I like to think about our emotions as the little messengers that carry the message of our inner self to the surface. The usual course of emotions is to teach us a lesson before we finally let it go.
While we live through our experiences, many times, we tend to suppress our emotions which causes a build-up of emotional cuts and wounds.
Practicing emotional hygiene is like lifting off the weight from the emotions.
One barrier to lifting off the weight of emotions is the labeling of emotions. When we label emotions as good or bad, we try to abandon those that we label as bad.
One example is how most people have difficulty handling failures. Since failures are perceived to be something negative, we abandon them and don’t really reflect on them. While actually, reflecting on it might tell us about the shortcomings of our approach and better prep us for success in our next attempt.
Let us discuss some steps to better emotional hygiene:
Bring awareness to the emotional pain/wound
Just like a doctor cannot treat a physical wound without looking at it, you cannot tend to your emotional wounds without being aware of them. We all have a default set of emotions that we resort to whenever we face rejection, failure, or rejection. I have always found it difficult to pick myself up after a failure because I tend to overthink how people would judge me. By knowing how I react to failures I know that I need not give in to that feeling and I am able to give it one more attempt. I have also noticed myself shying away from having difficult conversations during times of conflict. I am a person who is chronically afraid of confronting people. Even with full knowledge of what is happening, I tend to save people from the pain of explaining their actions and tend to apologize on their behalf. By knowing that I tend to run away from difficult conversations, I now take some time to convince myself that I can eventually do that hard thing.
2. Stop the bleeding The only way to let go of the suppressed emotions is to express them to another person. Getting a third person’s perception of our trauma can help us lift off some of the weight. To understand how important it is to express emotions, let us see what can happen when are unable to do so. Imagine you have a sharp pain in your knee. You go to the doctor but your hands are tied up and you cannot point to the wound. Your mouth is muffled so you cannot tell your doctor where you are hurting. You are minutes away from help but you just cannot express the pain. Something that we do need to keep in mind when we start expressing our emotions is to do it with a person who can empathize with us. The person should be willing to step into the discomfort of our situation without any judgment.
3. Protect the wound Our self-esteem is inherently how we look at ourselves. It has a role to play in how we deal with our emotions. Just like a connected circle of friends and family helps us build resilience against the hard days of life, a good connection with ourselves will help us overcome difficult emotions. Failure and rejection hit us harder when we have low self-esteem. Overthinking and a vicious cycle of negative self-talk hurt our self-esteem even more. Instead what we must do is improve our self-esteem. Recognizing the things that we are actually good at will boost our confidence. Being kind to yourself will go a long way.
4. Build good psychological habits We brush our teeth not because we have a cavity but because we need to protect our teeth from cavities. Just like that, good psychological habits will go a long way in protecting our mental health and building emotional resilience. One such bad habit is overthinking. And because we tend to overthink things that we are yet to face, the overthinking lingers for a really long time. A personal tip that I have found to work very well is to introduce a distraction whenever you get the urge to overthink. A distraction, no matter how tiny, if it causes you to move physically from that place or introduces a new thought to your mind is enough to stop the overthinking for that moment. And just as there are bad psychological habits, there are good ones too. Since we know that our emotional and physical health is interlinked, keeping hydrated and regular exercise is something that can help. Finding connections with others will help us share our feelings with others. Practices like deep breathing can even help with problems like anxiety and overwhelm. Practicing gratitude will help us look into the good things that our life brings to us.
It is important to recognize that just as there is no perfect physical state, our emotional health will also keep changing through the course of our life. Recognizing our feelings will go a long way in helping us lead a life that is truer to ourselves.