In my more than 30 years of work as a Mental Health professional I have noticed many of us have trouble dealing with emotions. We tend to deny or undervalue our feelings as if they are not important. Us men are even worse at this in general than are women.
Here are a number of questions that you the reader might find helpful about your emotional health:
· Do you feel numb even when there is loss or other powerful emotional events in your life?
· Do you sometimes feel like nothing has much affect on you?
· Do you every feel upset with yourself for feeling the way you do?
· Do you feel embarrassed for feeling what your feel?
· Do you get angry with yourself for having your emotions?
· Do you avoid crying because you think it isn’t ok?
· Do you ever feel out of touch with your heart?
· Do you tend to bottle up your emotions?
· Do you ever feel so angry that you feel out of control?
· Do you ever feel taken over by emotions?
· Do you ever feel like the negative emotions are running you even when you are trying to be positive?
· Do you feel it is realistic to feel good all the time?
· Do you every try to force yourself to feel some other way than you do?
If you answered yes to some of these questions then you may be struggling with your emotional health. Let’s review some ideas to help your feel better emotionally.
1. Most important to realize is that there are no good or bad emotions. All feelings are ok even if they don’t feel ok.
2. It is best to not judge your feelings and instead practice unconditional acceptance of them.
3. Feelings workout best if you simply feel them and acknowledge them.
4. Feelings validating internally tend to quickly transform into other feelings.
5. Developing your ability to simply watch what you are feeling will help you be much less reactive.
6. Next time you feel emotionally overwhelmed take a few minutes to feel what you are feeling, breath deeply, and soon you will be feeling better.
7. If you practice accepting all your feelings, soon you will feel more accepting of yourself.
8. Feelings happen where your thoughts meets your body so pay attention to what is going on inside.
9. Feeling your feelings will make you feel more alive and energized.
10. Feelings are feedback about if you are on track with your life or not. If you don’t feel ok, you are off track.
11. Most feelings are caused by your thoughts, if you don’t like how you feel, than change your thoughts.
12. If you suppress negative emotions you also suppress your ability to experience positive emotions.
13. Learn to listen for your feelings and the feelings of others. You will feel closer to yourself and those who matter.
14. No one makes you feel anything; it is your thought about what happened that causes your emotions.
15. The difficult emotions come from not being in touch with your higher nature.
16. Joy, love, peace and freedom come naturally if you are fully present to the now of life.
I hope you find these ideas thought provoking, emotionally enlivening and helpful. Have a meaningful day feeling all of who you are.