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What Is Emotional First Aid?

Emotional first aid refers to the first and immediate care that should be provided to a person who is suffering through an emotional crisis. It compromises of a set of skills that can be provided even by a lay person in case of emergency.

 

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What are the common psychological injuries that may benefit from emotional first aid?

In our daily lives, we experience a range of emotions. We go through major and minor mishaps. Just like we don’t run to the doctor for every sneeze or headache, there are some psychological injuries that we can deal with ourselves too. Some of the common psychological injuries are-

• Loneliness– There are often times when we feel we are all by ourselves and there’s no one to fulfil our emotional needs. There’s a feeling of disconnect and emptiness in and around us.
• Rejection– Rejection by friends to come to a football match, family members for a dinner, co-workers on some work project or rejection by dating partners are instances that occur more often than we’d imagine and are likely to hurt us.
• Failure– Sometimes we set goals for our studies, work projects, fitness or lifestyle changes that are not always attained. Failure to achieve the planned work might discourage us.
• Loss– Loss of a job, a friend who moves across the country, a pet who passes away are critical moments of our lives. Such losses are hard to process and deal with.
• Guilt– There are mistakes we make intentionally or unintentionally, both cause guilt. This guilt often constantly bothers and makes it challenging to concentrate on our work and other responsibilities.
• Brooding and rumination– Pondering continuously over angry or upsetting feelings gets us stuck in a cycle of brooding and rumination and ends in making us psychologically weaker.
• Low self-esteem– Being overly critical of oneself does more harm than good. It can make us feel incredibly low and doubt our capabilities.

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How does it work?

• It provides calmness to an overwhelming situation.
• It assesses the immediate needs and concerns.
• It provides non-invasive and comforting support.
• It requires listening to the person and not pressurizing them to talk.
• It offers information to help people further with their difficulties.
• It connects people with various services social support groups and community resource.
• It helps prevent harm in future.

 

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What are the ways to practice emotional first aid?

The ways to practice are:

• Recognize your emotions-  

One of the foremost steps to emotional first aid is recognizing and acknowledging the emotions we are feeling. When there’s a physical pain in our body, our sensations quickly do the work and let us know. Similarly, when there’s emotional pain, we should become aware of that as well. We may experience failures, loss or rejection and that may cause an emotional injury. In such cases, we should pay attention and recognize what we are experiencing, so that we can heal the injury and prevent the damage from intensifying.

• Redefine the perspective towards failure-

Failure is often tough to deal with. We may focus on all the things we can’t achieve rather than what we can. It is seen that we tend to overthink about a few shortcomings and totally ignore all our capabilities. We forget that there are things that we can control and make the situation better for ourselves. When you go through a failure, try to ignore the gut reaction that makes you feel helpless and spend time in planning and preparing to improve yourself.

• Be compassionate to yourself- 

There are times when we say things to ourselves like ‘I am good at nothing’ or ‘Why can’t I ever get anything right?’. These are ways that we put ourselves down, lower our self-esteem and weakens our emotional resilience. Try to talk positively in such scenarios to yourself, just the way you would talk to a friend if they were going through the same thing. You may also try this by texting or writing to yourself.

• Find meaning in loss- 

Loss is a lifelong wound that prevents us from moving forward until we are healed from its pain. Mostly with the passage of time, the pain reduces but if you’re still struggling with the loss of a pet, a job or a relationship, you might need to reframe your thinking towards it. You could try to think about how the pet is no more suffering and how the loss of relationship has made you independent. Changing the perspective of the experience of yourself and others who are going through the same thing as you can be beneficial in the long run.

• Learn what treatment works for you-

Every individual is different, their wounds are different and their experiences are different. So how can one treatment work for everyone? Just the way you know what clothes look best on you and which pain reliever is right for you, similarly, you need to decide what treatment fits you perfectly. Some people may take one whole day off and bounce back absolutely fine the next day whereas some might need an emotional timeout each day over a period of time. Most importantly, everyone must keep a check on their psychological health regularly.

 

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How does it differ from other techniques?

Emotional first aid requires basic skills like active listening, showing compassion for the person suffering, or providing support by just being there. It often aims to improve the emotional health of a loved one just as a basic first aid helps to heal minor cuts or sore, after which no additional assistance is required.

Whereas techniques like breathing exercises, Jacob’s Progressive Muscle Relaxation, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, Rational Emotive Behavioral Therapy can be performed only by qualified experts or after they are learned under the guidance of trained professionals.

 

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Conclusion

Emotional first aid training is essential for the psychological benefit of ourselves as well as for providing help to our loved ones for their emotional well-being, if and when needed. If we make it a habit to keep a check on our mental health through these simple aids, it can make our daily lives a little less stressful and a little more peaceful.