Modern life is full of economic, societal and familial pressures that didn’t used to exist. It’s easy to be overwhelmed by day to day living, and emotional health can help you keep things on an even keel. Your ability to handle your daily responsibilities and relationships is influenced by your levels of mental stress, and managing them better can support you in staying healthier and happier long-term.
Research shows that emotional health is a skill. There are steps you can take to build emotional wellness, and how you react to feelings or experiences can change over time.
What is Emotional Health?
Emotional health or emotional wellness refers to a person’s ability to manage their thoughts and feelings daily throughout life’s many ups and downs. Having good emotional health doesn’t mean you don’t feel sad or angry, but you can process and respond to those emotions in ways that help rather than harm you.
Good emotional wellness plays an important role in your self-awareness, resiliency and overall sense of well-being, as well as how you respond to and are perceived by others. It can influence your view of people and the world, as well as how you respond to feedback or criticism.
Emotionally healthy individuals have control over their emotions, share feelings appropriately, bounce back from setbacks, and can generally cope with life’s challenges.
Self-Esteem and Emotional Health
Self-esteem is a crucial element of mental and emotional well-being. It refers to one’s confidence in their own worth or abilities, and is based on opinions or beliefs about the self. Low self-esteem is associated with mental illnesses such as depression or anxiety, and symptoms of poor physical health too. Working on building self-esteem can have a positive knock-on effect on emotional wellness, and vice versa.
Signs of Poor Emotional Health
- Ongoing fatigue and low energy
- Sleeping too little or too much
- Overeating or undereating
- Battling to maintain personal hygiene and care
- Feeling anxious or irritated with loved ones
- Letting work performance suffer
- Physical symptoms of mental stress such as heart palpitations or high blood pressure
- Compromised self-esteem or self-confidence
5 Signs of Good Emotional Health
Self-Awareness:
Individuals who are self-aware are able to view their actions from a perspective outside of themselves. They perceive themselves accurately and understand how their behavior comes across to other people.
Emotional Flexibility:
A person’s ability to deal with mental stress or discomfort is known as their emotional agility. Those with less of it may repress emotions, ignore them or be reactive to them. Those who are more flexible are better able to accept their feelings and adapt to challenging circumstances. They are also less likely to resort to unhealthy behaviors and coping mechanisms.
Strong Coping Skills:
When emotional wellness is high in an individual, they tend to have a battery of healthy skills to help them cope better, such as relaxation techniques, getting support from friends, pausing to rest, and finding time for hobbies.
Relationship Boundaries:
Regulating your emotional health requires having boundaries in relationships: personally, professionally and in your community. Being able to say no without being guilty, letting go of relationships that don’t serve you and communicating boundaries to others are all signs of emotional health.
Living with Purpose:
Purpose looks different to different people and refers to an individual’s drive and passion to pursue certain goals. Rather than simply existing and moving through the motions of each day, those who live with purpose have chosen a direction for their life that feels meaningful, and around which they shape many of their choices and decisions.
Having good emotional health doesn’t mean you feel happy all the time. It means you are in control of your feelings and behaviors and can keep problems in perspective. If you are emotionally healthy, you are able to cope well in challenging situations, but also know when to seek help from others. Developing your emotional health can have a reciprocal positive effect on self-esteem and improve the quality of your relationships with others.