When it comes to psychotherapy, we must first understand the ancient philosophical concept of "the unity of body and mind".

The latest research by neuroscientists has proved that the spirit is not an intangible thing independent of the body, but has a complete and sophisticated biological mechanism with the brain as the main body. All the complex emotions of human beings have a close correspondence with the brain.

Living in a colorful world, people are bound to show a variety of emotions. Once emotions arise, they evoke a variety of physiological responses. The heart, blood vessels, gastrointestinal, endocrine, etc. all begin to work, and are manifested through physiological indicators such as skin voltage, blood pressure, heartbeat, and gland secretion. They are primitive, simple and direct, most of them are unconditioned reflexes, and the role of the will in regulating and controlling them is very limited.

These physiological responses have extremely important effects: they allow people to form the necessary physiological, behavioral, and mental preparations before the stimulus occurs, and to correctly guide physiological, behavioral, and mental activities in the stimulus; It also allows people to learn lessons and respond better the next time a similar stimulus arises.

Specifically, what kind of correspondence will there be between the various organs of the human body and emotions?

Mood and cardiovascular

Mood has a significant impact on cardiovascular activity. For example, anger, fear, panic, joy, agitation, etc., can cause the heart rate to increase and breathing to increase.

These emotions have a special effect: arousal. It is an external stimulus that causes an increase in cardiovascular and respiratory activity, prompting the body to get excited. Monotonous and dull environmental stimuli make people dull, and this kind of arousal provides warning signals to external stimuli and prepares the body for stress.

Emotions and internal organs

The hypothalamus and its limbic system are the efferent pathways of some emotional centers, and it has a broader regulatory role in visceral activity.

Chinese medicine has observed and described this in great depth. For example, Chinese medicine has long described the relationship between the five basic emotions (joy, anger, worry, sorrow, and panic) and visceral activity, and pointed out that excessive emotional activity can lead to impaired visceral function.

There is also a role for emotions to regulate each other. There is no need for high-level cognitive processes such as enlightenment and suggestion, but only the interaction between emotions can be used to regulate people's emotional state, and then adjust the function of internal organs. For example, a bitter cry can dissolve anger, and a moderate amount of panic can bring an ecstatic and dysphoric person back to normal.

To be precise, it is not emotions that affect visceral functioning, but visceral regulation itself as part of emotions. In evolutionary history, emotions and visceral function may have had a more fundamental connection and are the direct regulatory pathways of the environment to the organism. The evolution of human beings and the intervention of cognitive activities have made emotions more behavioral.

Emotions and bones

Emotions affect a person's body movements, and body language is accompanied by distinct emotional characteristics. The idiom "hand and hand dancing" is an example of the increase in movement caused by excitement. If a person is grieving, his movements will also appear sluggish. "Dog jumping over the wall" refers to the instantaneous stimulation of motor function by a dangerous environment. Excessive fear leads to limb paralysis and is also a blockade of motor function by extreme emotions.

Given the general role of emotions in regulating motor function, observant people can judge people's emotional changes from their small expressions and body language.

What are the effects of emotions on the human body? Let's look at some of the most important emotional experiments in the history of psychology.

Emotion Experiment 1

American psychologists once conducted an experiment in which a subject was asked to observe the torture of a prisoner. The doctor took a red-hot coin from the stove with tongs and placed it on the prisoner's arm, only to hear a "stab" sound, accompanied by a scream, and a wisp of smoke burned the prisoner's arm.

After several repetitions, the doctor tied the subject to a chair as well. Then he took out an equally red-hot coin from the furnace and said, "Now put this coin on your arm." Subsequently, the subject felt a hot object fall on his arm, and he felt great pain and screamed. At this point, the doctors discovered that the subject had a third-degree burn scar the size of a coin on his arm.

In fact, that coin, with only a slight increase in temperature, could not have caused burns at all. So where does this third-degree burn come from? It can only be assumed that it is the spirit-consciousness that burns the flesh. Because the spiritual consciousness thinks that the physical body should be burned in that situation, it really burns. This is the body's passive response to external stimuli.

This experiment proves that the spirit has a certain dominance over the body.

Emotion Experiment II

Place a guinea pig in a pool of water. Instead of swimming on the horse, the little mouse "squeaked" in circles. Its whiskers are an azimuth detector, and after the cry reaches the edge of the pool, the sound waves are reflected back and detected by the whiskers, so as to determine the size, orientation, distance, etc. of the target. The mouse screamed and spun around a few times, swam in the direction closest to the edge of the pool, and soon swam to the shore.

Then, another mouse was chosen, and this time all its whiskers were cut off and placed in the center of the pool. The mouse also squeaked in circles, but was unable to determine its orientation due to the whiskers being cut. It continued to spin and scream in a hurry, still unable to do anything. After a while, the little mouse sank to the bottom and drowned.

The psychological explanation is that the whiskers of the rats are cut, they cannot accurately determine their orientation, they do not know how big the water surface is, and they think that they will not be able to swim out anyway. In this case, it did not know what to do, gave up its efforts in despair, lost its physical strength, and ended its life.

In summary, emotions have a very wide efferent effect, and it has a significant effect on both visceral and somatic movements.

Furthermore, emotions play a significant role in people's cognitive activities and behavioral decision-making. It changes the behavior itself and becomes an important part of the life activity. Emotional activity is a more common and basic form of environmental adaptation in higher animals.

A good psychiatrist is the helmsman who guides the patient's ship of life. He must have quintessential professional knowledge, intelligent understanding, a cool head, the ability to empathize, love, patience and good psychological quality, and should also have rich life experience.