How to be emotionally healthy | Haleh Banani
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- čas přidán 9. 02. 2022
- When you are in the midst of chaos and things are falling apart around you, how do you remain emotionally healthy? How do you keep it together? That's what I'm going to share with you today.
What is healthy positivity?
Many people think that being positive means you need to always look on the brighter side and never feel sad or unhappy. That's just not true. Healthy positivity means that you're able to embrace all the emotions that you feel: grief, sadness, anxiety, feeling a little bit down, etc. You don't have to shut these emotions off.
When you experience physical pain, it tells you there's something going on. If you start having pain on your side or in your back or in your neck, you start examining and trying to figure out what’s wrong. Our emotions play the exact same role. They get us to stop and examine. Instead of distracting yourself from these emotions, stop for a second and embrace those emotions.
Let's say you are feeling anxious. If you are going to distract yourself by watching something, you are just temporarily neglecting the emotion for a few moments, but it’s going to come back. It's going to stay in your subconscious mind, only to rise up at the slightest provocation.
Instead, this is what you should be doing.
Label the emotion
I want you to, first of all, start breathing and then label this emotion.
What is emotion?
Is it grief?
Is it sadness?
Is that anxiety?
What is it that you're feeling?
Because once you label the emotion, you can actually have a little bit of a distance from it and not get immersed in it. I want you to look at it and think of this emotion. Think about where you feel it in your body. Is this sadness that you feel in your heart? Is it something you feel in your gut? Where are you feeling it?
And if you could give it a color or a shape or something, imagine it in a physical form. That way, you are able to wrap your head around it and you can control it much better. This is one of the ways of dealing with emotions.
You don't want to just distract yourself. You want to label it. You want to give it a physical form.
Never suppress your emotions
There are times when a good cry will really help. We don't need to suppress our emotions. I know that many people have been taught to suck it up, especially men in our society. They've been told to not cry and suck it up. When you stop feeling those emotions, you just end up suppressing it. I deal with clients all the time who have suppressed years and years of these emotions. And they're not even in touch with their emotions anymore. They don't know what they're feeling because they've been told what they're feeling is wrong and shut it down. When you start acknowledging these negative emotions, embracing them, and recognizing them, you get a better understanding of how to deal with them.
So, for example, if you are feeling anxious, say to yourself that right now, you're feeling really anxious, you are anxious because of these reasons, etc. Acknowledging that you have a problem solves half of the problem.
When you accept your emotions without judging them, you begin to realize that you are not a wimp to be feeling that way, you are not being weak, you are not having weak Imaan, it's just a part and parcel of your life as a human being in this Dunya.
Allah says in the Quran,
“...and that it is He alone who causes [you] to laugh and to cry.” (Quran, 53:43 )
You start embracing these emotions which lead to having emotional acceptance. This will help you in dealing with life's stresses.
Recognize the problem
Those individuals who have a healthy acknowledgment will recognize when they have issues. They will recognize when they have negative emotions, and they will accept it. They are able to have a higher level of life satisfaction. They have a better ability to resolve stresses and challenges that come up.
When you just pretend that a problem doesn't exist, because you don't allow yourself to feel negative emotions, you will either become delusional when you don't accept the realities, negativities, and hardships of life or will suppress the emotions, only for it to come bubbling up at one point or another.
So, make sure that you acknowledge the emotions that you have. Healthy positivity teaches us to accept these emotions. When we do that, we are able to be at peace with ourselves.
Cut out avoidance behaviour
When you can embrace your emotions, you end up successfully resolving issues with your loved ones. We're no longer pretending it's not there because avoidance behavior- to pretend that something is not happening - will not make it disappear. When we can accept that there is a challenge, it makes it easy for us to rectify our affairs. This is a very critical part of being emotionally healthy. We recognize that there are ups and downs. We recognize that there are negative emotions. Ask yourself, if you don’t feel pain or sadness, how are you going to know that you're happy?
I embraced the exam anxiety and realized there's not much I can do about it, because once it is over it will be over too. And it's not going to be the end of the world.
I think that sometimes negative emotions make us feel sad,it is ok to be sad ,but we should pray more 🤲🏼and reflect,🧐after rest a while.We should move on.Keep going and trying to focus on our purpose of life.This life is full of ups and downs.Sometimes we need to find a lesson from it.“convert a lemon into sweet drinks”.Allah always know our struggle and reward us.🌹
JazakAllahi khairan doctora❤️💐
Thanks for your valuable advice
Thank you this helped me 👏
Needed this!!!! Been a hard week and everyone wants to tell me to feel better and all that positive stuff.
I just want to be able to feel sad or angry.
JazakAllahu khair it really helped me
Thank you sister for your all helpful lectures.🌹
I guess we all have our struggles and it’s down to our selfs to make the right changes however, how do you deal with someone who is embedded with negativity/anxiety in especially your spouse?
How to accept everything as it is?
Belief in Qadr and self-accountability (take control of your life with actions/effort) helps :)