Negative Feelings and Stress Hormones: Understanding Emotional Pain, Health, and Faith
By Dr. Maria Pinto Barbosa
Emotional pain can affect how we think, relate to others, and experience daily life. Rejection, abandonment, grief, and difficult life circumstances may leave us feeling anxious, overwhelmed, or disconnected. Understanding the relationship between emotional distress and the body’s stress response can help us approach healing with greater knowledge and compassion.
When we experience a threatening or stressful situation, the body activates its protective stress response. Hormones, including cortisol and adrenaline, help prepare us to respond. Cortisol is a chemical messenger produced by the adrenal glands; it also supports essential functions such as blood pressure, metabolism, and inflammation regulation. Negative emotions do turn into, distressing experiences can activate systems that influence hormone release.
This response can be helpful during an immediate challenge. However, persistent stress may contribute to or worsen headaches, digestive difficulties, sleep problems, and emotional distress. Chronic stress is also associated with increased risks of conditions such as high blood pressure and heart disease. These relationships are complex: feeling sadness, anger, or fear does not mean someone will develop a disease, and illness should never be treated as evidence of emotional or spiritual failure.
The Emotional Pain of Abandonment
Abandonment can involve the loss of an important relationship, emotional neglect, separation, or the absence of needed support. Bereavement may also bring feelings of being left alone, even though the person who died did not choose to leave.
For some people, these experiences are accompanied by loneliness, sadness, shame, or a diminished sense of worth. Others notice difficulty trusting, fear of commitment, repeated worries about rejection, or a strong need for reassurance. These experiences deserve understanding rather than judgment.
It is important to distinguish between what happened and what we have come to believe about ourselves because of it. “Someone left me” can gradually become “I am unlovable.” Yet another person’s behavior does not determine our value.
Sometimes fears of abandonment continue even within a caring relationship. This does not make the pain imaginary or self-inflicted. It means the person deserves support in understanding those fears and evaluating present circumstances with greater clarity.
Many people trace these struggles to childhood. Claims about abandonment beginning before birth, however, require caution; a person’s current feelings cannot establish a specific prenatal emotional experience.
Emotions and Our Relationship With God
From a Christian perspective, love, gratitude, forgiveness, and joy are meaningful parts of spiritual growth. Nevertheless, painful emotions are not automatic signs of separation from God. Scripture includes grief, fear, anger, and lament, showing that honest emotional struggle can exist alongside faith.
God invites us to bring our suffering into His presence. Isaiah 41:10 offers reassurance of His presence, strength, and help. When others disappoint us or when loneliness feels overwhelming, this promise can become a source of comfort.
Romans 12:2 encourages transformation through the renewing of the mind. Applied thoughtfully, this can invite us to examine harmful beliefs, seek truth, and develop healthier responses. Renewing the mind does not require pretending that pain has disappeared.
Repentance may be appropriate when we recognize harmful actions of our own. Being abused, neglected, or abandoned is not itself something for which a person must repent. Likewise, forgiveness should never be used to pressure someone into restoring an unsafe relationship. Boundaries and protection can remain necessary.
Moving Toward Healing With Compassion
Healing begins with acknowledging what we feel: “I am hurting,” “I feel afraid,” or “I need support.” Accepting an emotion does not mean accepting every conclusion it suggests.
Prayer, Scripture, journaling, and supportive relationships can provide space for reflection. Regular sleep, physical activity, and relaxation practices may also help with stress management. Slow, comfortable breathing can help some people settle their bodies when tension rises.
When emotional distress persists, disrupts daily life, or makes coping difficult, professional support is appropriate. Faith and mental health care can work together. Seeking help is an act of care for the life God has entrusted to us.
You do not have to punish yourself for feeling hurt. Your emotions deserve attention, your experiences deserve compassion, and your worth remains greater than what has happened to you.
God understands your emotional struggles. You can seek His comfort while taking practical steps toward safety, support, and healing.
For further encouragement, explore Thank God We Are Not Orphans: Divine Shield by Dr. Maria Pinto Barbosa (ISBN: 979-8-2954-2034-4). This book offers spiritual reflections to support you through feelings of abandonment, rejection, and loneliness, encouraging you to find comfort in God’s love and remember that you are never alone.
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