Emotional wellness 101

The National Center For Emotional Wellness defines emotional wellness as “an awareness, understanding and acceptance of our feelings, and our ability to manage effectively through challenges and change.”

Your emotional and physical health is really important if you want to succeed in your daily life. Believe it or not, the way you feel about yourself can change everything. You might not realize how many different areas of life your emotional wellness, or lack thereof, is involved in. Let’s look at how your ability to handle, understand, and manage your emotions impacts your life. Also, discover other ways to treat yourself here.

Relationships

When we interact with others, it’s important we understand our own perspectives about different issues. Sometimes we disagree with other people, and to keep relationships happy and healthy, we need to be able to have disagreements in a calm and appropriate manner. If you aren’t able to deal with your emotions well, it’s difficult to deal with those of others. The state of emotional wellness impacts our relationships whether they are personal or professional. In order to best connect with and relate to others, the more emotionally healthy we are, the more support and care we can offer those we love and respect.

Work and School

Whether you’re decades into your chosen career or still deciding what you want to do in your life, your ability to handle situations as they arise is vital to your success. Knowing how you feel, dealing with your emotions, and being able to move forward from challenges with a positive mindset all lead to better outcomes in your scholastic and professional life.

Mental Health

This may seem obvious, but your emotional health is a big part of your overall mental health and wellness. While that fact is true for everyone, for those who face mental health challenges and conditions it can be even more impactful. As you learn about how to deal with your own mental health challenges, you’ll be most successful in navigating them if you are in touch with, and able to deal with, your feelings and emotions.

The Impact of Poor Emotional Wellness

There are many ways that not being able to work through life in a positive emotional state can lead to worse outcomes, particularly because a negative emotional state is a stressful one. Here are some examples:

• Lower immunity: stress weakens the immune system.
• Hypertension: long-term stress worsens blood pressure.
• Increased illness: stress worsens everything from heart issues to psychiatric problems.
• Relationship issues
• Difficulties at work
• Trouble concentrating

Benefits of Strong Emotional Wellness

As much as poor emotional health can make for major problems in your life, having strong emotional wellness can help you thrive. These are some of the many benefits of having good emotional wellbeing:

• Your relationships with others can be at their best.
• Reducing stress reduces illness and increases immunity.

How to Optimize Your Emotional Wellness

Now that you understand how important emotional wellness is to a healthy life, you’re probably wondering if there is anything specific you can do so that your own emotional health is at its best. Luckily, there is no shortage of activities that can promote emotional wellbeing. However, you can enhance and improve your state of mind with these activities.

Practice Mindfulness

Mindfulness is about being present in the moment. Rather than living on autopilot, mindfulness encourages us to really take part in our lives, and it can improve both physical and emotional wellbeing. You can practice mindfulness doing everything from running to eating.

Connect and Communicate With Others

There’s no need to go through this journey alone! Emotional wellness is about being connected to and able to deal with your own emotions, but so much of our emotional lives are lived with those we know and love.

Make a point of intentionally talking about your feelings with others, which can lead to you understanding them. Ask others about their feelings, so that you have the opportunity to experience different perspectives.

Source:

Ariane Resnick. (2021). What is emotional wellness? VeryWell Mind. https://www.verywellmind.com/emotional-wellness-5206535