Emotional Health
Most of us are at our best when we are feeling calm, clear-headed, optimistic, and grateful. We work more effectively, interact more positively, and experience life more richly when we are experiencing these states. However, most people do not spend every waking moment filled with these emotions, and it is unrealistic to expect that we can do so. Negative emotions are an inevitable part of life. Negative emotions can help to organize our behaviors appropriately, as when anxiety helps to focus our attention and give us increased energy when there is danger. However, many people unnecessarily experience more negative emotions and fewer positive emotions than they would like. For example, continually worrying about unlikely future dangers can sap energy, disturb sleep, distract attention away from more relevant topics, and create an exaggerated sense of dread and apprehension. Emotional health is reduced when our thoughts are unrealistically negative, when we haven’t developed good strategies for managing emotions, and when we overlook positive aspects of our lives.
Emotional Health Brain
The information provided below is intended as a helpful resource for enhancing emotional health. However, it is not intended to provide psychotherapy or serve as a substitute for assessment, diagnosis, or treatment from a qualified mental health provider. If you believe that you are having emotional difficulties that are interfering with your relationships, work functioning, or daily activities, or are feeling significantly distressed for several days, it is recommended that you schedule an appointment with a qualified mental health provider or with your primary care physician. If you are wondering whether making an appointment with a provider would be right for you, an online screening instrument can help to inform your decision.
Feeling Clear-Headed, Confident, and Focused
Our ability to feel clear-headed, confident, and focused is affected in part by how well we manage thoughts of how things may go wrong. Worrying, like anxiety, can be helpful to the extent that it brings to our attention possible problems that could occur, mistakes we could have made, or dangers to be anticipated. However, once we have noticed what could go wrong and planned accordingly, any additional worrying is unhelpful, and can interfere with one’s ability to concentrate, interrupt sleep, and make us irritable and fatigued. It also tends to get in the way of enjoying life, as our appreciation of simple pleasures is obscured by thoughts of what might go wrong. For those whose worrying mechanism tends to keep spinning needlessly, helpful strategies include relaxation training, problem-solving, and making changes in your thinking.
Feeling Calm
It is appropriate and helpful to feel anxiety in some situations, such as when we have a high-stakes project nearing a deadline, or when driving in heavy traffic in a rainstorm. Moderate anxiety in these situations can increase our available energy, focus our attention, and enhance our motivation to perform successfully. While most people have some anxiety before giving a public presentation, for some the anxiety is intense and uncomfortable, and may even trigger a panic attack, which involves racing heart, shortness of breath, intense fear, and often an intense urge to avoid or leave the situation. Many people report feeling elevated levels of anxiety, and fortunately there are numerous effective techniques for enhancing our ability to be calm, by reducing and managing excess anxiety. These techniques may involve modifying thoughts (cognitive strategies), actions (behavioral strategies), or physiological state (relaxation strategies).
Breathing exercises
When you are not feeling as calm as you would like, a brief and simple technique is to pause for a few minutes of deliberate, focused breathing exercises. Get in a comfortable position, place one hand over the belly button, take a deep breath in, observing how the belly expands with inhalation. Pause, and then release the breath slowly, noticing the relaxation of the upper body as you exhale. Complete several slow, calming cycles of this breathing exercise. Notice a quiet awareness of deeper, slower breathing, and a softening, warming, and relaxing of the shoulders, arms, and torso, as the rhythm of the breath eases and slows.
Relaxation practice
One of the easiest ways to counter worry and anxiety is by practicing relaxation exercises. These techniques are effective because they produce a relaxed state that is physiologically incompatible with anxiety. Anxiety involves shallow, quicker breathing, increased heart rate, elevated blood pressure, and elevated circulating stress hormones. Relaxation training counters this physiological state. One of the most effective techniques is to listen to a recorded Progressive Muscle Relaxation audio script. By systematically tensing and then relaxing all of the major muscle groups of the body, a state of deep physiological relaxation is induced. Breathing becomes deeper and slower, heart rate slows, blood pressure reduces, and stress hormone production returns to normal. Because of the close connections among our physiological, mental, and emotional processes, this leads to calm, clear-headed thoughts, and to a positive, peaceful emotional state. Another method for relaxation training is Directed Relaxation, in which relaxation is induced by focusing attention on areas of the body and intentionally reducing tension in the areas. Body Scan is a similar technique. All of these methods are highly effective for inducing a state of relaxation. With regular practice, you will develop the ability to induce a state of relaxation in situations where you would typically feel apprehensive or worried. For people who frequently experience worry, or whose anxiety in different situations causes them to feel more distressed or less effective than they would like to be, scheduling relaxation training regularly (once a day or so) for several weeks could be very helpful.
Meditation
There are different forms of meditation. Some are based on religious or spiritual practices, but others are based on the practical recognition of the emotional and physical benefits of regular meditation practice, including anxiety reduction. There is no solid scientific evidence that one form of meditation is superior to others, and so trying different types of meditation scripts, many of which are freely available online, allows you to select the one that would work best for you.
Cognitive Interventions
Many times we feel more anxious than warranted because of the thoughts going through our minds. Someone may feel tense and apprehensive while working on a report because of a half-formed thought that she is going to be fired, or that her supervisor is going to be angry or criticize her for the quality of her work on a project. When these thoughts are inaccurate they produce excess anxiety that produces unnecessary distress and can hamper effective work. A useful strategy is to try to identify the actual thoughts going through your mind when you notice feeling tense or anxious, instead of calm and clear-headed. As soon as you can do so, write down this thought, and then examine the accuracy of the thought. Is there evidence that supports it? Is there evidence that contradicts the thought? After weighing the evidence, ask yourself, “What’s the best way of looking at this situation?” For example, you might note that in 5 years in your job you have rarely been criticized for your work, and have received positive evaluations. The evidence would be strongly against the risk that you will be fired for poor performance. After writing down and explicitly examining the accuracy (or inaccuracy) of your thoughts, you will likely find yourself calmer and more effective.
Enhancing Optimism
Although there can be benefits to anticipating negative outcomes, having an optimistic outlook rather than a pessimistic outlook is associated with better emotional status, including greater satisfaction with life. While many people are not naturally optimistic, in recent years there have been exciting developments in developing a lasting optimistic attitude. Martin Seligman, a prominent psychology researcher, has shown that when people are asked to record their thoughts in different situations, they can train themselves through repeated practice to identify and strengthen more positive, optimistic ways of viewing situations. Further, these exercises can generalize across different situations, so that if someone develops greater optimism in their work life, for example, they are also more likely to become optimistic in their social life or in pursuing fitness goals.
One reason that developing an optimistic perspective is worth the effort is that those who are especially optimistic tend to persist at goals that they set for themselves, and are significantly more likely to see their goals through to completion. The result across time is a significantly higher record of success and accomplishment.
Another reason for working at increasing your optimism is that optimists are both healthier and happier. Even those who tend to see the downside of every situation, and to anticipate the worse, can make persistent changes in the ways that they think about situations that can shift them from being pessimists to optimists, with the positive benefits associated with optimism.
The thought-changing techniques described earlier are relevant here as well. Generally, the first step involves noticing when you feel pessimistic, discouraged, or sad, and then trying to notice what thought was going through your mind. After writing this thought down, notice what effect this kind of thought may have been having on you. For example, if you have been trying to learn a new software program, and find that you are feeling discouraged, you may notice that you were thinking, “I’ll never learn this; I’m just not smart enough.” Notice also what effect this thought might have on your behavior; are you more likely, or less likely, to persist at learning the program? Most people are more prone to giving up when they have such thoughts. Next, consider how you might dispute this negative thought. Is there reasonable evidence against this belief (e.g., you may have completed difficult courses in college, or learned another difficult program in the past)? If the belief is partially true, what would be the implications (e.g., you may be able to learn the program with help from an expert; would that be an effective solution?). If you are unable to decide on whether the evidence does or doesn’t support a negative belief, you can consider the advantages and disadvantages of holding the negative belief versus taking a different, more positive belief. Finally, as before, you can ask yourself the two questions: 1) What is the best way of thinking about this situation? And 2) What is the best thing to do next?
Increasing Frustration Tolerance
The same interventions that are useful for enhancing positive emotions can be useful in maintaining one’s cool when frustration starts to build. When things go wrong it can be easy to become frustrated or even angry, especially after several problem events have occurred in the same day. For example, you wake tired after a poor night of sleep, and get off to a late start. A family member accidentally causes you to spill coffee on your shirt as you are heading out, so now you have to change and are even later. Traffic is backed up because of an accident caused by heavy rains, and you arrive at work late enough that you can’t find parking. On arriving at work, many people would be highly frustrated and may have difficulty returning to a level of calm that allows them to work effectively and interact positively with their colleagues. So how do people recover from these events? People with a lower frustration tolerance tend to have thoughts go through their minds that involve unfairness or injustice—“Why did this accident have to slow me down today of all days?”; “Of course it had to rain on the day I couldn’t find parking!”. These thoughts are so automatic we typically don’t evaluate them for accuracy or helpfulness, but they can cause us to feel as though we are being treated unfairly, and this can make us very frustrated and irritated.
There are several techniques that can improve frustration tolerance and enhance emotional well-being. The first two are forms of mindfulness practice.
While in the difficult situation, mindfully take in the sensory experience—What does the rain sound like? What is the visual pattern of rain on the windshield? How does the air from the vent feel on the skin? In deploying your attention to these sensations, the mental chatter about how unfair the situation is, tends to fade into the background, replaced by a sense of quiet observation and appreciation.
Notice what thoughts or images are going through your mind. If you discover the thought, “Now I’ll never get my work done on time,” take a few moments to evaluate the thought objectively. Is it accurate? Will it be possible to get 90% as much work done as if you have been on time? If objectively you arrive to work 15 minutes later than normal, would you still be able to work productively and complete some goals?
As a way of summing the evaluation of your thoughts, consider posing to yourself the same two questions discussed previously: 1) “What’s the most helpful way of thinking about this situation?” and 2) “What’s the best thing to do next?” Practicing these techniques can enhance your ability to manage your emotions effectively, allow you to stay calm and clear-headed rather than being distracted and distressed.
Increasing Gratitude
Researchers have found that people who feel and express more gratitude tend to be healthier and happier. However, even those who are not naturally prone to gratitude can benefit from the simple practice of keeping a gratitude journal. Researcher Robert Emmons has published several studies involving people he has randomly assigned to either complete a gratitude journal or simply keep a record of daily events. This line of research has found that keeping a gratitude journal resulted in greater happiness, greater optimism, being more enthusiastic, and making more progress on their goals. In short, simply by taking a few minutes a day to list that for which you are grateful, many different areas of your life can be significantly enhanced. Find or buy a low-cost writing pad or notebook, write “Gratitude Journal” on it, and on the first page write: “List three good things that happened today,” and “What were the reasons each thing happened?” Keep the Gratitude Journal by your bedside, and spend just a few minutes completing this before bed. Most people begin to experience notable and persisting benefits within days to weeks, and once the habit is established, it is very easy to maintain, allowing you to experiencing long-lasting enhancement of your emotional health.
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