How Speaking Up Can Save Your Life

Rare Diseases Magazine

June 2022

A ‘blocked voice’ lets us down when difficult conversations need to happen. We don't express ourselves, or we can’t articulate what’s made us upset or what just feels wrong.

Then we internalise those negative, stuck emotions. For many of us, these conversations then run inside our heads day after day.

The results of internalising stress are not limited to mental anxiety or depression. Indeed, when negative feelings are stuck inside us, it can be toxic to our physiology and health too.

Dr Gabor Maté, a world-renowned trauma expert, quotes a Longitudinal Study in the USA in which women in unhappy marriages were studied over ten years. One of the factors that they found is that women who didn't express their emotions in unhappy marriages were four times more likely to contract a dread disease.