Checklist: Emotional Balance to Amplify Pleasant Feelings and Dim Unpleasant Ones
This six-step framework helped me regulate my emotions, uplift my mood, and improve my physical and mental health.
My unpleasant emotions triggered by negative thoughts and imbalanced bodily sensations used to run wild, causing mood fluctuations, unhappiness, and health problems. I was at the mercy of my ups and downs. So, staying focused, productive, happy, and healthy was hard.
Later, I noticed that everyone struggled with emotional regulation at times. My late psychiatrist mentor, Janine, said it didn’t have to be that way.
According to Janine, every activity in the body and mind, like what we think, eat, drink, do, breathe, and respond to, can create emotions. Stress, memories (conscious and subconscious) addictions, withdrawal symptoms, and health conditions also can adversely impact the balance of our emotions.
All bodily fluids like hormones, neurotransmitters, enzymes, glucose, and lipids are involved in our emotional balance. Janine informed me that the body defaults to pleasant feelings with the right tools and practice if we use them wisely and create homeostasis (balance) in the body and mind.
