How Our Emotions are Linked to Our Illnesses

Gabor Maté points out that a study done in 2019 (and I hasten to note that all studies quoted in my blog are scientifically verified) found that women with severe PTSD have twice the risk of ovarian cancer as women with no exposure to trauma. The study found moreover, that the risk of ovarian cancer could show up decades after the traumatic event. The more severe the trauma, the more aggressive the cancer.

The link between the severity of the trauma and the aggressiveness of the cancer makes one sit up and take notice. It gets more striking: the same Harvard research found that emotional stresses are inseparable from physical stresses. Earlier studies had already associated depression with elevated ovarian cancer risk and the theory that came from Harvard then became that “stress may disable our immune system’s capacity to control and eliminate malignancy.” (Maté. The Myth of Normal. 2022. Pg 43)

Finnish researchers in 2005 found that life events: ordinary stresses and emotional losses, including relationship issues and work problems, led to PTSD-like symptoms (bad dreams, emotional numbing) even more so than in people who had come through war or disaster.

Maté concludes this section by saying that is exciting to think that healing potentials can be found by treating emotions as relevant healing tools. In other words, not only do negative emotions harm us, positive emotions can heal us. The Harvard paper on ovarian cancer found, for example, that women who had received psychotherapy had less risk of malignancy than women who did not receive emotional support or psychotherapy.

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