Effects of Emotions and Health

Health & Hard Times

Your health is dependent on being emotionally well, feeling balanced in the many aspects of your life, and on your ability to bounce back from adversity.

What is in this article?

• · Emotions, Actions, Behavior
• · Making Your Emotional Health Better
• · The Connection Between Physical Health and Emotional Health
• · Paying Attention to Your Thoughts to Get What You Need
• · Factors that affect our Mental Well Being
• · Using Your 5 Senses
• · Living the Life You Want to Have

So many things to do in a day, so many demands in our lives, multitasking, money issues, never enough time, technology overload from cell phones, emails, and texts, how much can 1 person handle? Dealing with sickness, grief, caretaking, financial issues, pressures that are ordinary and extraordinary make for rough times and take a toll on our health physically and mentally

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Stress is something we all deal with, but people handle stress differently. The adversities, struggles, and challenges make life difficult. With the stress and difficulties that happen, our emotional health is affected. So who is emotionally healthy, and what is emotional well being?

A person who has an awareness of their feelings and controls their actions, handles adversities, creates solid relationships with others, feels satisfied and fulfilled by their activities, and productivity is emotionally healthy. Generally their emotional health is matched with a healthy habits that help them maintain their physical well being. Resilience, the ability to bounce back from adversity has very positive effects on a person’s overall health.

Where does resilience come from?

• · the ability to move forward despite the obstacles that get in their way
• · how you feel about yourself, and your relationships
• · how you deal with your feelings and your difficulties
• · having a positive, self affirming attitude
• · feeling a sense of contentment
• · the ability to laugh and share your emotions
• · living well
• · enjoying life
• · gaining a meaning and purpose from your work
• · seeking and valuing pleasurable activities
• · having family and friends and other healthy relationships
• · the ability to adapt to change
• · being flexible
• · learning new things
• · having a balance of work, pleasure, leisure time, and hobbies
• · creating and having fulfilling relationships
• · having a healthy ego
• · the ability to cope with stress
• · enjoying good times
• · being able to deal with difficult times in a healthy way

We all have stresses and there are ways to make your emotional health better. You can boost yourself up by enhancing your mood, making sure you do pleasurable things. Taking pride in the activities you do and create. Having a positive attitude can help your resilience tremendously. Understanding that the difficulties will not last forever, and something can be gained from these adversities, even if you can’t see what they are right now, will empower you to move forward. Talk to people you trust, or enlist the help of a counselor to assist you in getting through these challenges. It is important to have the support of people you trust and who you can turn to for support when you need to express your feelings during these rough patches. Healthy minded people can help keep you positive and give you the emotional support you need.

Balanced feelings are vital to getting you through difficult times. Recognizing and expressing all your feelings will help you avoid getting stuck in a depression or anxiety cycle or feeling overwhelmed by stress, or other negative mood states.  Let yourself feel!  Take the time to breathe.  Take deep slow breaths. Breathe in slowly from your nose and exhale through your mouth.  Slow deliberate breaths will help you keep your focus and even change your thought processes. Stand straight and tall.  Feel good about who you are.  Tell yourself positive thoughts and keep your self esteem healthy.  Do whatever you can to help yourself function better. Take positive, constructive actions to move forward to get beyond the difficult challenges.  Make sure you rest and relax and reenergize yourself.  Spend time with people you love.  Be sure to take care of yourself, ask for help from others and be self reliant.

There is a strong correlation between mental and physical health. Improve your physical health and you will benefit from greater emotional and psychological health.  Exercise creates endorphins.  Endorphins are chemicals within your body, when released cause  a better internal feeling, even a euphoria, so keep doing your exercises to get to that point.  Make sure to get 7-8 hours of sleep a night. Too much, or too little is not good.  Practice good eating habits and nutrition.  Food and what you eat affects your energy level, emotions, mood, patience and overall well being.  Exercise helps relieve stress, anxiety, and depression.  Get as much activity as you can each day.  Try to use the stairs instead of the elevator or escalator.  Walk where ever you can, and try to stay as active as possible.  Sunlight is a very important ingredient to a healthy lifestyle.  Go outside, meet your neighbors, do some gardening, and when you walk you will be exercising and getting sunlight at the same time.  Take pleasure in your hobbies, read a book, take up a new leisure activity.  Do positive things and positive things will start to happen.  Limit your intake of drugs, alcohol, and avoid cigarette smoking.  Take care of your physical health and your emotional health will improve.

Pay attention to what your daily thoughts are like.  What do you tell yourself? What is your general mood?  What does your emotional state feel like? Find healthy outlets to relieve your stress and a buildup of emotions in constructive ways.  Try to avoid overburdening and overwhelming yourself and have a healthy balance between the challenges and responsibilities you have.  Make sure to take time to take care of yourself, and enjoy activities that give you pleasure. 

Use your 5 senses to heighten your self awareness.  Listen to music.  Smell the flowers. Take in the sights of nature, or the beauty of a picture. Massage your hands and feet, pet a dog or cat, hold someone you love to use your sense of touch.  Savor the food you are eating or try something new to taste.  Stimulating your senses will help renew you.

Seek professional counseling when your emotions interfere with your daily functions.  If you feel “stuck”, have suicidal or other thoughts of harming yourself or others, there is help and hope for you and your situation.  Look for strong relationships, even if you don’t have it now, you can learn to have healthy bonds.  Live a healthy lifestyle, free of dependency on drugs and alcohol.  Learn to use coping skills that help you manage stress and avoid negative emotions. Sometimes, childhood experiences affect the way we view the world and impacts what happens.  Your past does not have to dictate your future.  Inherited traits can also affect how we handle stress and life’s difficult issues.  If hard times are affecting your health, you can learn new and additional coping skills “tools” that will change your thoughts, actions,  and your behavior to gain more positive results.    

So don’t just sit there.  Do anything positive for yourself!  Do something positive for your health.