Your Guide to Emotional Wellness

When it comes to health and wellness, it typically embodies physical, mental, emotional, and behavioral wellness. This is what makes up your “health” and overall wellbeing. With emotional wellness, it is all about your emotions, feelings, and many of your thoughts.

This includes how you handle your emotions after various events in your life and your ability to bounce back from challenges, as well as how much negative things in your life affect you. Here are some things to know about emotional wellness:

Emotional Strength, Resilience, and Intelligence

Emotional wellness encompasses your ability to handle stressful situations, showing how much emotional strength and resilience you have. This might look like:

• Healthy ways of coping with stressful situations – A good sign of healthy emotional wellbeing is the ability to cope with stress in productive ways. As opposed to ignoring your emotions, turning to substances or other addictions, you can sit with your emotions and handle stress in a much healthier way.
• Being a grateful person who chooses to focus on the positive – Someone who focuses a lot of their emotional wellness also tends to be more grateful and can appreciate all the small blessings in their life. Consider whether you focus more on the good things in your life, or the bad.
• Treats others with respect, and never judging their emotions – Allowing others to feel how they need to feel and express their emotions is an amazing sign of being emotionally healthy, mature, and intelligent.
• Never judging your own emotions or feelings – Emotionally healthy people will also not judge their own emotions when they come up. This actually happens a lot more often than you might think.

The Impact of Your Emotional Wellness

While anyone can improve their emotional wellbeing, there are some signs of poor emotional wellness. Keep in mind this is completely normal and doesn’t mean you are “broken”. It simply means your emotional wellbeing is what you should be focusing most of your attention on.

Some common signs that you need to work on your emotional wellness include:

• Feeling shame or guilt for your own emotions or feelings
• Ridiculing others for how they choose to express themselves
• Turning to drugs, alcohol, or other addictions to hide from your emotions
• Allowing toxic people to remain in your life
• Giving too much of yourself to others with no personal boundaries
• Having no healthy outlets for your feelings

As you can imagine, having these signs of poor emotional wellness can lead to a lot of negative consequences in about every area of your life.

This includes:

• Issues with friendships and relationships
• Problems with your job or co-workers
• A weakened immune system
• Unexplainable body aches and pains
• Behavioral issues like irritability and moodiness
• Problems with focus and concentration
• Poor sleeping habits

Tips for Improving Your Emotional Wellness

If you want to start working on your emotional wellness, here are some places to start:

Learn How to Be Mindful

Mindfulness is really valuable when it comes to accepting and processing your emotions. If you have a tendency to either react immediately to how you feel, or completely hide from your emotions, then you need more mindfulness in your life. It allows you to really sit with your emotions, and understand where they are coming from, before reacting.

Use a Journal to Understand Your Thoughts and Feelings

It can be difficult to constantly live inside your head and make sense of your feelings and emotions. Get some of those thoughts onto paper so you can start working through your issues by writing in a journal every day. The clarity you gain is a wonderful step in the right direction toward better emotional wellbeing.

Communicate Openly With the People in Your Life

Open and honest communication is also really important. Emotional wellness isn’t just about your own emotions, but other people’s as well. This helps you to learn more empathy and sympathy, and to practice forgiveness when necessary.

1 – Understanding Your Emotional Wellbeing

Someone with good emotional health is able to handle their emotions, no matter what life throws at them. It does not mean you never experience stress or negative emotions, but that you have a much better coping mechanism and a better awareness of what you are thinking and feeling at any given time.

Signs of Good Emotional Health

You Have Reached a State of Acceptance

People with good emotional health understand that their emotions change from day to day, but they don’t really judge any of them. If you have come to a place of accepting how your emotions change and what causes them, you are already on the right track to motional wellness.

Acceptance might look like realizing you are getting angry or upset about something, but instead of reacting to it or judging yourself or spiraling and getting even angrier about it, you can be calm and go inside to figure out what is causing the anger.

You Easily Adapt to Changes in Your Life

Adapting to change is challenging for most people on some level, but if you feel like you have been getting better at it lately, your emotional health could be improving. Many things can cause change in your life, from having to move jobs or your home, to simpler things like a friend moving out of town.

When change happens, it takes a good amount of resilience in order to flow with these changes, which is another sign of a healthy emotional wellbeing.

You Can Analyze Your Own Feelings

Another sign of good emotional health is when you are able to analyze your feelings, without immediately judging or criticizing them. If instead of beating yourself up over how you feel, you simply get into a mindful state and consider where they came from, it is a really great sign.

Don’t be surprised if you find you do this without realizing it. Some people are naturally gifted at thinking about their feelings, because they are just more self-aware by nature. If this sounds like you, you already have a leg up with your emotional strength.

You Don’t Hold Grudges

Holding grudges is really not healthy for anyone, though sometimes it can be hard to avoid. Pay close attention to how you react when someone has wronged you, and how long you hold on to those negative emotions.

Holding grudges can sometimes feel safer, as negative emotions often feel like a comfort zone, even though you think the opposite should be true. But grudges never fix anything or solve any problems. All they do is create hostility in your life that damages your emotional health.

You Have a Lot of Empathy

Empathy is where you are able to see something from another person’s perspective, and relate on some level. Even if you have not experienced it before, you can still empathize by trying to understand what they must be going through.

The next time someone you know is dealing with something, examine how you react and what you think about it. Do you immediately judge them and wonder why they are making such a big deal out of it? Or do you feel empathy toward them, where you can see how that must be hard for them?

It is Easy for You to Set Personal Boundaries

Personal boundaries are incredibly important to your emotional health, but can also be challenging in the beginning. Setting personal boundaries allows you to set limits on what you can and can’t handle on an emotional level.

It could just be your own boundaries with how often you use social media or what you engage in. In other cases, it is boundaries with other people who tend to have a negative energy that affects you. It might be learning to say no more often. Having personal boundaries that you are clear about is a great sign of emotional maturity.

You Have Excellent Problem-Solving Skills

If you are good at resolving issues and problem-solving instead of just going into an anxiety spiral, you have amazing emotional health and maturity. Knowing how to solve a problem isn’t always easy and it doesn’t come naturally to everyone. But it isn’t so much about intelligence or knowing everything, and more about how you react to obstacles and challenges, and what actions you choose or not take.

What Can Negatively Affect Your Emotional Wellbeing

Even after learning about your emotional wellbeing and getting various tips and tricks for improving your emotional wellness overall, there might still be some factors in your life that are affecting your emotions in a negative way. Here are some things to be careful of when it comes to your emotional wellbeing.

How You Think About Yourself

Even when you treat others with kindness and compassion, if you don’t treat yourself just as kindly, then your emotional health can suffer. What you think about yourself at any given time is important, and it can hurt or help your emotional wellbeing. If you constantly think bad things about how you look, what you can accomplish, things you regret or any of your actions, you are harming your emotional health. It is the same thing as if you were being bullied by someone else, but worse because you are doing it to yourself.

This self-sabotage needs to come to an end if you want to improve your emotional health and mindset. Start thinking positively about yourself. Whenever you have a negative thought, try to challenge it with a positive one.

Your Self-Talk

In addition to those thoughts, you have about yourself, the way you talk to yourself can also have just as big of an impact. Be careful about your internal dialogue, as this can sometimes be so subtle, you don’t even realize you’re doing it.

When you have those conversations in your head, whether talking to yourself or imaginary conversations with other people, it includes self-talk. If you are talking to yourself through first or third person in a bad way, assuming something negative about yourself, you are harming your emotional health just as much as with thoughts you have about yourself.

If you struggle with positive self-talk, just start with some affirmations. Simple “I am” affirmations, even if you don’t believe them yet.

I am confident.
I am beautiful.
I am strong.
I am capable.
I am chosen.

Relationships and Friendships

The friendships and relationships you have in your life have a big impact on your emotional wellness, both good and bad. The supportive people in your life are the friends who are always there for you, who listen, and who never judge you for how you feel or what emotions you express to them. These people improve your emotional health so much and are something to be grateful for.

But there are also some bad apples. Toxic friends don’t always know they are toxic, but they can have a negative impact on your life and your mindset. People who don’t let you express yourself, who are constantly judging you, who never offer emotional support. You might love these people, but if they are bringing you down and making you feel or think badly about yourself, they are not worth being in your life at this time.

Your Environment

Your emotional wellbeing can also be negatively impacted by your environment, which includes your home and work environment. This not only includes the people who are in your work and home environment, but how organized it is, and the feelings it creates within you.

If you had a bad experience in your home, and a certain area of your home always brings those emotions back, then you might need to make a change. You can’t just move because of it in most cases, but you can switch up that space. Decorate it differently, move furniture around, do something that keeps you from creating this connection between your home and your negative emotions.

Judgment, Criticism, Shame, and Guilt

These are the negative emotions you really want to start working on getting rid of your mind. These are the most toxic thoughts you could have, and also some of the most common. What has happened in the past, is in the past. You can’t go back and change it; you can only move forward and deal with it. So, all those feelings of guilt and shame and resentment are pointless. They aren’t helping you or anyone else, and they aren’t erasing that situation from your memory.

How Your Emotional Wellbeing Affects Different Parts of Your Life

Your emotional wellbeing encompasses how you think and feel, how you process your emotions, and the way in which you adapt to unforeseen circumstances and stressful events. The strength of your own emotional wellbeing can affect not just your emotional and mental state, but many other areas of your life as well.

Your Mental Health

Naturally, the first area of your life that your emotional wellbeing affects is your mental state. This goes beyond just how you feel on an emotional level, but actually affecting your mental health and any mental disorders you might have.

If you aren’t working on your emotional health and either have bad habits to cope with your uncomfortable feelings, or you are avoiding them entirely, mental disorders like depression and anxiety can start to get worse. You might notice more panic attacks or worsened depressive episodes. This is serious and should not be taken lightly.

Your Physical Health

It can also affect your physical health a lot more than you might think. Consider what happens when you are dealing with a lot of stress. It might be caused by emotional circumstances, but it is your physical body that feels a lot of the effects.

When you deal with a lot of emotional stress, do you feel it in your mind, or your body? You might initially feel that overwhelming stressed out feeling that causes a lot of fear and anxiety. But then, your body takes over. Your body’s response to stress might be a headache, stomachache, diarrhea, aches and pains, neck pain, and so much more.

By working on your emotional health and your ability to work through your emotions, you are also improving your physical health and reducing all of these discomforts.

Your Job and Work Environment

With poor emotional wellbeing, your job and work can suffer quite a bit. Most emotional challenges you face, when not dealt with properly, can cause a lack of motivation, focus, and concentration. This eventually leaks over into your job performance, reducing output and quality.

Whether you work for yourself or another company, it can put your career at risk. Even if your job is safe, it makes it a lot harder just to get through your workday, and you are putting all this added pressure on yourself without a good reason.

By working on your emotional health, you really help to reduce the negative side effects with your job and your work environment. The relationships you have with your colleagues and co-workers can be improved, you enjoy going to work, and even have fun on the commute. It is all in your perspective, which starts with your emotional wellbeing.

Your Home Environment

In addition to your work environment, your home environment might also begin to suffer. This includes your personal relationships and friendships, and the environment in which you spend all your free time outside of work. If you wake up every day stressed out or unable to deal with your emotions, how does the rest of your day go? Probably not great.

You start falling behind in personal obligations, barely taking care of yourself, neglecting household duties, canceling plans with friends, and so much more. You need to put yourself first, which starts with your mindset and how you talk to yourself. It includes how you process your emotions and what kind of resilience and mental strength you have.

This is all important and should never be taken for granted. Start with small steps as you work toward improving your emotional wellbeing. It doesn’t need to be overwhelming or complicated. Just one small thing at a time.

What is Emotional Intelligence?

When someone is emotionally intelligent, they aren’t just emotionally strong and resilient, though that can be a big part of it. There are many things involved in emotional intelligence, including being connected with your own thoughts and feelings, accepting, and regulating your emotions, and understanding more about your own emotional state.

Here is a look at what emotionally intelligent people do:

They Think About Their Feelings, Instead of Immediately Reacting

Someone who is emotionally intelligent is really good at thinking first about their feelings and analyzing them, instead of just immediately reacting. It is tempting and often much easier to just react first without putting too much thought into it.

It can feel like if you just do something immediately, it softens the blow of how the event affected you on an emotional level. But this only prolongs your suffering and makes it a lot harder to deal with. While it can be more challenging to really soak in those feelings, it is healthier for you in the long run.

They Accept and Understand Their Own Feelings

In addition to being able to take a pause and sit with their emotions, someone who is more emotionally intelligent and mature can also understand their feelings a little more. Even getting to a place of acceptance over how they feel.

You might think you understand why you feel the way you do, but unless you are giving yourself time and space to really acknowledge them and sit with them, you might be surprised by what your own internal dialogue can reveal.

They Don’t Judge Others for Their Feelings or Emotions

Another sign of having more emotional maturity is being able to understand and accept how other people feel, without judging them or reacting in a negative way. Emotionally intelligent people have a better understanding of their own emotions, which makes it easier to empathize with how other people might be feeling. It doesn’t mean you have to just agree with other 100 percent of the time, but trying to see things from their perspective does make a huge difference in how you react to others.

They Have Good Empathy and Deep Understanding

Being empathetic is a wonderful quality that makes you a more sensitive person when dealing with others, but it doesn’t always come naturally. However, it does tend to be more common among people with higher emotional intelligence.

Empathy does not mean you feel sorry for someone, but that you can just understand them a little more, even relate to them on some level. You can see someone suffering emotionally, and understand why, instead of criticizing them for it.

They Don’t Surround Themselves with Toxic People

Toxic people can be strangers, co-workers, your best friend, even your parent. They don’t usually set out to be toxic influences in your life, but can bring down your energy and act as energy vampires. When you are emotionally intelligent, you are able to spot them and typically spend less time with them, so all the drama and pessimism doesn’t rub off on you.

It’s not always possible to avoid every toxic person in your life, but with more emotional maturity, you can spot the people draining your mental energy and set some personal boundaries with them.

They Have Amazing Self-Awareness

Lastly, emotionally intelligent, and mature people are also very self-aware. They know who they are, what they want, their strengths and weaknesses, what triggers their emotions, and why they feel how they feel at any given time. The more self-aware you are, the less stress you experience and the more resilience and emotional strength you will have.

How to Make Your Emotional Health a Priority

Your emotional health should be a top priority in your life, so if it tends to be the last thing you think about, that is a big sign that you are standing in your own way. Your emotional wellbeing is how you cope with stress, it shows how mentally strong and resilient you are, it allows you to focus on healthier ways to cope with your emotions.

If you are someone who tends to have their entire day or week ruined because of one bad thing happening, then strengthening your emotional health definitely needs to be at the top of your list for things to work on.

Understand the Benefits of Good Emotional Health

If you want to make your emotional health a priority in your life, you need to first understand why it is so important. With good emotional health, you can benefit in the following ways:

• Build up your resilience – Resilience is how you bounce back when struggled or complications enter your life. While you can’t avoid these, you can control how you react to them by building up your resilience.
• Process your emotions in a healthier way – The way you accept and process your emotions makes all the difference when it comes to your emotional health. With better emotional wellbeing, you are able to process your emotions instead of hide from them.
• Have better confidence and self-esteem – With more confidence, you know you can get through anything. This is a wonderful benefit of good emotional health and one that improves nearly every area of your life.
• Improve your relationships – You can also have better relationships in your life with better emotional maturity, including friendships and romantic relationships.
• Feel happier and more fulfilled – Finally, you will notice that when your emotional wellness improves, so does your happiness. You suddenly feel more contentment in your life, and can really focus on gratitude instead of lack.

Take More Moments to Yourself

Putting yourself first and making your emotional wellness a priority really requires you to have more time to yourself, whether this is taking a break, practicing self-care, or just taking a few minutes to feel your feelings.

This can be considered a form of self-care, as you are putting yourself first and making yourself a priority. Your emotional health is really important, but it so often gets put aside. While taking care of your life, your finances, your relationships, and your physical body is important too, you can actually improve all of that by working on your emotional and mental wellbeing.

Start Acknowledging and Processing Your Own Emotions

This might be a more challenging one, but it is essential that you learn healthy ways to cope and to process your emotions. Stop hiding from them and pushing them aside. Stop judging how you feel, and just accept it.

To process your emotions in a healthy way means to acknowledge and work through them. Be clear and honest with yourself about why you feel that way, whether it is irrational or not, and what you can do about it. Use your problem-solving skills to come up with a solution instead of reacting negatively or using substances and the bad habits to hide from how you feel.

Work on Your Self-Esteem and Confidence

As you continue on your emotional healing journey, you will come to a place where you need to focus on your confidence and practice more self-compassion. This is life- changing when it comes to making your emotional health a priority. The way you treat yourself and how you think about yourself can pave the way toward a healthy relationship with your mind and your body.

Get Regular Exercise

Exercise isn’t just good for your physical health, but your emotional and mental health as well. As you move your body and get more exercise, you are improving your mood by releasing endorphins. It can also give you more energy to focus on important things in your life, and make you feel happier overall.

2 – A Deep Dive Into Emotional Wellness

Here is a deeper, more in-depth look into emotional wellness and wellbeing:

How to Validate Your Emotions

We often talk about how the only person who we should focus on validating us is ourselves, but rarely explain how to actually do that. Validating your own emotions is coming to a place of accepting them. Where you notice what your emotions are and you never judge yourself for having them. This self-validation can be really healing for you emotional wellbeing.

Be Mindful

In order to validate your emotions, you first need to understand what they are, why you feel that way, and rally just accept them. You will see mindfulness mentioned a lot when it comes to emotional wellbeing because of how valuable it is for your mindset and how you process your emotions.

When you are mindful, you are present in yourself and in your thoughts and feelings. You aren’t judging how you feel, but you are accepting of it, and that alone is validating your own emotions. It can be an important part of changing how you view yourself and what emotions you experience during different moments of your life.

Never Judge How You Feel

Just like when you validate someone else, you don’t want to place judgment on your own emotions. This can be hard sometimes when you feel like they are being intrusive on your mind or your life, but it is really important to find a place of acceptance without criticism.

Any time you experience an emotion or feeling that makes you uncomfortable or that you don’t want, give yourself a couple minutes to just think about it. Ask yourself why you feel that way, what triggered that emotion, if you have felt that way before, and what you did previously to cope with this emotion.

By doing this exercise, you learn how to acknowledge your emotions for what they are and validate them, instead of placing judgment.

Encourage Yourself

You don’t need validate or encouragement from others! You are the best person to encourage and motivate yourself. You can be your own best friend, your cheerleader, the one who gives you unconditional love and support. Continue encouraging yourself and showing yourself how much you can accomplish.

Think of all your challenging experiences before now, and how you overcame them. Get honest with yourself about how strong and powerful you are, and how much you can actually overcome in your life. This alone should prove that you deserve to encourage and support yourself every step of the way.

Accept Your Emotions

Accepting your emotions or how you feel is not the same thing as wanting to continue feeling that way. It is simply you being in a state of acknowledgement that it’s how you feel right now, and the understanding that it’s temporary.

People often feel that acceptance is the same thing as forgiving and forgetting, but it’s not. It is closely tied with being mindful and understanding your emotions, so that you can come to a place of recognition and know that soon they will pass.

Use Positive Self-Talk

Stop talking bad about yourself, even in your own thoughts. Your internal dialogue is running constantly all day and night, and you might notice that it is often negative when thinking about yourself. Whenever you have a moment to yourself, think about where your thoughts go. What is the dialogue in your head? What are you thinking about yourself? When you have those internal conversations with other people, what scenario are you seeing? What is that person saying about you? What are you saying about
yourself?

Try to shift these to more positive thoughts. One at a time, begin acknowledging when you talk badly about yourself, and then shift it to say something positive about yourself. The more you do it, the easier it becomes.

How to Protect Your Emotions

Protecting your own emotions is incredibly important, and far too often overlooked. People have no problem protecting their homes, vehicle, and even their own physical body. But they don’t consider protecting their own emotions and emotional health.

Here are some easy ways you can start protecting your emotional wellbeing and mental state:

Set Your Personal Boundaries

Set clear personal boundaries with anyone in your life, from friends and family members to colleagues and even your neighbors. Know what you can handle emotionally and what you can’t. A good way to figure out what personal boundaries you need to set is thinking about what tends to trigger you.

When you feel particularly upset or defensive, what causes it? Is there a situation or a person that leads to it? Is it from your social media use? Does it have to do with people putting pressure on you to do something when you have other things to focus on?

Make a list of everything you notice that tends to trigger your fragile emotional state, where you experience any feelings that are uncomfortable for you, and then start creating personal boundaries to avoid those as much as possible.

Recognize Toxic People in Your Life

Toxic people are sometimes very obvious, but most of the time, it is extremely subtle, and you don’t recognize how much they are taking from your positive energy. A toxic person can be a co-worker who gossips all day and constantly interrupts your work. It can be a friend who you have known for a long time, but never seems to respect you or acknowledge your feelings. It can someone in your life who doesn’t respect your personal boundaries and is constantly pushing you, causing you to be angry with them.

Toxic people come in all forms, and it takes a while to start noticing them. But once you do, you will see what a negative impact they have on your life and your emotional state.

Recover and Rest When it is Needed

Make sure you are giving yourself adequate time to rest and recover whenever you need it. This can help you avoid burnout and will help tremendously when it comes to protecting your own emotions. If you don’t give yourself enough time for rest, you will experience burnout and exhaustion, and will never have the opportunity to process what you are going through.

It can be as simple as going to sleep a little earlier or taking a micro nap during the day when you have 5-10 minutes to spare. You don’t have to take a week-long vacation just to recover.

Get Away From Your Normal Routine

Sometimes what you really need for emotional protection is to get out of your comfort zone and do something different. When you keep doing the same thing over and over again, you tend to feel the same types of feelings over and over again as well. This cycle might feel comfortable and predictable because you know what to expect. But you aren’t really learning or experiencing anything.

To protect your emotions, requires building up your resilience. You can only do that when you occasionally get out of that comfort zone and try something new. This can feel scary because you never know what to expect, but it is going to build that emotional strength tremendously.

Pay Attention to Negative Influences

A negative influence is sometimes people, but it can really be anything that negatively affects your own emotional state. This might look like social media, going to certain places where you don’t feel comfortable, people who tend to be energy vampires, and anything else you don’t think serves you.

How to Become More Resilient

To be more resilient means you are able to bounce back much faster and easier from any struggle in your life. With more resiliency, you can recover from anything that life throws at you, regardless of how bad it is. Here are some tips for becoming more resilient:

Improve Your Problem-Solving Skills

If you want to be more resilient, the first thing you need to do is learn how to solve problems in a more efficient way. Problem-solving might not come naturally to you, especially if you have grown up with the mindset that you’re not good at it. But it really only takes a few strategies to work through your own challenges, which will then make you more confident and resilient moving forward.

Some tips include:

• Be creative when working on a new solution to a difficult problem. Can you take another path? Is there something new you can try?
• Do your research. Make sure you have really looked through all your options before getting stressed out or giving up on something.
• Work with others. Find support from friends and family, ask a colleague, reach out to someone who specializes in this area.
• Use your emotions to your advantage. Look at your feelings and emotions as a superpower. Use them to your benefit, let them guide you to the right solution. Don’t fear them or hide from them. Embrace them. Your emotions come from your own mind, and they often have the answers you’re looking for.

Learn How to Be More Mindful in Any Situation

Being mindful is an amazing skill when it comes to being more resilient and bouncing back from challenges in your life. When you practice mindfulness, you stay in the moment, never judging your thoughts or feelings, but just acknowledging them for what they are.

Now is the perfect time to start practicing being more mindful. If you’re not ready to be mindful during the more difficult challenges in your life, just start small and simple. The next time you eat a meal, sit somewhere quiet, turn off your phone and TV, and just focus on your food. Focus on the colors, the tastes, the textures, the temperature, the flavors. Really get lost in the experience and focus on each detail.

This is all mindfulness really is. It is being present in the moment, paying attention with no judgment, and accepting that this is what the current moment is. That’s it.

Prioritize Yourself with Self-Care

Self-care should always be a priority in your life as it is how you show yourself that you are loved and valued, but it can be especially useful when it comes to being more resilient. It is a way to put yourself first and have more self-love and confidence, which in turn can help you to build up that internal strength for tackling any hardship in your life.

There is no right or wrong way to do self-care. It can be any type of activity that you enjoy doing, that is only for you, and that makes you feel good. It can be pampering yourself, taking a long shower or bath, going for a walk, taking a nap in the middle of the day, cooking yourself a good meal, reading a book, playing with your dogs, really anything that feels special to you. If it feels good and is a way to make yourself a priority, then it’s beneficial to you.

Why does this help you become more resilient? You are teaching yourself that you are important. That you can do anything. The better you treat yourself, the more self- compassion you have, and the more confident you become. This is an amazing cycle that helps you build your emotional strength allowing you to accomplish anything.

Remember How Far You Have Come

When you feel like you aren’t bouncing back fast enough, think for a minute on all you have already accomplished. You have likely gone through many obstacles and challenges in your life. How did you get through them? It takes strength and resilience to get as far as you have, no matter where in your life you are.

Life isn’t always easy, and it loves to throw curveballs at you every time you feel comfortable. But you don’t need superpowers to handle it. All you need is a little confidence, reassurance, and that internal strength you already have to be resilient.

Healthy Ways to Process Your Emotions

Processing your emotions is not about ignoring your emotions or trying to get rid of and change them. It is simply a way to acknowledge how you feel, consider them, and figure out why you feel that way.

Every human being has a wide range of emotions at any given time, but we are often so afraid of them, that we hide them away and distract ourselves with other things. But for better emotional wellness, you really need to learn how to sit with your emotions and process them.

Sit with Your Emotions for a Minute

An easy way to begin processing your emotions is to just sit with them. What does this mean? In the literal sense, just sit for a moment and consider what your emotions are, allowing yourself to feel them fully.

This might seem overly simplified, but it is actually harder for people to grasp than you might think. Your natural reaction as a human being is to react immediately to any extreme emotions. Fear, sadness, anger, even happiness can all create this desire to react to it.

Sometimes you react by lashing out, sometimes you react by immediately hiding from that emotion and eating junk food or drinking alcohol or participating in another bad habit.

But if you can just sit for a few minutes and acknowledge your emotions, you will be able to process them in a much healthier way.

Acknowledge Your Emotions at Any Given Time

This is closely linked to mindfulness, where you try to stay present in the moment and just acknowledge your emotions and feelings, and what might have caused them. You will do this while you are sitting with your emotions, but it’s not always immediately after you experience them.

Sometimes, you find that your emotions are tied to something from the past that keeps coming up. It is just as effective in these circumstances. Think about what you are feeling and what emotions it is bringing up. Consider what you were doing previously or what you were thinking about to bring up these emotions.

Sometimes, coping is just acknowledging and accepting that this is how you feel right now, but you might not feel like this later.

Work Through Them with Journaling

For a more actionable step, you can process your emotions by working through them in your journal. Many people find that writing things down is a much more effective way at acknowledging and processing their emotions. You might not even realize all the feelings you have until you start writing down what is on your mind.

What often happens is one thought leads to the next, and then the feelings start coming up. The more you write down, the more you think about and can actually gain clarity about. It is a really surprising and moving experience when you allow yourself to do this in a safe, open, and honest environment.

Change Your Story

You are the author in your own story, and you are the only person who can really change it. Nobody else is in control of how you think or feel except you, which means your emotional wellbeing is also all up to you. While others might have some impact on how you feel, they can’t change it for you and they can’t validate your emotions.

You can change your story right now by processing your emotions in a healthy way. You can create a happy ending in your life by changing your mindset and having more self-compassion and learning how to accept your own emotions and feelings.

Address Your Other Basic Needs

Lastly, don’t forget about the most basic needs you have each and every day. By making these a priority even in the most stressful of circumstances, you will be able to process any emotions you are dealing with. Even when you’re feeling bad and struggling with processing those feelings, just go for a walk, take a shower, eat a meal, adhere to your basic needs and you will start feeling better.

Affirmations to Help Calm Your Mind

Calming and relaxing your mind really should start in your subconscious. It is what you tell yourself throughout the day through your various thoughts and feelings that will have the largest impact. If you want to tap into your subconscious mind, using affirmations is a great way to start doing that.

Why You Should Use Affirmations

Before getting into some of the affirmations that can be useful for you, let’s talk about the benefits of using affirmations in the first place.

Affirmations work by tapping into your subconscious and reprogramming your thoughts. You are likely aware of most of your thoughts in your conscious mind, but your subconscious mind is trickier to control. This is where a lot of your confidence, self- esteem, and love for yourself comes from, which is why so many people use affirmations to reprogram their subconscious mind to think positive thoughts about
themselves.

For your emotional health and to calm your mind, affirmations work by helping you to get into a relaxed state, and staying calm through any unexpected event that would have otherwise made a very big impact on your mindset.

This is why it is important to choose affirmations based on what you are trying to accomplish. In this case, they should be about your mindset, calming and relaxing you, reducing stress, reducing anxiety, and your emotional wellness in general.

How Affirmations Can Help Your Anxious Mind

If you have an anxiety disorder or simply experience a lot of anxious thoughts, affirmations are going to be an amazing tool for you to use.

With anxiety, a lot of those fearful thoughts are irrational, and come from your subconscious mind. It can be harder to deal with your triggers when you have anxiety, and the more panic attacks you experience, the worse they seem to get over time because the fear of them worsens with each one.

This is a vicious cycle to get caught up in. But if you have anxiety, you can use affirmations to reprogram your subconscious and improve your mindset overall to reduce how anxious thoughts affect you.

Types of Affirmations for Emotional Wellness

There are many affirmations you can use for emotional wellness, and it really comes down to what you are trying to accomplish. Here are some different examples:

I am calm and relaxed.
I am courageous.
I fear nothing.
My mind is at peace.
I am filled with love and light.
I love myself unconditionally.
I choose to be at peace.
I can handle anything.

Ways to Use Your Affirmations

Now that you have a good list of affirmations and understand the benefits of using them, here are some tips for how to actually use your affirmations:

• Write them down in your journal – A great way to use affirmations is by writing them down each day in your journal. Start with the ones you want to use to reprogram your subconscious mind, then write those down each day, as many times as you need to. Over time, you will memorize them and won’t need to write them down anymore.
• Keep them somewhere visible – The more you repeat your affirmations, the more effective they will be. This is why it is a great idea to have them around your house in visible places. Put them on sticky notes and place on your bathroom mirror, your desk, your dresser, your refrigerator, anywhere you know you will see them often.
• Have them in your purse or wallet – You might also need some of your affirmations when you are not at home, so it is a good idea to have a list of them with you. Whenever you are feeling anxious or you just need something to calm down, take out your affirmations and read them out loud to yourself.

Types of Emotional Self-Care

When it comes to self-care, most of the activities you probably have in mind help more with your physical body. These might include taking a bubble bath, getting a massage, doing a face mask, or any other form of pampering for your body. But there are so many ways to practice self-care more for your mind and emotional health.

Protect Your Energy

One of the most important things you can do for yourself when it comes to emotional self-care is protecting your energy. Consider the people who are around you on a regular basis, and how you feel during and after spending time with them.

If you discover friends or colleagues that make you feel exhausted, like your energy has been depleted just from a conversation with them, they are likely energy vampires. These are toxic people who will take all your positive energy and leave you feeling emotionally drained.

Now is a good time to start spending a little less time with these types of people.

Ground Yourself

Grounding is a wonderful practice that not only helps you feel more connected to the Earth, but also more connected to yourself. The simplest and most effective way for grounding is to go outside and put your bare feet in the natural earth’s surface. Standing on dirt or grass outside is really healing and soothing. You will notice the effects almost instantly if you are mindful during this process. It can be done at a park, forest, while hiking or going for a walk.

Another option is to put your bare feet in sand, such as at the beach. You might also want to go into water, like the ocean, lake, or river. Even being in your own shower can be really grounding and soothing for your mind. Some other grounding options include drawing, reading, listening to music, or any mindful activity that helps you feel centered.

Use a Journal for Self-Reflection

A very simple self-care practice for your emotional and mental wellbeing is to write in a journal. There are many ways to journal, and they are all beneficial for you, but for emotional self-care specifically, self-reflection and clarity is really important.

Journaling for self-reflection is when you journal your thoughts, feelings, and emotions. Really dig deep to consider how you feel at any given time, what your primary thoughts are, what challenges you are dealing with, and just how you notice your moods and emotions shifting.

The more honest you are during this process, the more self-reflection and self- awareness you will discover.

Allow Yourself to Rest

Something as simple as taking a little 20-minute nap in the afternoon when you’re tired or going to sleep earlier can be considered self-care. Your body and your mind both need rest. If you get burned out by working too much or simply don’t allow yourself enough time for sleep, both your body and your mental state will react badly. It can make emotional stress much more severe, and make it extremely difficult to improve your emotional wellbeing.

An easy way to start resting more is make a daily goal of allowing yourself just 15-20 minutes in the afternoon to do whatever makes you feel restful. This can be a micro nap, sitting somewhere comfy to read a book, lounging on your patio, or even just sitting down to watch something uninterrupted.

Reduce Social Media Noise

Social media noise is any of the drama, distractions, and even triggers that are caused by what you see on social media. It isn’t bad to want to use social media, but it can be easy to be negatively affected by it on an emotional level, without actually realizing how much of an impact it has on you. A good way to tell is just go 24 hours without using it, and write down how you feel when you’re done.

Are you more relaxed? Did you have more time to focus on other things? Did you notice the lack of being emotionally triggered helped you in some way? If so, you know social media was a big part of your mental stress.

3 – Bad Habits and Toxic Influences

Anything that is done in excess in your life can be detrimental to your wellness and emotional health, and that includes positivity. Toxic positivity is simply forcing yourself to be positive and optimistic about absolutely everything in your life, the good, the bad, the stressful, and the joyous. While it is amazing to practice positive self-talk and look on the bright side of things, it can turn toxic when it results in denial or the inability to really accept your own thoughts and emotions.

You are living a human experience just like everyone else, so you shouldn’t feel shame or guilt for feeling how you feel, even if it isn’t 100% positive all the time.

Here are some things to know about toxic positivity:

What Does Toxic Positivity Look Like?

First of all, what exactly is toxic positivity? Here are some common signs to be aware of.

Invalidating someone else’s emotions by telling them to just get over it. This is probably one of the most common ways people practice toxic positivity. You might mean well when your friend tells you they are feeling bad about something, and you tell them to just not think about it and move past it, but it isn’t helpful at all. You don’t want others to do this to you either.

Shaming someone for the types of emotions they are experiencing. Whether you are shamed or you are shaming someone else, this often comes out in the form of shutting down someone’s feelings, and telling them to look on the bright side. While it is good to always look for gratitude in times of stress, you should also be free to express and feel your emotions. This is necessary before you can process them fully.

Masking your feelings with something positive, no matter how bad you feel. Masking or hiding your emotions is not “just thinking positively”. This is toxic positivity. It is a way to pretend you’re happy and everything is fine, while you are hurting deep inside, even if you don’t acknowledge or accept those feelings. It is okay to feel how you feel.

Examples of Toxic Positivity

If you’re still a little confused about what toxic positivity is compared to just having a positive mindset or attitude, here are some examples of what it might look like in your life.

Just be happy! You can’t force emotions, even if you want to. A classic form of toxic positivity is when you feel sad, angry, or stressed, and someone tells you to just feel happy.

It’s going to work out. Nobody else can predict what will happen, so a better method of supporting someone with a difficult circumstance is to offer your help and listen to them, not tell them it’s going to be fine. This doesn’t seem toxic, but it is more in the delivery of this statement and the true meaning behind it.

Everything happens for a reason. This is a very common form of toxic positivity by someone who means well. They want to help you feel better about a bad situation, but being told it happened for a reason is often very hurtful, and doesn’t help you feel supported at all.

What You Can Do About It

Now that you understand a little more about what toxic positivity is and why it should be avoided, here are some tips to start removing it from your life.

Offer to listen, instead of give advice. When it comes to someone else, you want to be supportive and positive for them. But to avoid toxic positivity, the best thing to do is just to listen to them. If they need and ask for advice, they will let you know. But don’t just assume you know best.

Feel your feelings completely. For your own emotions, just let them come and feel however you feel. You don’t have to hide from these feelings just because they aren’t all sunshine and rainbows.

Allow yourself time. We often rush our emotions, especially after a traumatic or stressful event. It’s not necessarily hiding your emotions, but trying to rush through the healing process. But it can’t be rushed, and can actually turn into toxic positivity when you force yourself to feel better before you’re ready.

Bad Emotional Health Habits to Break

There are many healthy lifestyle habits that can improve your emotional wellbeing and help you to live a happier, healthier life. There are also some bad habits that might not seem terrible from a distance, but when done in excess could be causing you to lose some of that emotional wellness. For improved resilience and emotional strength, it is best to avoid these habits.

Hiding From Your Emotions

Pretending you don’t feel how you feel isn’t going to make your problems go away. If anything, this just prolongs how bad you feel. It can sometimes feel easier to hide from your emotions and pretend they aren’t there. This feels comfortable and like you don’t have to deal with them at all. But what tends to happen is they build up, and come out sooner or later, but much more extreme than if you just dealt with them in the first place.

Not to mention that when you hide from how you feel, you aren’t really hiding. You are just covering them up with other unhealthy coping mechanisms.

Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms

Speaking of unhealthy coping mechanisms, it can also sometimes feel easier to just push those bad feelings aside and instead participate in unhealthy coping activities like drugs and alcohol, but if you aren’t dealing with them, they will keep festering.

Plus, some of these bad habits actually make your emotional and mental health worse. If you have depression or anxiety, alcohol can make it much worse. While you are drinking and having a good time, it seems like everything is great. But once you sober up, that alcohol acts like a depressant, making you feel much worse in the long run.

Reacting Immediately Before Sitting with Your Emotions

While you don’t want to hide from your emotions, you also don’t want to immediately react in a bad way. Give yourself a minute to feel how you feel, figure out why you feel that way, and then react once you have calmed down.

This typically happens in response to something that made you feel angry, sad, or defensive. You don’t want to just jump down the person’s throat who made you feel this way. In these moments, your emotions tend to be so heightened that you act irrationally and say things you don’t really mean. This can be hard to come back from.

Strike a balance by giving yourself a minute to calm down, think about what you are feeling and why, and then work on processing your emotions in a healthy and constructive manner.

Judging or Feeling Shame Over Your Own Emotions

While you are in control of how you feel, outside circumstances can catch you off guard. This is no reason to have shame or judgment over how you feel. You are having a human experience, the same one everyone else on this Earth has gone through. There is nothing to be embarrassed about. There is no reason to ever judge how you feel about something, no matter what other people think about it.

Trying to Constantly Stay Busy

There is a difference between healthy distractions and just trying to stay busy for the sake of avoiding how you feel about something. Distractions like reading, going for a walk, meditating, or watching something funny on TV can be good for you. They allow you to rest a little and think on your emotions when you feel more prepared for them.

But when you try to stay busy with work and productive activities constantly, you might actually be trying to hide from emotions you just don’t want to deal with. This is when it turns into a bad habit for your emotional health.

Are Other People Draining Your Energy?

Your emotional and mental energy is a really important part of what makes up your emotional health, so if you feel like it has been suffering lately, it is essential that you look into what might be causing it. But sometimes, it has nothing to do with what you are doing, and more about what other people are doing. Here are some signs that other people might be draining you of your energy:

They Make You Feel Overwhelmed Every Time You See Them

Toxic people are not always abusive or lash out at you. Sometimes, it is more subtle when they drain your energy and they might not even realize they are doing it. One of the signs to look for is when you feel exhausted or overwhelmed when you talk to a certain person or spend time with them.

You likely have people like this in your life, but you didn’t realize it was a problem. Many times, we blame certain things on outside circumstances, and not the person themselves. It is not a reason to judge your friends, but if they tend to be toxic in nature and drain you of your energy, you might need to spend a little less time with them.

This is really a decision only you can make, but if you are working on your emotional health, it might be necessary for the time being.

There is Always Some Kind of Drama Going On

Some people are just addicted to drama and almost seek it out. But you don’t have to engage if you feel like this kind of drama and gossiping is negatively affecting your own energy. When other people talk about drama or gossip often, you tend to get sucked into it, even if you didn’t want to be. Even when it is about someone you don’t even know, hearing that over and over again can give you a similar negative mindset.

You are Made to Feel Like You Never Do Anything Right

Another thing that toxic people might do is make you feel like nothing you say or do is ever good enough. Like you have to constantly prove yourself to them, and they still have something to criticize. This can come from your friends, your partner, co-workers, even your parents.

The next time someone makes you feel like you did or said the wrong thing, or gets upset by how you reacted to something, take a moment to consider if this has happened before with his person. How often do they react like this? Do you feel their reaction to you is justified? Do you feel like you have to walk on eggshells and be extra careful with what you say?

They Downplay Your Emotions or Feelings

It is normal and healthy to experience a wide range of feelings and emotions, so nobody should ever be making you feel bad about them. No matter what emotions you have, you should feel free to express them in front of your friends. When you have people who don’t let you talk about your feelings, it is a sign of a toxic friend.

You Feel Irritable or Moody Around Them

Lastly, if there is a particular person who makes you feel moodier or more irritable than what is normal for you, it is a big sign that thy are an energy vampire. The people you choose to be around should lift you up and support you. They should make you feel loved and feel happier. While it is not their job to validate your feelings, you shouldn’t constantly feel irritable just being in their presence. This is a sign that they are zapping you of all your positive energy.

4 – Emotional Healing and Dealing With Your Emotions

Emotional exhaustion is a type of mental fatigue that can affect many areas of your life. Not only does exhaustion of this magnitude affect you emotionally and mentally, but physically as well. It makes it hard to focus and concentrate, hard to spend time with others, hard to do just about anything.

Signs You are Suffering from Emotional Exhaustion

1 – You Have Trouble Focusing

Do you find that your ability to focus and concentrate on a task is getting worse? Maybe you can focus for a little bit, but not nearly as long as you used to. This might be a sign of emotional exhaustion. Having trouble focusing can come in many forms, so it’s not always as straightforward as not being able to get anything done.

You might find that you can focus for a few minutes at a time, but then your mind starts wandering. You may be able to get your work done, but when it comes to anything around the house, you aren’t able to get anything done. If you are in school, you might doze off constantly when trying to study or do homework.

Regardless of how it is happening, this could be a sign of emotional exhaustion.

2 – You are in a Constant State of Irritation

Being irritated and annoyed is a normal human emotion, but you can probably tell when it gets worse or when it never seems to go away. When it is from exhaustion or burnout, that irritation tends to be a constant state of moodiness. Every little thing bugs you, whether it is from your spouse, your kids, your pets, co-workers, friends, or neighbors.

You never really feel settled and relaxed, and you can’t let anything go without it bothering you deeply. It is often a more severe form of just being very touchy.

3 – You Have Regular Aches and Pains, Headaches, and Other Pains

Believe it or not, mental and emotional issues can develop into physical aches and pains. This is why when you are experiencing mental stress, you start experiencing physical issues, like not being able to sleep, neck pain from tension, headaches from the neck pain, and just overall body aches and pains.

The same thing can happen when you are struggling with emotional exhaustion. It tends to create a lot of tension and pain in your physical body. If you have aches and pains and no idea what is causing it, consider emotional reasons.

4 – You Can’t Handle Any Amount of Stress

Everyone will go through stress on a regular basis, though the amount of stress you experience varies quite a bit. However, how you are able to handle that stress is what can determine is a healthy emotional wellbeing, or dealing with emotional exhaustion.

You probably know the difference between normal stress that is uncomfortable, but you can deal with, and stress while you have emotional exhaustion. Even if the situation causing your stress is similar, it seems so much worse. It is an instant reaction of your mind and body, where you absolutely cannot handle any of it.

5 – You Have a Lack of Motivation

In addition to not focusing or concentrating very well, you may also notice that you don’t have much motivation either. You might be able to do what is mandatory, like going to work every day, but your efforts are minimal and you typically can only do the bare minimum.

You might suddenly have no motivation to exercise, run errands, or do self-care. You have no desire to do anything that isn’t working or sleeping, and possibly taking care of some of your more essential needs, but nothing else sounds interesting at all to you. Either that, or you feel so physically exhausted, you just can’t manage it at all.

6 – You Cancel Most Plans

Canceling plans very once in a while might not be a big sign of exhaustion or burnout, but canceling every plan or even most of them can definitely be a warning sign. A big sign of this is when you have weekly commitments with friends, such as Sunday brunch or going to the movies every Friday with your significant other, and you suddenly don’t want to go and keep canceling.

Any time something seems unusual for you, it could be a sign of exhaustion, burnout, or another emotional issue you are dealing with.

Tips for Coping with Emotional Stress

There are many forms of stress that can impact your life, but emotional stress is one of the most difficult to handle. Even someone with amazing emotional wellbeing and excellent resilience will struggle a bit with emotional stress. While you can’t avoid stressful situations, you can control how you react to them and what kind of effect they have on your life.

Here are some helpful tips for coping with emotional stress:

Focus on What Makes You Feel Positive

Even if you feel like your current stress is overwhelming and like you can’t possibly focus on anything else, there is something positive in your life that you can think about instead. Even on your worst day when it feels like all hope is lost, there is something to be grateful for. If you just had the worst day of your life, but now you are sitting at home, in the home that keeps you safe and comfortable, that is a blessing that not everyone has.

You can’t think positively all the time, and you shouldn’t. This isn’t about forcing yourself to feel happy or toxic positivity. It is more about looking on the bright side when you can, and not just focusing solely on your stress 100 percent of the time.

Look for Healthy Distractions

Sometimes what you really need to deal with stress is a healthy distraction. If you have some time to yourself to do whatever you want, turn on something that makes you laugh. Listen to your favorite music. Read from a fiction novel. Do something that is just for you and nothing productive.

This is not the time to go down your to-do list and get more work done or work on house projects. It is the time for self-care and self-love. For doing something just for you to take your mind off your stress for a moment.

Express Yourself Honestly in a Journal

Journaling can benefit everyone no matter the circumstance, and dealing with emotional stress is definitely no exception. Journaling comes in many forms, from keeping a gratitude journal to doing daily brain dumps of all your thoughts. For stress, a combination of different journaling strategies works great.

If your stress is from a brand new situation you haven’t really worked through emotionally yet, then you want to do a brain dump, often called stream of consciousness journaling. This is where you just write whatever is on your mind. Be open and honest and brutal with yourself. Allow your thoughts to flow onto paper, no matter how many different streams of thought come out.

Another great method for stress journaling is to write down what you are grateful for. It is another way to look on the bright side even if just for a few minutes. Find 5-10 blessings in your life that you can be grateful for and write them down. It helps even more if you can write down WHY you are grateful for these things.

Meditate for a Few Minutes

Don’t worry about having to master meditation and do it for hours a day just to benefit. For emotional stress, all you really need is a few minutes a day to start calming your mind. For stress, breathing meditation is probably best. This takes all the added pressure over trying to clear your mind.

Just sit quietly, close your eyes, and focus on your breaths. Take deep inhales and exhales, focus on how they feel, and where your mind goes. Focus on the sounds of your breaths. Set an intention to relax more and more with every exhale. You will soon be in a meditative state without even realizing it.

Move Your Body

Release endorphins through your favorite form of exercise to start dealing with your stress in a healthy way. Any type of exercise can release the happy chemicals in your brain, but cardio does tend to work the fastest. Even if you aren’t in good shape, you can just go on a walk around the neighborhood to feel better. Plus, when you exercise outside in nature, the fresh air and scenery can help tremendously with your stress levels.

Why You Shouldn’t Hide Your Emotions

It can often feel overwhelming and even more stressful when you acknowledge your emotions, and even harder when it comes to expressing them in an open and honest way. It is scary to come to a place of acceptance with your own emotions about various things in your life, but hiding from them isn’t going to help anything. In fact, in most cases it makes it a lot worse.

Common Reasons People Hide Their Emotions

There are many reasons why people have a tendency to hide their emotions, not just to other people, but often from themselves. These might include:

• Not wanting to deal with them – Simply put, people don’t want to deal with their emotions. It is scary and uncomfortable.
• Feeling shame or guilt – A very common reason for people hiding their emotions is that they are ashamed of them or feel guilty. Your emotions are just what they are, and it is nothing to be ashamed of. You can’t always control how you feel or react to something, so processing and accepting them is your only option.
• Not wanting to appear weak – This often starts in adolescence by people who were raised to hide their emotions. A parent who tells them not to be “weak” and to stop crying has taught their child that it’s not okay to have feelings. This unfortunately follows them into adulthood, and it’s a hard habit to break.
• The fear of losing control – Some people also feel that once they start expressing their true feelings, they will never stop. That all that control they built up over years of practice will explode and let loose every emotion they have ever tried to hide.

Here are some reasons you should not be hiding your emotions, and instead should be embracing them.

It Puts a Strain on Relationships

The first reason you don’t want to hide your emotions is that it can put a big strain on your relationships. If you have a habit of hiding how you truly feel, then the person you are in a relationship will also not know how you feel. Not just your negative emotions, but your positive ones as well.

They won’t be able to feel these feelings. They won’t know when something is upsetting you. They won’t always feel the love and compassion you have for them if you hide too much.

It Creates a Lack of Clarity and Understanding

In general, not processing and expressing your emotions makes for a lot of misunderstanding. Not just with other people, but also with yourself. To get to know yourself more and work on your emotional health, you need clarity from your own emotions. The way you feel and react to things that happen in your life says so much about who you are as a person. Just by processing and accepting your emotions, you can learn so much and gain clarity. This can be so healing for you as you move forward.

Lowered Self-Confidence

You might think that by hiding your true feelings, you are protecting yourself and your own confidence, but you might actually be making it worse. Just pretending you never feel anything bad isn’t going to magically improve your confidence. You need self- compassion and unconditional self-love for that. And you can only truly love yourself fully when you embrace every thought, every feeling, and every emotion that you have.

You Might Cope with Unhealthy Habits

People who hide from their emotions often do so with unhealthy habits. This ranges from shopping and gambling, to substance abuse. If you find that when you feel anything uncomfortable, you quickly try to find something to cover it up and feel anything else, it is a really bad cycle you have gotten yourself caught up in.

Now is the perfect time to break free of this cycle and accept your feelings for what they are.

How to Handle Burnout and Overwhelm

Burnout and overwhelm are not exactly the same thing, though they are very closely linked. With burnout, you tend to enter a state of exhaustion, both mentally and physically. It is often the result of a lot of stress, being overworked, or just putting too much on your shoulders without taking a break. Overwhelm often follows closely behind or occurs shortly before you experience burnout, where you just feel like you have far too much on your plate, and aren’t sure how to keep up.

Both burnout and overwhelm cause a level of exhaustion, fatigue, and stress that make it hard to cope emotionally. Luckily, there are some solutions that can help you stable your emotions and find more balance in your life.

Look for Signs of Burnout and Overwhelm

Both burnout and overwhelm can sneak up on you, and cause a lot of confusing symptoms. It helps to first know what these signs are so you know where to start on your emotional healing journey.

Some of the more common symptoms of burnout include being exhausted and severely fatigued, having headaches and muscle pain, and lack of focus and concentration. In addition to these signs, you might notice the following:

• Poor quality in your work
• Mood changes like irritability and anger
• Significant change in your appetite
• Significant change in your sleeping habits
• A feeling of failure
• Lack of motivation
• Issues with friends and family
• Increased illnesses and lowered immunity
• Isolation from others
• Procrastination

Let Yourself Feel How You Feel

When it comes to your emotional wellbeing, no matter what you are dealing with, you should always allow yourself to feel how you feel without judgment. This includes when those feelings are related to burnout.

When you try to hide or cover up your real feelings, even if what you are feeling is extremely tired and worn out, it isn’t going to solve anything. Pretending you aren’t dealing with something on an emotional level, doesn’t make it go away. It’s like putting a Band-Aid on a bullet hole. You might not really see it, but it’s still there, and it’s not getting better on its own.

Allow yourself to feel whatever it is you feel when you have burnout, and any other time in your life. The good days, the bad days, the challenging days, the exhausting days. They all deserve for you to validate your own feelings. The more you can do this, the easier it becomes to process your emotions, and actually prevent burnout and overwhelm in the future.

Incorporate Relaxing Activities Into Your Day

You might not be able to stop working or take a vacation when you have burnout, but you can certainly fit in some relaxing activities throughout your day. People with burnout often get that way by overworking themselves and not taking enough time off. Sure, you might not be able to take days or weeks off for vacation, but you can still find way to rest and you should.

Nobody should be doing nothing but working during their waking hours. The body and the mind are not set up for this. You are not a machine and you shouldn’t treat your body like it is one. Instead, find relaxing things to do that don’t take up too much time or mental space.

This might be reading a fun book, watching a movie with your family, going for a hike with friends, or just laying down on the couch in the afternoon to rest your eyes for a few minutes.

Control What You are Able to Control

Instead of stressing about the situations in your life you can’t control, instead try to focus on what you can control. What in your life are you able to handle right now? What is completely in your control?

If you are self-employed and struggling with the stress of a slow business month, that’s not really something you have full control over. You can market your business, but really it is up to the customers or clients. But what you can control is improving your product, taking a break, hiring someone who has a specialty that would improve your business.

No matter what you are dealing with, look at what is within your control, and that can take some of the pressure off your shoulders and help with your overwhelm.

Get Support from Others

Finally, make sure you are getting adequate support from the people around you. When you get to the level of complete burnout or emotional exhaustion, you might need some help from others.

This could be someone to help watch your kids when you have work to do or you just need a break, or asking your boss for some time off. If you are self-employed, you might need to hire someone to help you pick up the slack. Or it might just be as simple as a friend coming over to talk and hang out for a couple hours. Doing this alone is going to make it a lot harder.

Can You Heal Your Emotional Wounds?

If you have emotional trauma, which is often the result of extremely stressful events in your life, it might be time for some emotional healing. This will allow you not to forget what has happened or even forgive anyone who was responsible, but simply to move on emotionally and learn how to cope with these events.

The good news is, it is very possible to heal your own emotional wounds with a series of habits and mindset shifts.

Be Patient with Yourself

Before you begin the process of healing your emotional wounds, remind yourself that it takes time and to be patient with this process. What took potentially years to cause this emotional burden, is not going to be cured in an afternoon. You really need to be kind to yourself during this process and be as patient as you can be.

Give yourself a little more grace and stop judging yourself for not “getting over it” at a more rapid pace. As long as you are working on your emotional healing, then you’re on the right track.

Identify, Acknowledge, and Accept Your Feelings

The first step of healing your wounds is understanding what they are, analyzing them, and then coming to accept them right now. This doesn’t mean they will never go away of course, but acceptance allows you to remove the frustration and resentment you might be experiencing.

When you have an emotional wound or trauma, the first step to healing it is always to identify what your feelings are. Consider what happened, why you felt the way you did, and how it has impacted you on an emotional level.

Next, acknowledge where you are today with this emotional trauma, and how it is affecting you in your life. Be really honest with yourself about this if you want true emotional healing.

Finally, come to a place of acceptance. This doesn’t mean forgiveness or even forgetting it happened. Just accepting that you can’t go back and change it, and all you can do is work on yourself and moving forward.

Connect with Others

Having a positive support system around you is always a good thing when it comes to emotional traumas or wounds, no matter how bad they were. Think of the people in your life who you can turn to and really talk openly with. These are the people who are always there to listen and will only offer guidance if and when you ask for it.

It is also a good idea to seek out counseling or therapy for emotional traumas. You don’t have to do this alone.

Focus on Self-Care

Treat yourself kindly and with compassion! Self-care can seem almost frivolous when you have emotional wounds, but it isn’t about pampering yourself and getting massages and doing things that cost money. Self-care is really about putting yourself first and showing yourself some love and compassion. Nobody can love you as much as you love yourself, so you need to treat yourself with respect during this healing process.

Practice Mindfulness

Try to focus on staying present, even when these intrusive thoughts come up and try to ruin your good day. Mindfulness helps a lot during an emotional healing journey because you stay present and come to a place of acceptance with your thoughts and your emotions. What you feel in any given moment is a temporary feeling, so even in your worst moments, you know it isn’t going to last forever.

You can also combine mindfulness with journaling and meditation for a different healing experience. Remember that this is a journey and no two journeys are identical. Choose your own healing path based on what your individual needs are.

Signs You Need to Work on Your Emotional Healing

Healing emotionally from traumas or any difficult situation you have gone through in your life can feel really overwhelming, but it is also important that you make it a priority in your life. This is where you will find your path to improved emotional wellness, as all that emotional trauma weighs heavily on you no matter what you do.

1 – You are Constantly Anxious or On Edge

One of the biggest signs that you need to work on your emotional healing is if you find yourself with a lot of anxiety, fear, or are generally on edge a lot of the time. Whenever you feel like your emotions are running high or like you can’t quite contain your anxiety, it is a good enough reason to consider what has been causing it.

It might be that emotional healing is what you need, whether from traumas in your life that you never dealt with, or just healing your emotional wellness in general.

2 – Your Negative Emotions Overpower Your Positive Emotions

It is completely normal to have negative emotions, as we are not positive emotion robots. But what you really want is a balance between then. So, if the majority of your emotions or negative or pessimistic and it’s rare you feel good or positive about anything, you definitely want to consider some emotional healing.

You should not be living in a state of constant negativity and bad thoughts about yourself or your life. Whether it is about how you talk to yourself, your thoughts about your life or the future, or how you feel about other people, this is not normal and requires some healing.

3 – You Have a Tendency to Overreact

Again, overreacting is a normal human reaction. But for some people, it is a sign of needing emotional healing, often closely linked to anxiety and stress. Overreacting can be any form of being extreme with how you react to a person or situation. It often goes far beyond just dealing with a stressful event.

For example, if you run late to work and instead of just calling your boss to explain the delay or trying to get there as soon as you can, you get into an immediate and all- consuming panic spiral, that is not a normal reaction. Doing this on a regular basis to just about anything that happens is an even bigger sign of needing emotional healing.

4 – One Bad Thing Can Ruin Your Entire Day

Being able to process your emotions and handle stress is definitely a work in progress. It takes a lot of practice and patience to become this emotionally mature. However, if you are at a place where every small obstacle can completely ruin your entire day or longer, that is something to think about.

This could be something as small as your alarm not going off in the morning, to something more stressful like your car not starting and needing a jump. There are many events big and small that can put a damper on your mood, but when every single tiny bad thing that ever goes wrong causes you to basically just give up and assume your day is ruined, is a big sign of needing to work more on your emotional health.

5 – You Get Poor Quality Sleep Most Nights

Sleep is important for your physical, mental, and emotional wellbeing. If you aren’t getting good sleep, and can’t find any logical reason why, then it’s time to think about your current emotional state. Lack of sleep can be from many different things, not just physical ailments, but emotional needs as well.

It might be from having more stress than usual, your anxiety peaking at night when you’re trying to rest, or not giving yourself enough time to actually get tired before you need to go to sleep. If you go to bed with your phone, you might be getting triggered by what you see on social media, also leading to poor sleeping habits.

Emotional healing should be a priority in your life and taken seriously. Now is the time to start working on your emotional wellbeing.

5 – Lifestyle Changes to Improve Your Emotional Wellness

There is no one way to improve your emotional wellness, but like other types of health and wellness, is a combination of changes you make it your life. There are a variety of simple habits and lifestyle changes that not only help your physical health, but your emotional health as well.

Exercise

This is one of the best and most impactful habits that you can incorporate into your lifestyle for emotional wellness, though you might not have considered it. Exercise is often seen as improving your physical health, which of course it does. But it is also amazing at boosting your emotional wellness.

If you have ever participated in a workout program or challenge, how did you feel? Chances are, even if it was challenging on a physical level, you started building a lot of resilience mentally and physically. You were more energetic and in a much better mood.

When you exercise, you release endorphins, which are the happy chemicals in your brain. You can also boost your serotonin, helping your emotional and mental health even more. With just light exercise a few days a week, you will notice a drastic difference in how you feel.

Dietary Changes

What you consume every day can also determine how healthy your mind is. If you want to change your lifestyle for emotional wellbeing, think about your diet. The foods you choose to consume make a much bigger impact on your emotional wellbeing than you would think.

For example, healthy fats can really help with your brain and your memory function. When you eat more fruits and vegetables, the fiber and vitamin B can help lessen the severity of depression symptoms. There are also some natural herbs, such as Holy Basil and ashwaganda, you can take as well that help with your mental health.

As for nutrients, the ones that help your brain function the most include iron, magnesium, vitamin D, Omega-3s, and zinc.

Think about how much better you feel when you are eating a healthy diet. You get more physical energy, but you also just feel lighter and happier. You feel like you can handle anything. This is what you get when you focus on your nutrition.

Meditation and Mindfulness

To relax your mind and start developing healthier coping skills, consider meditation and mindfulness. You can do them together or just pick the one that best suits your needs.

With mindfulness, you stay present in the moment, and just accept whatever is happening without judgment. You don’t stress about the future or worry about the past. You just live in that moment and really pay attention to the details.

Meditation is similar, but while you are staying present, you are in a calm and serene environment. You focus on your breathing and try to clear your mind the best you can. Guided meditations will guide you through this process if you are a beginner.

Journaling

Writing in a journal every day is a great habit that is easy to do and provides a long list of amazing benefits for your emotional health. Add writing in a journal every day to your lifestyle and routine. Different journaling is better suited to different times of the day.

For your morning routine, consider a brain dump. This is a great way to start your day because you get all of these anxious and intrusive thoughts out of your head. It can really lessen a lot of the stress you are under and anything that is confusing or frustrating to you.

For nighttime journaling, consider writing about your day, starting a gratitude journal, or using journal prompts. This is when you can find more self-awareness and gain clarity into your life.

No matter what form of journaling you choose, it will help tremendously with your emotional wellness.

Self-Care

If you haven’t done so already, you should also be incorporating some self-care activities into your lifestyle. For emotional wellness, consider self-care that not only helps you put yourself first and make your own needs a priority, but also help with your emotional health.

This might include:

• Reading
• Doing something creative
• Getting rest
• Going for a nature walk
• Soaking in a soothing bath

Get Better Sleep

Lastly, don’t forget about sleep! Sleep should always be a priority in your life, so if you have been neglecting, that might be what is wrong with your emotional and mental state. Create a new sleep routine so you go to bed at a decent hour and can have restful sleep.

Natural Remedies for Improved Emotional Health

If you are looking for natural ways to improve your emotional health, you have come to the right place. These are all completely natural and holistic, so you aren’t using anything harsh on your body or your mind. These natural remedies provide so many amazing healing benefits outside of improving your emotional wellness.

Focus on Balanced Nutrition

What you put into your body in the form of food and drinks can make a really big difference on not just your physical health, but your emotional health as well. If you want to improve your mental and emotional wellbeing with your diet, think first of your gut bacteria. Your gut and your brain are very closely connected, so when you eat foods that improve your gut, your brain and your mental health often improve as well.

This can include foods with prebiotics and probiotics, including kefir, yogurt, and kimchi. Another good idea is to reduce foods and drinks that worsen your anxiety, such as caffeine, sugar, and alcohol.

Get Your Omega-3 Fatty Acids

Healthy fats are good for you! Another aspect of nutrition to consider for boosting your emotional and mental health is with healthy fats like omega-3 fatty acids. Not only do omega-3 fatty acids help with your physical health and wellness, but can reduce the symptoms of anxiety and depression, and give you a lot of positive energy.

You can get more omega-3 fatty acids into your diet with foods like salmon, mackerel, tuna, walnuts, and flaxseed.

Meditate on a Daily Basis

Meditation can also be considered a natural and holistic approach to your emotional wellbeing. Meditation provides many benefits for your emotional wellbeing, and can be done in as little as 5-10 minutes a day.

If you have never meditated before, your 2 best options are breathing exercises and guided meditation. With guided meditation, you listen to someone tell you what to focus on, when to breathe, when to be mindful, and even create a visualization for you to think about. Breathing meditation is simply focusing on your breathing, and not on your intrusive thoughts.

Another great option is to combine meditation with mindfulness, where you stay in the present moment and meditate only on how you think and feel in that very moment, without worrying about the past or future.

Take Vitamin D

Lastly, when it comes to specific vitamins and minerals, it doesn’t get much better than vitamin D for your emotional health. While vitamin D can’t cure depression, it has been found that people with depression symptoms are often deficient in vitamin D. It also helps to improve your mood and give you more energy.

Vitamin D deficiency is actually very common among most people. You get natural vitamin D simply through the sun’s UV rays. But if you work at home or in an office, you don’t get outside much. This can lead to a deficiency and emotional and physical effects.

If you can’t get sun exposure every day, taking a vitamin D supplement is the next best thing.

Why Journaling is Your Best Tool for Improved Emotional Wellbeing

When it comes to improving your emotional wellbeing and making your emotional health a priority, there are many tools at your disposal. But among them, using a journal is one of the very best. It is easy to use, inexpensive, and extremely versatile.

Here are some different ways to use a journal on your own emotional wellness journey:

You Can Acknowledge and Process Your Emotions

One of the biggest emotional wellbeing benefits you get from using a journal is not only being able to become more aware of your emotions, but actually learn how to start processing them. Before you can process your emotions, you do need to acknowledge them. If you have a tendency to hide away from your emotions out of fear, then the journal can feel much safer and more private for you.

You Work Through Traumas and Other Challenges

Any time you have an emotional trauma in your life, no matter how mild or severe it may seem, your emotions will be put through the ringer. It can often feel like you aren’t able to process it and deal with it on your own, but with a journal, you have a little extra help.

You have a safe space where you can write down how you feel or think about that traumatic event, what challenges you faced, and how you are feeling about it now. Nobody ever has to read what you write in your journal, so it is easier to be honest with yourself and use it as a tool for your road to emotional healing.

It Provides You With Self-Reflection and Clarity

Journaling is a wonderful tool when it comes to self-reflection and gaining more clarity into your life, your thoughts and feelings, and your emotions. Not just for your emotional wellbeing, but improving your life and mindset as a whole.

Even when you don’t intend to, you find a lot of clarity from writing in a journal. This is especially true when you choose a stream of consciousness style of journaling, where you write down anything that is on your mind, with no rules or prompts to use.

Journaling is a Safe and Healthy Distraction Activity

Sometimes what you really need is simply something to distract your mind and not focus so much on one thing that is weighing heavily on you. This doesn’t mean you try to hide away your emotions and never deal with them, but just to give yourself some time to relax until you’re ready to deal with them.

It is a healthy way to distract your mind as you work through how you are feeling, until you can come back to those emotions and get to the root of what is actually going on inside your head.

You Can Sit With Your Emotions Instead of Reacting

With a journal, you can also start learning how to sit with your emotions, instead of immediately reacting. By writing down how you feel and getting to the bottom of WHY you feel that way, this exercise alone helps you to take a pause before immediately reacting and going down a negative thoughts spiral.

When you immediately react to how you feel, it is often based on your fears or limiting beliefs, and not realistically what is happening. This can lead to a lot of regret, guilt, and shame. It is much healthier for your emotional wellbeing to sit with your emotions by just writing them down and considering where they are coming from.

Journaling Helps to Reduce Stress and Anxiety

Stress and anxiety are both very common and it doesn’t mean anything is wrong with you. But there is no denying that it can make having a healthy emotional wellbeing a little more difficult. Using a journal every day to process those emotions helps tremendously when you struggle with stress, anxiety, or other mental health disorders.

Many people find that just writing about their day or what is going through their mind at the time can help with their anxiety. You can use the journal to figure out your own anxiety triggers, and discover what in your life might be making your stress worse. Even if it doesn’t resolve these issues, having an outlet to express what you are going through is never a bad thing.

Spiritual Practices that Nurture Your Emotional State

Many people think of spiritual and divination practices as helping with specific things like reducing anxiety, manifesting something into your life, and heling you to choose a path moving forward. But they can also help with your emotional state overall, allowing you to focus more on your thoughts and feelings, and improving your emotional wellbeing in time.

Practice Visualization

If you have ever looked into spiritual practices, particularly when it comes to manifestation or the law of attraction, you have heard of visualization. But even if you don’t believe in that type of manifesting, you can absolutely benefit emotionally by using visualization.

Visualization helps your emotional state by allowing you to visualize yourself being calm and relaxed. Any time you feel stressed or you simply want to improve your emotional wellbeing, sit quietly in a meditative state, close your eyes, and imagine how you would feel if you were more relaxed.

Use Healing Crystals

There are quite a few healing crystals that can be used for your emotional and mental health. Crystals can help ground you, make you feel calmer and more relaxed, improve your quality of sleep, protect you from other people’s toxic energy, and even help with your stress and anxiety.

Here are some of our personal favorites for your emotional wellbeing:

• Amethyst – If you have any type of stress or anxiety in your life, amethyst is the crystal for you. Keep it with you, wear amethyst jewelry, have amethyst crystals on your desk or in your car, you can even put it under your pillow to improve your sleep.
• Rose Quartz – Rose quartz is often used by people for self-care and to manifest love into their life. But this positive energy stone can also be wonderful for your emotional wellbeing, as it helps to activate and soothe your heart chakra, and can help ground you and make you feel more relaxed.
• Selenite – You might also want to get a selenite crystal. Among its many wonderful benefits for your spiritual practices, selenite can cleanse you of negative energy that might be keeping you from proper emotional wellness.

Meditate

Meditation is one of the most popular and widely used spiritual practices for emotional wellbeing, but you will also notice many other benefits as well when you begin this simple practice. While meditation can often be seen as a way to clear the mind, it doesn’t have to be complicated or overwhelming. All you are doing when you are meditating is relaxing the body and the mind, and momentarily not worrying about what is causing you stress or anxiety.

It can be as simple as just sitting for 5 minutes every day and focusing on your breathing. Thoughts may come in and out, and that’s okay. Just come back to center and ground yourself while thinking about your breaths. A good way to focus away from your thoughts is to notice how it feels when you inhale and exhale, how your body moves, and allowing it to relax you a little more every time you breathe in and out.

Practice Gratitude

Lastly, don’t forget to practice gratitude! It is a highly underrated practice that can improve your life and your mindset exponentially. Gratitude is also super easy to do, and only requires a notebook or journal and a pen. You can also just write down your gratitude on any piece of paper.

Every day, make a habit of writing down what you are grateful for. You can write down as many things as you want, but aiming for 5-10 a day is a good number.

This can be absolutely anything in your life you consider a blessing or are appreciative of. This might be something small like your morning cup of tea or something nice that a neighbor did for you. Many days, you will have the same things on your list, such as home comforts, your pets, your job, or your family. Other days, something new might happen that you are really grateful for.

The point is that you really think about what you are grateful for in your life, why you are grateful for it, and you write it down.