What Are Emotions — And How Do They Relate to Cancer?

Did you know that thousands of years ago, philosophers in China were already exploring emotions and their relationship to the physical body? I find it fascinating that long before modern medicine and psychology began discussing the mind-body connection, ancient cultures were already recognizing that our emotional experiences and physical health are deeply interconnected.

Emotions are at the heart of my work because, both personally and professionally, I have seen how integral they are to healing. I want to share what I know and understand about emotions because I think it’s an important topic related to cancer and other chronic diseases.

Most of us think of emotions as something that happens only in the mind and heart. Something we feel temporarily and then move on from.

But emotions are not just mind-heart experiences. They are physical experiences too.

Every emotion we experience creates a response within the body. 

Think about your own experiences with different emotions. Fear can tighten the chest. Grief can feel heavy in the body. Anxiety can create tension, digestive changes, exhaustion, or difficulty sleeping. Joy can create lightness, openness, and energy.

Since the beginning of your existence, your body has been constantly responding to your emotional world.

The truth is that when emotions are fully felt, processed, expressed, and supported, they naturally move through us. Unfortunately, many of us were never taught how to safely process difficult emotions such as anger, grief, sadness, fear, rejection, shame, or loss. This is not anyone’s fault but typically just a inter-generational way of being in the world that was past onto us. 

As a child, you may have been told to stop crying when all you wanted to do is cry, but instead you forced yourself to stop. Over time suppressing emotions becomes the norm and what often happened is that we gradually became disconnected from what we felt in order to survive and keep going. 

Over our lifetime, our bodies often start to show the signs of this emotional suppression. This can look like many different chronic physical manifestations-diseases, inflammation, unexplained ongoing symptoms, and chronic pain. The body is showing what the mind-heart tried to bury within it.  

It’s important to emphasize that there is no blaming or shaming with whatever is showing up in your body. This work is about moving towards an understanding that chronic stress and unresolved emotional experiences affect all parts of us, including the physical body. It’s also important to understand that the mind-heart is intimately interconnected to the physical and vice-versa.  

This psycho-emotional work is critical for individuals dealing with cancer.

Not with blame.
Not with guilt.
But with curiosity, compassion, and awareness.

I encourage you to look at cancer as an invitation to get curious, and allow yourself the opportunity to question everything you have ever been through-especially the hard stuff.  

Could there be parts of your story asking to be explored more deeply? A painful childhood experience you have carried quietly for years. Grief that was never fully processed. Emotions you learned to suppress long ago just to survive. People-pleasing patterns that slowly disconnected you from yourself.

Healing is never only physical because we are not only physical beings.

We are emotional, mental, physical, and deeply human.