What is emotional health anyway?
When we grow up in emotional chaos or neglect or our examples of emotional wellness were not especially healthy, it can be challenging for your body and mind to know what emotional health looks or feels like.
Discerning what is healthy can be tricky when unhealthy patterns feel normal due to familiarity. Sometimes emotional wellbeing might look different for you depending on your values, how you’re wired, and what emotional peace means to you. Consider your experience of the following qualities that tend to be consistent of emotional health and offer curiosity towards how you might explore growth if it’s an area that feels tricky.
Characteristics of emotional health might look like:
❇Being able to self-reflect and consider the impact you have on others.
❇Being able to separate your expression of needs from the reactions and opinions of others.
❇Knowing how to communicate (and enforce) healthy boundaries with those who don’t treat you the way you want to be treated.
❇Understanding you cannot change others, only yourself.
❇Being able to listen without becoming defensive.
❇Having the ability to understand the other rather than demanding to be immediately understood or right.
❇Being able to empathize.
❇Being able to consider a different perspective as valid and having value, even if your perspective is different.
❇Having a willingness to learn how to emotionally regulate and self-soothe.
❇Having a growth mindset.
If you’re struggling in any of these areas, they are skills that can be developed and grown. Reading books about boundaries, emotional intelligence, and becoming curious about your inner world through journaling can be a great start. Sometimes support is needed to untangle from old patterns as you develop an understanding around why emotional wellness is hard to access and build new patterns of emotional grounding that feels authentic to you.
If you need support, I love this area of my work and have had a lot of success helping clients build emotional stability and wellbeing. Reach out via my contact page to schedule a consult for support!
Stay gentle 💛.