Many of us live a jam-packed existence. We feel compelled to be as efficient as possible at work, home, and in your social life. Yet, these habits and behaviors can also wreak havoc on our emotions.
How can you take care of your mental state as you strive to live your best life?
Use these strategies to ensure your emotional self is well-cared-for:
Acknowledge your feelings each day. Something as simple as asking yourself, “How do I feel today” can go a long way toward emotional self-care.
• Doing this daily reflection shows you’re aware of your feelings and see them as important. Performing a feelings-check ensures you remain in effective control of your emotions.
Speak up for yourself. When you feel you’ve been wronged or misunderstood, simply state your feelings and what you’d like to see happen.
• For example, “I think what I said yesterday about not wanting to drive the four of us on the trip wasn’t clear. What I meant to say was my car will only hold one other person, so I’m unable to accommodate 3 riders. Can you drive instead?”
• When you speak up for yourself, you show yourself that what you think and feel is important enough to be noticed and discussed with those around you.
Prioritize and work on your relationships. No one wants relationships filled with angst, disappointment, and anger. No one wants to feel neglected, unimportant and unheard.
• Are you emotionally present, kind and loving to those closest to you?
• Are you speaking up if you feel your needs are being disregarded or overlooked?
Have some fun each day. When you prioritize fun, the benefits to your emotional life are great. Happiness is good for the soul. Have fun each day.
• What makes you laugh? That special friend, TV show, or playing with your dog? Make time for that.
Express what’s upsetting you. Whenever you have negative, nagging feelings, they can weigh you down emotionally. Especially something like shattered trust and betrayal. Struggling and suffering in silence prevents healing while creating physical, mental and emotional symptoms, conditions and more.
• Speak to somebody about those challenging feelings. It can be a close friend, or someone who understands what you’re going through and can help.
Reduce work stress. You have a responsibility to yourself to take whatever steps necessary to adjust your work load, due dates, or other challenges to reduce job stress.
• Can you delegate more, take on less, or say no to extra responsibilities that seem to fall on you regularly?
• Can you give yourself more time to prepare for a presentation, can you take regular breaks, or organize your day more effectively so you’re more productive in less time?
Trim negative relationships from your life. Energy vampires drain you of your vital energy. Are you the go to person because you’re a great listener? While that’s a wonderful quality, are these people coming to you with their problems available to you if you need a helping hand?
• One sided relationships where you’re doing all the giving and the other person is doing all the taking can be so draining-physically, mentally and emotionally.
Taking care of your emotional health is as important as taking care of your physical health. Just as the right foods, exercise, sleep and supplementation can boost your physical health, we need to make changes so that we can boost our emotional health too.
Dr. Debi
Founder and CEO, The PBT (Post Betrayal Transformation) Institute