EMOTIONAL WELLBEING

 Emotional wellbeing is something hidden and often never talked about. It is a term closely related to mental health. When we talk about health, we usually focus on the physical aspects of it and consider diseases affecting our body directly as the more important ones. Our physical health should for sure be one of the most important concern of any individual but at the same time we must also take care of our mental and emotional health and make sure that we are overall healthy. Emotional well-being refers to the emotional quality individual experiences.

Emotional wellbeing can be defined as: “A positive state of mind and body, feeling safe and ability to cope, with a sense of connection with people, communities and the environment.” The emotional wellbeing of an individual is fundamental for their overall health and future life chances.

Emotional well-being can be influenced by a variety of demographic, economic, and situational factors. For eg- in the times of pandemic the emotional wellbeing of people on an average reduced by 74%.

Emotional wellbeing in simple terms is how a person feels and how the emotions and feeling of a person affects them. An increased well-being means being happy, more cheerful, its helps in developing many good changes in us like,- our ability to cope with stress, increasing self-esteem, increasing productivity, building a strong immunity, etc-, it has also been seen that emotional wellbeing also helps to increase longevity. Similarly, a decrease in emotional wellbeing means a high-tension and stressful situation, a low emotional wellbeing can also lead to introduction of unnecessary mental disorders like- anxiety, depression, etc-. In fact a low emotional wellbeing can act as a fuel to mental disturbances of these kind. As the term suggests emotional wellbeing is related to our emotions may it be- happiness, sadness, anger, fear, etc-.

The connection between our mind and body is very strong to such an extent that our mental and physical states feed into each other in both a positive and a negative way. Our feelings depends on our thoughts and both of them together determine our attitudes and actions. Our thoughts determine our feelings, and these thoughts are nothing more than firings of neurons. And these feelings that our thoughts generate make our body release extremely addicting substances like adrenaline and cortisol. Researchers say that these hormones are addictive and like with any other addiction, the need to continually feed off these addicting substances tends to make the body think and feel in a certain way. When we, by not thinking negative- can stop these emotional addictions, and so the key lies in our hand and so we have to learn to think differently.

We can encourage in the development of our own emotional wellbeing by engaging in activities like- exercising, yoga and meditation, practicing mindfulness, trying to keep negative thoughts away, engaging in activities that one likes to do, encouraging one’s own hobbies, simple activities like- decorating ones room to give it a new perspective where one can feel more comfortable, maintaining an emotion journal where one can write down their feelings and emotions, taking a break and giving some time to self-care, reliving good old memories and easing stress by watching a childhood favorite show, etc-

Having a good emotional health is a fundamental aspect of creating and promoting resilience, self-awareness, and hence resulting in overall contentment. We should always keep in mind that having good emotional health doesn’t mean that one is always happy or free from negative emotions. It is about having the skills and resources to manage the ups and downs of day-to-day life.

We should also keep in mind the fact that our emotions and our feelings are very important and are completely valid, and so we should never compromise our own emotions and feelings for others as we should embrace them. We should keep in mind both our emotions and that of the others so that we do not hurt anyone’s feelings may it be of others or our own in order to maintain a balance and live a happy life.

REFERENCES:

www.wikipedia.org

www.healthline.com

www.youtube.com- Psych2Go