What is Emotional Well-being?

Emotions are tricky. Expressing them can get complicated at times, either because we’re unable to find the right words or because the listener is unable to relate to our emotional state. Either way, the fluency with which we express our emotions determines how emotionally healthy we are. We often get irritated over small things and shove people away for no apparent reason. As a result of this neglect, we resort to isolation. But does this help us understand what we’re feeling? Or is this just an escape mechanism for us?

Emotional wellness or Emotional well-being is defined by the awareness, understanding, and acceptance of our emotions. Being aware that we can have feelings, simple or complex, helps us understand that any reaction that we have isn’t standalone. It is important to know if a physical sensation that you have or any response that we give is in some way linked to a certain emotion we feel.

The Ability to be Aware of Your Emotional State

Let’s say someone asked you how you’re feeling and a prompt reply you give is ‘fine.’ What is ‘fine’? Is it the presence of happy feelings? Or the absence of negative feelings? Do you even feel ‘fine,’ or do you just want the conversation to end? Awareness about our emotions is the first criterion of being emotionally healthy. Our emotions make us react differently. If it was a regular day, you might be okay with someone asking you how your day was. However, if it’s an already tiring day, you might feel the same question to be nagging and irritating.

Being aware of our emotions helps us reflect on not just our reactions but the cause of it. If a simple question at the end of your day irritates you, look back at the rest of the day and figure out the reason behind your response. The analyzing part can get tough at times. But that’s okay.

Analyzing emotions becomes more complex as their numbers increase. For a single emotion, you might be able to understand the cause and the reaction. But when there’s a bunch of them, you might get confused. There might also be many different shades of a single emotion that we have no idea of. Being open and compassionate, knowing that there can be tons of emotions reeling inside you, paves the way for understanding them.

The Ability to Understand Your Emotions

Sameer is an IT professional. He reaches home to his wife after a long day. His wife asks him if something’s wrong. “I’m just stressed,” Sameer says with a forced smile and drags himself to the bedroom.

Human emotions are a reflection of the combined experiences of a lifetime. The short-tempered Uncle Scrooge in your neighborhood might not have always been short-tempered, for instance. His anger might be the culmination of the different situations of life he’s been in and their corresponding emotional responses.

For example, while what Sameer is feeling at this point can be called sadness, there can be a wide range of emotions going inside his head from powerlessness to inferiority and disappointment. Similarly, for a single feeling of anger, you can have many different emotions such as resentful, furious, dismissive, hostile, or annoyed.

It gets tough understanding and naming the different emotions we feel. However, understanding that we can have different shades of the same emotion helps us take different approaches for them. So now, if it’s a person in surprise, you would know that both the emotions of awe and shock are different and the reactions to these different emotions would be different.

The Ability to Accept Both the Positive and Negative Emotional State of Your Mind

The Persian Sufi poet Rumi compared emotions to unexpected visitors sent as a guide from beyond. Similarly, any emotion, be it positive or negative, leaves us with a teaching.

Accepting that our mind can have positive as well as negative emotions is a crucial step in loving oneself. In fact, psychological studies have shown that acceptance of negative emotions is essential to regain and maintain our peace of mind. When we accept both negative and positive emotions, we’re NOT trying to change what we feel. Instead, we’re just acknowledging that we can feel those emotions too.

If only it was that easy. Emotions do not have an ‘off’ switch. We can’t expect to stop being angry, depressed, or sad just because we’ve made up our mind. We have to stop trying to suppress our anger and instead accept that we’re human and can be angry too. Only when we’ve considered that will we be able to come to terms with ourselves.

Emotions are never steep. The emotional build-up is a gradual process, and so is being emotionally healthy. The awareness, understanding, and acceptance of emotions takes time and requires practice. It isn’t as if we wake up one day and are suddenly enlightened about the various emotions that we feel. Being emotionally healthy helps us understand the reaction caused by our emotions and also opens us up to the responses that we could’ve given instead. It is only then we can get ready to understand things from different perspectives and can call ourselves emotionally well.