The key to emotional wellbeing
EMOTIONAL REGULATION
Are you flexible?
Meaning, how's your ability to recover from a triggered moment?
Not saying that you have to be emotionally positive all the time, it's about you being able to sit with and be comfortable with a variety of feelings that make you human, while still moving towards what matters the most to you in life, despite the discomfort.
3 skills to become emotionally flexible
1. Awareness – with curious observation, notice what has been stirred up within you. (Anger, frustration, hurt, feeling like cursing, heat near the ears, churning in the stomach etc.)
2. Acceptance – that it is your reality right now. What you're feeling is real, it's your truth right now, albeit not necessarily accurate! Eg. you're feeling 'disrespected' but it may not be the case that the person has indeed intended to disrespect you! Nonetheless, accept your reality right in this moment.
3. Acknowledge – the emotions you feel by labeling them using the emotions wheel. If you can't find a word for it, nevermind. Ask what is this emotion trying to tell you? When have you felt it before?
Your emotions are trying to help you
Not destroy you!
You can't erase or get rid of your emotions, but you can change your relationship to them.
Going from point A viewing your uncomfortable 'negative' emotions as something to be rid of, to point B being expansive enough to hold space for every and all emotions that arise within you to C using your emotions as messengers of your deeper truths!
This is the same as having someone be there for you through your ups and downs. That person is you.
But you don't have to learn it alone, in fact it's nearly impossible especially if you haven't been immersed in parents who themselves modeled it for you. Just like yoga-flexibility, it takes practice! Engage a therapist/coach aka me to guide and support you until such time you can walk on your own.