Achieving Holistic Wellness through Emotion Management (Part 3)

Achieving an ideal state of holistic wellness is a process that includes focusing on physical, mental, and emotional well-being. Our well-being impacts our perception of life and health and the management of our emotions. For adults, a mindful observation of our feelings can also help us recognise the communication we receive from our body as we experience our feelings.

When we do not acknowledge our emotions, we unconsciously refuse to understand the mental and physical reactions accompanying them. By working and managing emotions, we recognise the feelings and learn to express them mindfully and healthily. In the case of children, helping them identify and manage emotions is best implemented in early childhood. As an effective practice, parents can incorporate this understanding as a part of their parenting approach and promote wellness in their children.

A cousin who visited us at home last week remarked on the transparent, mindful parenting approach she follows with her seven-year-old and three-year-old. The choice to show physical affection towards anyone (including parents) depends on her children. By giving the children an option to decide if they wish to show overt affection to another individual, she believes she is teaching them the importance of self-respect, self-love and the liberty to make decisions. She is furthermore teaching them to manage their emotional well-being as much as their physical well-being.

?She is right. Interestingly, parents equip their children with the rudimentary skills of emotion management consciously or unconsciously from the time they are infants. By supporting them in managing their emotions positively, we help them adapt and manage changes in their lives. Yet, insisting on her stance requires tremendous confidence, awareness of the situation, and the ability to handle societal pressures to influence her parenting style. In specific scenarios, emotion management can help manage long periods of life with tenacity and efforts to overcome the undesirable changes that life inflicts.

A friend who had endured a disappointing dysfunctional family environment for years declared that she cultivated her emotion management technique through her self-beliefs, hope, and philosophy of hard work. She consistently worked hard to excel at school and college, and soon after securing a job and gaining financial independence, she eventually stopped the toxic impact of her family environment on her mom, her younger sister and herself. Coping mechanisms in the face of situations and hope are crucial for cultivating emotion management, like in my friend's case.

The difficulties of living in a dysfunctional family only increased with time. Comprehending the steadily deteriorating changes in her family with an attitude of resilience was the first step she took to manage her emotions—after all, emotional awareness and emotion management result from conscious comprehension of changes taking place. We can deal with these changes (like in my friend's case) on our own, but sometimes, with support from external sources such as the immediate environment (family and friends) and social network or through guidance from a mental health professional.

?The first step is to develop the skill to manage emotions by encouraging ourselves or, in the case of a child, to express emotions in mindful and composed responses, such as talking about feelings. The listener is required to be not just someone close and sincere but one who is nonjudgmental in their support. They may be either known to us or a mental health professional. Interpreting positive and negative feelings is critical for the child to accept and take the desirable steps to manage these emotions.

Expressions of emotions can be through tears as well. More often than not, tears are perceived as weakness, leading to the person withholding their pent-up feelings and experiencing stress. In the case of boys and men, the societal criticism is even more profound with comments such as, "Brave boys don't cry". These comments not only inhabit tears but also create the false notion in the growing boy that those who do cry are weak, delicate, not strong, and unable to make decisions. In the case of girls, the silent social acknowledgement that permits them to cry is also challenging for them. Girls and women are still more likely to be perceived as weak or sensitive by society, yet far less critically than in the case of men.

?Mindful expressions during verbal communication can also help us process our emotions more appropriately. In the case of anger, personal attacks during verbal communication are familiar, yet through mindfulness, the words can be more conscientiously reframed. A deliberate effort to infuse diplomacy and clarity regarding the reasons behind the feelings can create a more desirable communication process, leading to clarity of the situation for both the speaker and the listener.

Developing emotion management strategies like smiling, conscious breathing techniques, meditation, working to benefit someone's well-being without expectations (charity work), being aware of the bothering feelings, and consciously disengaging from them temporarily helps shift the feelings to a more desirable state of mind.

?Writing therapy works well, too, for emotion management. For teenagers and adults, writing about feelings is a practical step to express and, more importantly, gain clarity regarding our thoughts, feelings, and the situation causing the challenge. Emotion management requires confidence and awareness of its long-term mental health and well-being benefits. Like our attention to our physical well-being, addressing our emotional health supports our focus on personal and professional excellence. The earlier we acknowledge and respect the interdependence of our body and soul, the earlier in life we begin to focus on maintaining our holistic wellness.

Focusing on our overall well-being makes us more consciously and mindfully connected to ourselves and progress toward self-awareness and self-discovery.