Toxic Thoughts That Impact Your Health and Your Recovery

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A heart attack is a major trauma to the body, which results in a wide range of emotions one feels after such a traumatic heart event. For some the feeling may be more intense, while, for other people, it may not. Common feelings after a heart attack are worried, Anxiety, Anger, denial, etc.

Most people go through 5 -stages after a heart attack.
1. Denial
2. Anger
3. Bargaining
4. Depression
5. Acceptance

Through these stages, there is a range of thoughts and emotions that one experiences. What do these emotions do to us?

These thought and emotions can impact us physical and mentally.

 

A common emotion one feels after a heart attack, or cardiac event is Why me?!

This feeling of “why me?” Makes us feel sad or angry, and we may tend to take it personally, which in turn may make us feel victimized.
Getting caught up in this way of thinking may cause us to spiral into a state of self-pity, despair and some state of depression.

These are ‘toxic thoughts’ as they interfere without our recovery process. Toxic thoughts impact us at two levels. In this state, we may throw caution to the wind and make poor lifestyle choices that could slow down our heart disease recovery or could worsen our pre-existing condition.

These poor choices may include a lack of exercise, poor diet, smoking and excessive drinking. While these habits in turn increase the risk of high blood pressure, weight, diabetes that increases the risk of additional heart event, strokes, and other cardiovascular complications.

These toxic thoughts can also have a more direct impact on our bodies. Neuroscience and Integrative medicine studies show that chemical messengers in our bodies (also called neurotransmitters and hormones) generated in response to these toxic thoughts are released to help us cope. However, these very same chemical messengers, when in excess or for prolonged periods can cause inflammation of cells in various parts of our body and also negatively impact our immune system.

Our thoughts, attitudes, and emotions influence heart attack recovery, heart disease recovery or recovery from other chronic illnesses. Toxic thoughts may not only increase the chances of a secondary cardiac event or complication, but also slow down the recovery process. We cannot simply erase these toxic thoughts and emotions. However, we can develop skills to cope with them. Mindfulness meditation is an effective technique that is found to be very beneficial. There are other powerful mind-body techniques that are rapid and effective that have helped heart attack recovery and heart disease recovery.

 

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