Feel and be healthy!

There is an opinion that an emotionally healthy person is a calm person. Someone who knows how to keep their feelings and emotions under control. They also say that such people that they have iron nerves. However, this is the main misconception. An “outwardly calm person” is not the same as an “emotionally healthy person.” And that’s why.

A few “dry” definitions. But important!

The word “emotion” is usually understood as a subjective experience of a person’s attitude to the surrounding reality and himself. It manifests itself in four components: psychological, autonomic, hormonal, and behavioral, which work in the body simultaneously: 

1. The psychological component is a wide range of subjective experiences, depending on the characteristics of the individual. 

2. The autonomic response facilitates behavior by increasing blood flow to muscles and organs and increasing metabolism. 

3. The hormonal reaction ensures the release of biologically active substances, glucose, which increases its consumption by the brain. 

As a result, all this prepares for behavior change. 

Facts about emotions and feelings

Before talking about emotional health, it is important to understand a few key points:

1. Emotions can be taught. Children copy the emotions of adults and learn from adults how to respond to them. They don’t know how to interpret their feelings. For example, if a child falls and hits, in response, he may cry, smile, or get scared. Which of these emotions will be associated with pain depends on other people.

Surrounding is sometimes forced to experience certain feelings. One of the most common situations in which forced emotions to arise is the arrival of a newborn sibling. For an older baby- a competitor with whom you must share parental love. Therefore, older children so often show anger and aggression towards younger ones. But the parents insist: you love him. This is the forced emotion. And as an adult, the elder can say: “I loved my brother so much! I just dropped it often.”

2. Emotions can be masked. It’s no secret that a person can hide true feelings.

3. Emotions can be invented. For example, if the husband is late after work, the wife may imagine that he is having fun somewhere. Therefore, as soon as he crosses the threshold, she can express her anger at the imaginary situation.

4. Emotions must be listened to. Because unreasonably strong and stereotyped emotions can speak of a problem.

If emotions are more spontaneous, superficial, and often not realized, then feelings, on the contrary, are more meaningful and deep. And they are always connected either with the internal state or with external circumstances. 

Internal relates to how the person himself perceives the situation and what he thinks about it. External are connected with the circumstances in which he fell and the outside world. Many problems arise if the relationship between the “I” and the “world” is broken. For example, a person thinks that feelings are connected only to him. And since the feeling is mine, I must do something with it. For example, suppress or express safely. He feels resentment, fear, anger, and irritation. And he tries to “chew and swallow” all this mental pain without considering external circumstances.

As a result, his feelings, as a rule, do not influence actions about the world, but they manifest themselves in relationships with people, often unconsciously.

There is another mistake. When a person believes that his feelings are caused only by external circumstances, he can say that he feels hurt because someone is a scoundrel, for example. Or he feels fear because the darkness frightens him. And he feels joy because someone did a good thing. In this case, the internal state does not seem to affect his feelings. 

In both the first and second cases, it is not necessary to talk about emotional health. Those who delve into themselves risk becoming a machine that endlessly analyzes and tortures itself. It’s just that it’s impossible to live like this all the time, so sometimes feelings will break out, sometimes not in the most environmentally friendly way. And the one who is dependent on external circumstances, as a rule, is completely defenseless before life. Because for him, the actions and behavior of other people are too important, which, of course, will not behave the way he wants.

What to do with feelings to be emotionally healthy?

First, it is worth understanding: that everything we feel is always connected with what is happening inside and around us. It is also important to correctly isolate what is specifically related to external influences and what is related to the internal state. And it is completely wrong to suppress your feelings and emotions to appear as a calm person with ropes instead of nerves. So we risk not recognizing ourselves and the world around us, which can lead to wrong actions. It is important to remember that an emotionally healthy person allows all feelings to be. Only then can you work with them. How? Try:

• Fix feelings and give them the exact name: love, fear, pity, anger;
• Each time honestly answer the question: what caused this feeling?
• Express your feelings. After all, they do not come because we want it. They came to signal what was happening inside or in the outside world. And if you can correctly understand this signal, it will serve as an incentive to make the right decision and act. When a person feels, thinks, and acts the same way, he is adequate, simple, and easy to communicate with.

What to do if you experience strong feelings? Express them physically! You can dig, wash, run, or punch a punching bag. You can express feelings in creativity: draw, dance, sing. You can talk to another person, which, unfortunately, is not very popular in our culture, but in vain. After all, the feeling will become the past if you talk about it.

Do you want to be emotionally healthy? Do not hide your feelings: cry, laugh, shout, kiss, unless, of course, others allow you to. Use your feelings as a stimulus to process maladaptive thoughts and choose the right behavior. And remember: emotions also have a bodily expression, so all this is a concern for mental and physical health.