Arguing with your partner can harden your heart!

Salt Lake Tribune
March 5, 2006

Arguing with your partner really can break your heart. Research now shows it can contribute to hardening of the coronary arteries.

Such impact on the heart is more common in wives when they and their husbands express hostility during disagreements, and more common in husbands when either they or their wives act in a controlling manner.

The study, conducted from 2002 to 2005, involved 150 healthy married couples, mostly in their 60s and with no history of cardiovascular disease.

The couples were told to select a topic, such as money, in-laws, children, holidays or household duties, that was the subject of disagreements in their marriage. Each couple discussed the topic for six minutes while they were videotaped… Two days after the discussion, each couple underwent a CT scan of the chest. Doctors then scored each person's level of coronary artery calcification.

"The surprising result is that this actually relates to a very hard health outcome — heart disease," said psychologist Cynthia Berg.

http://www.theage.com.au/news/world/spatting-with-the-spouse-can-harden-your-heart/2006/03/04/1141191890106.html

Thanks so much for posting it. I'm going to have to work harder at my anger issues.

My wife controlled me rigidly for 20 years. Now my heart may be rigid physically (she already hardened it emotionally).

happens.

You’re welcome.

Recently I have noticed that some people I know have gotten various types of cancer about a year after being subject to workplace abuse--this is anecdotal, but it seems clear to me. Probably one of the great frontiers of medicine will be to connect particular emotional issues to particular physical pathologies--rather than just the general "sure stress is bad".

Pointing all this out is one thing................but what to do about it? I love the energy psychology techniques, and there are MANY of them. They are growing like wildfire though traditional psychologists have a long way to go.

Here is one technique that a lot of people love--emotional freedom technique. I am mentioning that in particular because there is a ton of free information on it, and one may be able to learn it from that. It has to do with tapping on various acupuncture points on the face, shoulders and hands while repeating affirmations of various types.

http://www.emofree.com/

One might state the problem and the solution in the statement--

"Even though my spouse is/was emotionally abusive towards me, I wholly and completely love myself and accept myself"--although it would work better with a particular situation. It would most likely be helpful for PTSD as well.

Again, this is just one technique. Another example would be EMDR--but this has to be done with a practitioner.

http://www.emdr.com/

I like neuroemotional technique, too. Again--I am a HUGE fan of all these things and have come to use a type of neuroemotional technique a bunch on my family and myself. It is amazing the physical change it can make in certain symptoms.

particular physical pathologies" Yes, this would be very interesting.

Your idea for psychological inoculation sounds great! To deflect or shield even more of the negative, you might consider something like; "Even though my spouse gets angry, I forgive him/her and I wholly and completely love myself and accept myself"