Heart and Mind
By Lea
Ever since we were young, we have always been told to take care of our physical selves. “Don’t run on the pavement, you could fall and hurt yourself!” We were always told to maintain and look after our physical bodies to avoid injury and pain. Despite such well perseveration of our physical selves, we often leave our mental and emotional state exposed for so many injuries, trauma and pain. We were never told to guard our hearts and minds.
The most important first step is validating your own feelings, especially in times of sadness, frustration and anger.
Growing up, we begin to learn what emotional pain really means. We had our first heart break, our first disappointment and so many other traumatising moments in our life. Unfortunately, we never grew up learning to guard, maintain and fix our emotional self, leaving us exposed for further trauma. A scrap on the knee is nothing compared to the feeling of your heart being wrenched from your chest, trust me.
Emotion wellness is a new aspect for many of us. It used to be so foreign before, the echoes of emotional upkeeping were never heard. Thankfully, now we live in a community that encourages emotional and mental health. Despite this, it is important to acknowledge that a lot of us struggle with being emotionally attuned to our feelings.
I believe that our emotions are like a river flowing out of us with multiple channels of crystal-clear water. When a traumatic experience happens, we often block that channel of emotion, reluctant to experience the pain that will come when we let that block through. In order to take care of yourself emotionally, you need to let that block through and out of you. Bottling all that pain and trauma will never do you good. When we are distant from recognising and validating our emotions, we leave room for trauma to resurface later in our adolescent years. This is exactly why practising emotional wellness is important.
No, emotional wellness does not mean being happy and carefree all the time. Instead, emotional wellness welcomes all emotions and feelings into the spectrum and implores for individuals to be emotionally aware of them at times to connect with the situation. Just like physical health, balance is essential for your emotional wellness, and requires just as much attention as physical training. As easy as it sounds, being emotionally aware is one of the hardest takes for most people.
To move from this and be better at managing your emotions, here are a few ways you can coach yourself. Speaking from an emotionally damaged person to the next, it is hard. It will be hard. But you owe yourself this. The most important first step is validating your own feelings, especially in times of sadness, frustration and anger. No matter how small or big your feeling is and the type of scenario you’re in, please never push away those feelings. “It’s just a small problem, I shouldn’t even be sad!”. Sound familiar? This is what we do, we think our feelings are ridiculous but they’re not. They never will be, and they are important to be addressed for you to be emotionally well.
Secondly, besides accepting your feelings, it is also necessary for you to express your feelings in a more appropriate way. When you bottle all those emotions in, it can add to the emotional burden and cause you to lash out to the people closest to you. Let’s all learn to recognise our feeling and act on it properly to ensure no regrets once that anger subsides. If it helps you, try talking to a close friend, partner or parent about your situation. Sometimes all you need is a good talk.
All in all, being emotionally well requires balance and harmony. Find the balance in yourself to handle all the good, the bad and the ugly that comes your way. Life can be rough, and we can feel emotionally overwhelmed by a lot of things. Emotional burden can translate into many physical symptoms like fatigue, aches, migraines and joint pain. That’s the way for our body to tell us that we’re tired because we seem to never stop when we are emotionally burdened. I hope we’ll all be able to recognise, validate and appreciate our feelings more. Here’s to being healthy, emotionally.
