Aakriti Lajpal
What is Emotional Wellness?
MEANING OF EMOTIONAL WELLNESS Emotional wellness defined as having an awareness, understanding, and acceptance of our emotions and also the power to manage them effectively through life’s challenges and changes. It involves learning and growing from experiences, managing life, developing inner strength and building healthy relationships with others. It also fosters autonomy, better problem solving and better operation skills. Being emotionally well doesn’t suggest being “happy” all the time either. Instead, it means we are more mindful and self-aware which then facilitates more happiness to our life
IMPACT OF EMOTIONAL WELLNESS ON OUR HEALTH
There seems to be strong link between a person’s mental state and physical health. Emotional wellness of a person results in lowering blood pressure, reduce risk for heart disease, healthy weight, balance blood sugar levels and long life.
HOW TO IMPROVE EMOTIONAL WELLNESS?
i) Surround yourself with positive people
If you realize you are mostly surrounded by negative people or folks that are always in a nasty mood, you’ll need to separate yourself from variety of those people. It can be easy to get trapped in negativity but we can get trapped in positivity as well.
ii) Truly realize that emotions are a standard part of the human condition
To improve emotional wellness of a person, there is a necessity to accept the intensity and type of emotion that he/she experiencing that time. If you get upset at yourself for having emotions then it will be hard to spice up your emotional wellness because you are in a constant tug-of-war.
iii) Allow your feelings to arise without self criticism for good emotional health
iv) Accept your past mistakes
Holding on to mistakes and past experiences causes excessive stress and it effects how we feel in the present even though it’s not even happening at the moment.
v) Elicit the relief response
Calming activities that trigger the comfort response reduce our stress levels and help us reacting to stressful situations with ease. Some of the best activities for eliciting the relief response are meditation, listening soothing music, yoga and breathing exercises. Stress makes our body to reach at ‘high alert’ mode, at that time these activities really works. When a person finds himself/herself in fight or flight mode, regulating emotional health becomes very difficult. So, if you really want to work on improving emotional wellness, finding such activities will help you to relax.
vi) Positive Affirmations
Inculcate a habit of writing down one positive affirmation in your notepad, wall, mirror, etc and repeat it to yourself a day or whenever you are feeling emotionally low.
If someone repeatedly use negative affirmations for himself/herself like ‘I am bad’, ‘I m going to die’ or ‘I am a failure’ then it will end up with degradation of emotional health. Hence to start acting out on emotional health, prepare some positive affirmations instead of negative which you can repeat on a usual day after waking up in the morning or whenever you see trouble. For example: ‘I will try’, ‘I will not give up’ etc
vii) Try ACT, CBT and MSBR THERAPIES
- ACT (ACCEPTANCE AND COMMITMENT THERAPY) helps a person to diffuse him/herself from emotional situations. ACT helps us separate ourselves from events, situations both mentally and emotionally by focusing on our strengths and learning how to not take things personally. It will help to reduce self-criticism which eventually benefits emotional health of a person.
- CBT (COGNITIVE AND BEHAVIOURAL THERAPY) enables us to learn that it’s not our problems that are the problem but our thoughts and feelings about the problems that cause us distress. CBT teaches us to see things from a different perspective instead of looking at things one-sided all the time.
- MSBR (MINDFULNESS BASED STRESS REDUCTION) helps cultivate mindfulness which as stated before. It helps to improve emotional health by teaching you how to live in the moment and become less reactive.
viii) Pause before you act
To improve emotional health, we need to stop reacting and we need to accept responding to different situations. For this, take a moment to pause yourself before uttering a word, take a deep breath then respond. After doing this, you will experience inner peace.
You need to calm down for few seconds and then try to figure out whether your reaction is going to help the situation or hurt it. Then move further.
ix) Physical health is inter-related to emotional wellness
Physical and emotional wellness is inter-related. Improving emotional wellness means taking care of your physical health. To have good physical health exercise regularly, take high nutritional diet and sound sleep.
x) Accept Support
Try to take and accept support. Whenever required, talk to someone about you feelings. Be it a trusted friend or a trained professional, no need to go through tough times alone
xi) Get sound sleep
Inadequate amount of sleep makes you more vulnerable to stress and anxiety. Being overly tired can make you more emotionally reactive. That emotional reactivity can negatively affect a person’s outlook performance, and relationships.
xii) Get sufficient sunlight
Sunlight is a great natural way to boost a person’s mood. Hence its very important to get sufficient sunlight for better emotional heath.
