive and addicted. Furthermore, they have trouble expressing disagreement and instead turning to hostility and anger.

According to the researcher, the tension produced in these hostile destructive situations is what leads to high blood pressure. Physiologically, the opposition between anger and its oppression affects the blood vessels.

To put it in layman’s terms: what often happens with high blood pressure is that two emotions are in opposition, which in turn corresponds to two physiological processes.

Here there is anger, which increases blood flow, and oppression, which causes the blood vessels to constrict. This tension increases over time, and that is when high blood pressure occurs.

Mittelman and Reiser, other scholars who agree with this explanation , have pointed out that various factors can generate the feeling inside.

One of them suggests frustrated desires for addiction. In other words, the patients wanted someone to take care of them, and they did not get anyone to do it.

Other sources of contained remorse are: damage to self-esteem, the threat of losing a job or disagreement with a feared authority, among others.

Emotions and high blood pressure: feeling inferior

Viktor Von Weizsaecker, the famous German doctor, adds that the mind associated with high blood pressure is often associated with a feeling of humiliation.

This indicates that those with high blood pressure feel that they have not reached their life goals and the disease is a way to compensate.

In the same vein  , Dr. Luis Chiozza points out that high blood pressure appears when we feel that our personal dignity has been hit.

In this sense, the hypertensive person perceives that they have been treated unfairly and feel helpless in the face of poor treatment.

They want redress, but they try to get it by being “worthy of comfort.” In other words, they become even more helpless. That is why it causes disease.

Now all these experts speak from a psychoanalytic perspective. From this approach, they seek an understanding of unconscious symptoms. These symptoms often appear in the body, which occur with psychosomatic diseases. They see the disease as a marker of an unconscious reality.

We should note that positivist thinkers have criticized them all, as they see their proposals as pure speculation.

Beyond these theoretical debates, we can look at treatment. Many of these hypertensive patients have improved when treated based on these hypotheses.

Similarly, many clinical reports show a relationship between emotions and high blood pressure. In particular, aggression and hypertensive crises are associated.

People with the disease should analyze their emotional health and ask if they feel respected. Perhaps the answer to that question is the key to improving your health.