A lot of individuals have one thing in common: they tend to hide their emotions and keep their feelings to themselves for various reasons. Although hiding your emotions can be an advantage sometimes, it can take a toll on your wellbeing if you keep them bottled up.
Your emotional wellbeing is an essential component of well-rounded health. What you’re feeling at the moment can highly impact your emotions, thoughts, and behavior. If you’re not emotionally healthy, you can jeopardize other aspects of your health and affect your productivity in school, work, and other interests, and compromise your social connections with loved ones.
First Things First, Recognize And Accept Your Emotions
Acting on your emotions can be difficult if you don’t know what they are in the first place. Understanding your emotions is an important skill. People who can immediately understand and sort out their feelings are more likely to foster healthier relationships with themselves and other people, as well as other aspects of their life, such as career, physical health, mental strength, and wealth.
Recognizing your feelings allows you to feel more in control in life. This way, you’ll have the upper hand to fight negative thoughts and potentially ask for help from other people. Most importantly, understanding and communicating your own emotions can make you a better friend, as someone else may be having the same experiences as you.
Now, It’s Time To Take Care Of Your Emotional Well-Being
People go through ups and downs, and knowing the right ways to cope is key to well-rounded emotional health. Now that you’ve learned to recognize your feelings and emotions, here are some habits and methods you can try to boost your emotional wellbeing:
1. Seek Professional Counseling
Emotional stress and anxiety are highly prevalent in today’s population. Many people can bounce back from this dilemma easily, while some take more time and assistance to do so. However, if you’re struggling with emotional stress for too long that it has caused negative patterns in your habits and lifestyle, Well Being Counseling says it might be time to seek professional help through therapy.
Signing up for therapy can be challenging for some people, but keep in mind that reaching out to health experts isn’t a sign of weakness. The sooner you receive treatment, the sooner you’ll recover and improve your emotional well-being.
Finding the right therapist is perhaps the most critical aspect of receiving therapy. Your relationship with your therapist will significantly impact your growth and recovery, so hiring the wrong one can do more harm than good to your emotional health.
Since therapists typically have specializations, choose one that addresses your specific needs. Choosing an experienced therapist is always an advantage as they have broadened their view of working with other clients. Of course, don’t forget to check their license and certifications, as well as any client complaints filed against them. Most importantly, trust your gut when it differentiates a good therapist from a bad one.
2. Revamp Your Diet Into A Healthier One
While getting therapy, it’s best to supplement your recovery with more healthy habits to achieve your goals faster and more efficiently. Food is one of ‘humans’ basic needs, but not a lot of people realize that their food choices will reflect their temporary mood and behavior, and beyond all, long-term mental and emotional wellness.
Therefore, you should be more mindful of your diet as it has various effects on your mental and emotional health. In hindsight, a healthy and balanced diet can set you up for improved mood and focus, reduced mood fluctuations, increased self-esteem, and an overall happier outlook in life.
Here are some reminders to eat healthier for your emotional and overall health:
- Eat regularly and avoid skipping meals
- Prioritize fruits, vegetables, and whole grains in your diet
- Stay hydrated by drinking plenty of water, milk, fruit-infused water, coconut water, and more
- Add protein and fat to every meal
- Take probiotic-rich foods for your gut, such as yogurt and kimchi
- Stay away from alcohol consumption, smoking, and drug abuse
- Reward yourself from your food cravings once in a while
3. Have Some Exercise
There are three pillars to excellent health—first is a healthy diet, then the second one is regular physical activity. Exercise isn’t just good for trimming down your waistline or building your muscles, it’s also beneficial for your emotional well-being. Various research studies show that individuals who exercise consistently sleep better at night, feel more relaxed, and are more energized throughout the day, which are three important foundations of having an emotionally happy day.
Even if you’re a busy person, compressing a 15-to-30-minute workout can do wonders for your emotional well-being. You can get up from your seat and do some light stretching, and even go outside, take a walk, and get a breath of fresh air.
To make the most out of your physical activity, you can also try engaging in sports activities. You’re essentially hitting two birds with one stone—get physical and have fun. If you have the same interests as your loved ones, you can even invite them for a game!
4. Get Plenty Of Quality Sleep
Despite having a healthy diet and regular exercise, it’s impossible to stay physically and emotionally healthy without the third pillar of health: quality sleep. Lack of quality sleep can take a huge toll on your mental and emotional health.
During sleep, your body is repairing and restoring itself to prepare for the next day. Without good sleep, you’re risking your cognitive and emotional processes throughout the day, and you’re more likely to experience these negative things:
- Difficulty focusing and concentrating
- Poor cognitive functioning and performance
- Grumpiness and irritability
- Lack of energy
- Increased agitation
- Onset or worsening of mental health problems
Regardless of your commitments and busy schedule, sleep should be a priority. Ideally, you should sleep eight hours every night. If you’re feeling tired at midday, you can also take a 20-minute nap to wake up feeling refreshed and energized.
5. Find Your Support System
Isolation is a major issue in today’s society. It has been scientifically proven that isolation and loneliness are critical factors in developing numerous physical and mental conditions. As most of the population is working remotely, the importance of seeking social connections and strengthening relationships should be emphasized.
A healthy support system is crucial to good emotional well-being. These people should respect, support, and care for you, and not judge or ridicule you, so it’s important to find the right people in your circle.
Finding individuals for your support system can be difficult. You might think it’ll be awkward; you don’t know what to say to them, or you don’t want to intrude into their lives anymore. But, if they’re indeed the right person, they would never think that you’re an inconvenience or a waste of time.
Here are some tips when finding people in your support system:
- Keep the circle as small as possible
- Start the list with people who are already in your system, like family and friends
- Look into communities with the same hobbies and interests as you
- Cut off unhealthy ties and toxic relationships
Once you’ve found individuals in your support system, make sure that you return the respect and love for these people, as they might also consider you as their support system.
6. Write It Down
During moments of chaos and confusion, it’s normal to feel overwhelmed on how to tackle a specific problem. To clear your mind and prepare it for decision-making, one way to figure out your life is through writing your thoughts down with simply a pen and paper, or what other people call journaling. Although not everyone is using this method, it doesn’t hurt to give writing a try.
Journaling can help manage your anxiety and cope with symptoms of depression if you’re experiencing them. To keep your thoughts organized and intact, it’s best to invest in a notebook. The best thing about journaling is you can use your journal as you see fit—for writing down quick thoughts, tracking small habits, expressing yourself through art, narrowing down your goals, attaching photographs, and more!
7. Develop A Consistent Self-Care Routine
Throughout this comprehensive discussion, taking care of your physical health has been mentioned a few times, as it’s the main contributor to your emotional health and well-being. To end this article on the best note, maximize your efforts by having a healthy diet, consistent exercise, and good sleep by practicing a self-care routine.
A self-care routine serves as an additional TLC to your daily routine, ensuring that your physical, psychological, and emotional well-being are taken care of. Having this routine can increase your self-awareness and help you get to know yourself better.
If you don’t know where to start, here are some practices to add to your self-care routine:
- Meditate after waking up in the morning
- Follow a skincare regimen for your face and body
- Take a break from electronics
- Spend time with nature
- Take short trips at least once a month, longer trips twice a year
- Learn how to say ‘no’ to things you don’t like
- Adopt a lovable pet
Takeaway
Emotional health and well-being are essential to your growth and success. Without taking care of this aspect of your health, you can miss out on a lot of happiness, opportunities, and memories that can guide your personal, career, academic, and social growth. Therefore, take care of your emotional well-being by starting these habits today, but above everything else, listening to yourself to figure out what you need.