‘Mental health is about diagnosable conditions like depression and anxiety. Emotional health is about common experiences like loneliness, failure and heartbreak, the non-diagnosable stuff.’ Dr Guy Winch.
Do you understand how your emotional health impacts your physical health? We are all aware of our physical health and know what to do if we suffer an injury such as a graze or a broken bone, but are we aware of the psychological injuries we endure? Do we understand how to treat them and how to maintain a healthy emotional state?
There are 5 areas of emotional trauma which we all will experience during our lives:
· Failure
· Rumination
· Guilt
· Rejection
· Loneliness
If we fail to acknowledge and treat these psychological wounds they can become vicious cycles, eg) failure can lead to a lack of confidence, with feelings of helplessness that make it more likely you will fail again. If we are aware of these negative cycles we can stop them and correct them.
Our self–esteem acts as an emotional immune system which can protect us and enable us greater emotional resilience. We need to get into the habit of monitoring our self esteem and boost it when it becomes low, so avoiding damaging negative self-talk.
We can put ourselves at risk of clinical depression and cardiovascular disease by ruminating. Ruminating is when we over think repetitively about distressing events and our thinking no longer is problem solving.
Idea for today: Write a list of 5 qualities you believe are true about yourself which are relevant to the rejection you have just suffered, eg) ‘I am loyal’, ‘I have a good work ethic.’
Then write one or two paragraphs about why these qualities are important to you and others and how you have used these qualities in the past and how you plan to use them in the future.
This will remind you of your strengths and qualities and boost your self-esteem…but remember you have to write these! If you simply think about them you are not embedding these beliefs. Imagine if you are hungry and you simply think about food…it is not going to stop you feeling hungry!
Your self-esteem is your psychological immune system. When your self-esteem is higher you have more energy and feel physically well, as well as feeling psychologically strong.
So…
· Do you monitor psychological injuries such as failure or rejection when you sustain them, to ensure that your self- esteem recovers?
· Are you aware of the ways negative self-talk impacts your emotional resilience?
· Do you know how to break out of a cycle of ruminating and brooding over distressing events?
Another strategy to nurture our emotional health when we continue to ruminate and overthink, is to review the difficult situation or event as if you are a stranger to the event.
1. Make yourself comfortable, sitting or lying.
2. Recall the opening scene of the experience or memory
3. Zoom out until you see yourself within the scene, then zoom out further so you can see the scene unfold as if you were a stranger happening to pass by
4. Play out the scene while maintaining the third-person perspective
5. Ensure you always employ this third person perspective whenever you find yourself reflecting on the event.
This is known as ‘adaptive self – reflection’ and it:
· Eases emotional distress
· Reduces the emotional potency of the event
· Offers new insights, perspectives and learning
· Clarifies the present or future action
· Helps us to move on
If you would like to learn more about maintaining your emotional health, sign up for one of my training sessions, detailed on my website. These are now virtual sessions so no travelling and no role play!
Want to Explore this Further?
Watch this Ted Talk
Why we all need to practice emotional first aid (Guy Winch | TEDxLinnaeusUniversity)
Take Action
If you want to work with me, contact me on isabel@norfolklifecoach.co.uk
Or visit my website https://www.norfolklifecoach.co.uk
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