One of the hardest and least talked about parts of maintaining a healthy lifestyle can be managing emotion. Though over the years, mental health and emotional wellbeing have become significantly less taboo as topics of conversation, they are still shrouded in an unnecessary amount of shame and stigma. This is unfortunate, as being out of touch with your emotions can negatively impact every facet of your life. If you are struggling with mental health dilemmas, it can be isolating and exhausting to deal with every day.
To make matters worse, the traditional methods of coping with such issues are often inaccessible and costly. For this reason, if you are experiencing difficulty with emotional and mental health, doing some self-led work may be the best first step. From self-reflection to doing peer-driven research, here are some self-help techniques for coping with emotional problems.
Journaling
It is common practice in early childhood to have a diary or journal to keep track of your innermost thoughts or feelings. It turns out, this is an extremely effective way to deal with emotional stress. While it is true that the lines between work and personal life are blurring more than ever before, it is still in your best interest to continue to write outside of the professional voice. Journaling can encourage self-reflection, which may help you figure out where specific emotional issues are originating from. This is especially true if you find you’re often overly pessimistic or too optimistic in your view of situations. Recounting events and thought processes can help you unpack the feelings behind them and understand your behavior a little more.
Reading Other People’s Experiences
One of the best ways to cope with just about anything is devoting time to research and discovery. Often, the most illuminating works can be products of experience. Personal memoirs, blogs, and stories can provide the relatable wisdom and advice that could be the catalyst for change you need. Collections of works based on others’ stories, like those found on popular blog RebelLove, can help explore the self and seek answers for even the most personal questions. Doing your research and applying the best and most functional pieces of information to your situations can help clarify the best course of action or perhaps just make you feel a little more connected and understood.
Practice Mindfulness
When you are in the midst of a life change or emotional upheaval, certain natural defense mechanisms kick in. These defenses in the body can lead to excessive joking or self-deprecation, avoidance of hard topics, or even memory loss in extreme cases. One of the most present indications that you are having difficulty coping with your emotions is where and how you physically carry your emotion. For recognizing and addressing this physical manifestation, practicing mindfulness can be a huge relief to many people. Noticing how your emotional cues manifest themselves physically, you will be able to dive deeper into the self and work on eliminating the physical responses to emotional pain or sorrow. This can alleviate some of the trauma and physical impact of going through a period of poor mental health.
Reaching Out to People Closest to You
The most important thing to remember is that you are not alone if you are experiencing mental health struggles. Even if your emotions are feeling especially uneven, the best thing you can do is speak to someone else about it. No individual is an island, and sometimes merely opening up communication and being vulnerable to someone else can immediately positively impact. Not to mention that physical and emotional support can take some of your burden and stress as an individual. A quick call, text, or email can do wonders in regulating mood and relieving some pressure if you are feeling particularly stressed or uneasy.
Emotions are hard to cope with on the best of days and can be even harder to temper when you are going through a hard time. Luckily, there are coping mechanisms that can and will help you to deal with these uncomfortable feelings. Therapists and medication can be used if things don’t start to improve, but it’s always important to use the resources at your disposal. By using easily accessible tools, both internal and external, to tackle the issues you find yourself dealing with, you increase your chances of remedying them. Not only will things like communication and improving your self-awareness work to combat emotional problems, but they will also enhance the quality of your day-to-day interactions- and your life in general.