It’s crucial to broaden our definition of “self-care” beyond “manicures and massages”. Caring for oneself is not for the affluent and famous. Instead, we can become our most content and stable selves thanks to “self-care”.
People behave without much reflection, but this is often a reflex. Wouldn’t it be better to learn your emotions? How to use them to your advantage? Not understanding your triggers usually leads to an escalation of emotional response. I often see escalated emotional responses to provocative issues on social media. To avoid such responses, there is a checklist for practicing emotional self-help.
Overview
- Embrace your emotions and permit yourself to feel them
- Identify what puts you off – Know Thyself!
- Permit an Emotional Day
- Define and Uphold Your Limits
- Avoid allowing other people drain your vitality
- Practice Meditation
- Journaling again!
- Get the Journal Going
- Be Kind to Yourself
- Plan Your Breaks
- Engage in an Activity You Enjoy
- Praise Yourself and Enjoy Emotional Self-Help
1. Embrace Your Emotions and Permit Yourself To Feel Them
Allow yourself to feel, experience and analyze emotional triggers. So many of life’s challenges stem from our inability to accept and deal with our feelings. Our bodies have a way of letting us know when we truly agree or disagree with an incident or how we’ve been treated. We often bottle it up or brush it off because we do not want to be termed “overly sensitive” or “taking things personal”. This can over many years result in feeling like the world is on our shoulders or feeling burnt out from all the emotional baggage within. How about instead, we acknowledge our feelings because “feeling our feelings” is the first step in healing and letting go. emotional self-help starts here.
2. Identify What Puts You Off- Know Thyself!
Knowing yourself, spending time with yourself and acknowledging your feelings will help you in your journey of a better YOU. This is a big part of emotional self-help. Analyzing your feelings helps you understand them better and recognize patterns and more importantly, triggers so you can better respond to them over time. For example, exactly what is it that makes you feel down? Do you get mad at a certain person always or at certain situations consistently?
You can learn how to control your feelings by examining their origins. Then work to mitigate any bad triggers that do not align with your inner peace and happiness.
3. Permit an Emotional Day!
Putting ourselves first is difficult for a lot of people, including us. We are humans. We all want to be liked and accepted. We all have the innate desire to be part of a “pack”. Yes, yes, we know you are different and you really don’t care but really you do 🙂
Unfortunately, taking care of yourself truly in a way that is authentic and real to you may feel isolated because it involves saying no to people who give us the validation of love and feelings we claim “not to want”. This can often put us in a difficult situation- choose you or them? Why is it always so black or white? How about we try permitting ourselves to have a self care day. In one of my favorite shows “Frankie and Grace”, we love how Brianna has a “cry day”- she is this tough cookie and boss all the time but on certain days she permits herself to watch tear-jerkers and cries herself out. Why not do the same. While this may be difficult for different stages in life, maybe we try to have a self care day or self-care hour or self-care 30 minutes. Any time to pause, acknowledge our feelings and get some release. This is part of emotional self-help.
4. Define And Uphold Your Limits
To take care of yourself, you must set boundaries. The inability to prioritize oneself might lead to a lack of healthy limits. Practicing “no” more could help you avoid unpleasant situations. For example, it is acceptable to decline a party invitation if it causes mental distress. You don’t have to bring that energy into your life, only to spend the next few weeks rethinking about it over and over and over again. Emotional self-help means that it is okay to simply set healthy boundaries, uphold and keep living your life.
5. Avoid Letting Other People Drain Your Vitality
Get in the company of others who fill you up fully. People who will encourage and inspire you and who are all for your Team. Avoid people who strain your vibes. But, remember – you can’t always avoid people or situations. But you can manage these people or situations if you absolutely have to maintain our inner peace. Do you engage with toxic people constantly, learn to provide responses by leveling up your knowledge on how to handle these people.
Managing your emotions is one of the greatest strengths you can have, so work on yourself so that someone can’t have the upper hand on your emotions. Keeping your emotional self-care prioritized is more important than keeping negative people around.
6. Practice Meditation
Regular meditation is an emotional self-help practice that can strengthen your mind in times of adversity. Therapists recommend that you meditate once a day for the greatest effectiveness. Learning to take deep breaths also helps. You don’t have to have a special area in your home, have the candles burning while playing zen music in order to meditate.
A great tip which has helped recently is take deep breaths at traffic lights. Yep, you read that correctly. Whenever the traffic light is red, I choose that time to inhale, hold and exhale. Not only does that help to re-center you against bad drivers (haha!) but it helps you remember you are human, you are alive, you can pause.
7. Journaling again!
We’ve written about the benefits of journaling so many times on our blog. Writing in a journal can help you work through your feelings and gain perspective. So make it a practice to write down your feelings in a journal whenever you feel like you can’t let them go. Writing in a journal can have positive effects on your practice of emotional self-help.
8. Be Kind To Yourself
Remember that you are the most important relationship you will have. If you won’t talk to your favorite besties, your parents in a bad way- why do you do it to yourself? Compassion and kindness is a gift we give to ourselves. It is acknowledging our imperfections and accepting an opportunity to be better, to improve.
We know that we are all different so we have different decrees of self-love too but maybe try by getting one who truly understands you, not one manipulating you or using you. One who truly knows you and is cheering for you to be the constant voice above the negativity within. And yes, that one voice can be your therapist.
A useful emotional self-help tip which I found recently is to – get a picture of you as a child or during a time you were truly at your happiest in life. Print that picture and paste it on your bathroom mirror and every morning, look at that picture to remember who is within you. Say all the things you wish you had said to that version of you. We are not a licensed therapist but the first time we did this, it made us cry because we realized we needed to do so much better for that person in that picture. We all have to be kinder to our “inner being”.
9. Get Help When You Need It
It’s important to recognize when we’re reaching our limits and seek help when necessary. You could be experiencing an emotional overload because you plan to face the world alone. But seeking help when needed is neither a sign of weakness nor shame. Help does not always have to be a paid therapist, it could be a friend, a mentor, a companion, a parent, or even a stranger who simply shows you an act of kindness. Please get help.
10. Plan Your Breaks
Planning regular rest periods in your daily schedule will help you avoid overworking. If we don’t give ourselves time to relax and refuel, we may start to feel overwhelmed. We love to plan our breaks because we can use breaks after work to soak in some pamper time with a long bath. A long bath with the right bath salts can help melt away the troubles of the day. Senteurs d’Orient Amber Seductive Bath Salts is such a release mechanism because it helps you feel fresh for the evening. This can serve as a quiet time away from your devices, distractions and life problems as you focus on your breath, being still, in tune with you and present with you.
11. Engage In An Activity You Enjoy
Every day should consist of rest and doing something that makes you happy. Feeling stuck in a rut and like life is passing you by? Then practice emotional self-help; get up and make some changes! As a child, you may have wanted to try something but maybe your traditional parents did not let you do- this could range from riding a bike, swimming, joining a dance group. Whatever the reason, you can still do it. There is nothing stopping you other than the voice in your head.
Take the bike lessons, join the dance group and shake your behind. It’ll surprise you how doing a little of what you enjoy makes you feel so much more alive, makes you more creative and gives you a new life perspective.
When you sprinkle a little more joy into your daily routine, it’ll surprise you with a change in mood.
12. Praise Yourself and Enjoy Emotional Self-Help
Some people have a hard time remembering their quirks, and what they love about themselves. But it would help if you always were your biggest cheerleader. Tell yourself how great you are when you finish a project, look in the mirror, and grin as if you were talking to a friend. A healthy connection with yourself is the key to staying tough when needed. Though it might seem stupid, practicing positive self-talk will do wonders in boosting your self-confidence.
Let’s say you’ve noticed that you’re down on yourself and putting yourself down. If this is how you feel, you need to start thinking of everything you love about you, loving and respecting yourself the way you want others to. Begin by admiring yourself in the mirror every morning when you get up. Think of all the times when a stranger appreciated you and why they did it. Get your dopamine running.
Final Thoughts
Practicing emotional self-help and emotional self-care strategies does not include presenting a state of bliss. To be healthy, you need to learn to take the good with the bad. Accept your feelings, no matter what they may bring. People who take care of their emotional health adapt to new situations faster.
As a result of feeling more connected to their community, their relationships flourish. Besides, self-care has affected physical health. To improve one’s life, it is important to learn how to develop EQ and make time to pursue emotional self-care. Invest the time required to recognize, understand, and manage your feelings.
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