WHY YOU SHOULD TAKE YOUR EMOTIONAL HEALTH SERIOUSLY.
Do you brush your teeth everyday? Yes right? You have known to do this since you were 5. And you have your bath everyday too right? Your elementary science teacher said it constituted personal hygiene. She also said to wash your hands regularly with soap and water if you didn't want to run the risk of getting infected by germs and falling ill. You fell ill anyway. But when you did, your parents took care of you. They knew what to do without necessarily calling on the family doctor or taking you to the primary health care center just close to your house. Even when you fell from a tree and broke your knee and sustained a bruise from butting off a bicycle, they knew what to do.
My own father though is an engineer, played the role of the family physician—he prognosed illnesses/injuries and prescribed remedies, however amateurish. My mum on the other hand was the family nurse even though she never passed through medical school—she administered the drugs (in balls of Eba sometimes and sometimes forcibly) and applied the Abonikis. I bet your parents weren’t so different from mine.As you grew older, you learnt to take of yourself without mummy or daddy or teacher motioning you to. And when you fell ill, you sought out, by yourself, your personal or dad’s first aid/medicine box, before ever needing to visit the doctor. After many years of experience, you now know that Paracetamol is a pain reliever, that Artesunate works against malaria, that Metronidazole is an antibiotic, and that Codeine is a remedy for cough and common cold (even though now it’s being abused). You also know that an open cut should be cleaned and covered, and that a broken bone should be bandaged. You know all the antidotes to the common and everyday physical injuries/illnesses. But what antidote do you know exists for common and everyday emotional chest colds? What do you use against occasional heartbreaks, rejections, failures, depression, distress, loneliness, anxiety and the likes. And how do you prevent these common emotional chest colds from developing into psychological pneumonias—like obsessions, major depressions, phobias, manias, addictions and paranoia—that will then require you consulting a psychotherapist or clinical psychologist?
If I am not mistaken, you have no answers to these questions. These are just not things you think about, even though they make up part of your everyday life. And even though we incur emotional injuries more than we do physical, science teacher never taught us about emotional hygiene. Even dad never thought to obtain emotional first aid/medicine boxes. But this lax attitude towards our emotional health doesn’t help anyone. If anything at all, it harms us.
Just few days ago an article was published to mark the world suicide prevention day, and based on the stats cited in the article we got to know that the number of people who take their own lives every year was a startling 800,000 (higher than the number of people who die as a result of malaria or common cold) i.e. one person every 40 seconds. So from the time you started reading this article, 5 people have died in their own hands. And by the time you’re done reading, the number would have quadrupled. Now, if we look at the risk factors cited in the article that dispose one to suicide, one can conclude, from all indications, that the non-management or mismanagement of emotional ailments is the major risk factor.
But apart from suicide, not paying attention and not treating our emotional illnesses/injuries harms us in several other ways. I noted already that if mismanaged or left unmanaged, emotional chest colds could develop into psychological pneumonias. Unlike physical injuries, emotional injuries tend to deepen rather than heal over time. The theory that time heals everything is one that has failed one too many times. The time people think it will take to heal an emotional wound may actually be the time it takes for it to degenerate into an irredeemable state (think of cancer; psychological cancer this time) if nothing is done about it. A general rule of thumb, for example, is that recovery from breakups takes one to two months for every year of a relationship (hence if your ex, in a two-year relationship, broke up with you, it will take you two to four months to recover) but if nothing is done to recover, you may brood over the breakup for many years to come. You may never even have subsequent successful relationships as a result.
Another thing is that emotional illnesses/injuries could negatively affect our physical health. We know from several findings that psychological stressors, such as grief over loss and failing an important exam, can have as great an impact on physical health as do physical stressors like freezing weather and pain. For example, in the two years following bereavement, widowed people become more susceptible to physical illnesses and injuries, and their mortality rate, higher than expected. Loneliness and worry can suppress one's immunity, making it possible for already existing infections to thrive. Also, depression following an heart attack increases significantly the risk of death from cardiac implications in a succeeding year.
In dire situations emotional illnesses/injuries could also lead to death ("lead to death" not "cause death"; evidence that negative emotions can cause death on their own is non-existent. They are risk factors that predispose one to illnesses leading to death)—and no I don't mean suicide. The WHO states, "There is a 1.8 times higher risk of dying associated with depression.” And in a study that kept tabs on men and women who suffered heart attacks, 7% of depressed men and 8.3% of depressed women died within a year compared to 2.5% of those who were not depressed.
What then do we do about all these?
The first thing I think we need to do is to pay more attention and be more conscious of our emotional health—as conscious as we are of our physical health. We need to begin to show more interest in our moods, emotions and mental modes, and to watch out for symptoms that indicate ill emotional health. And whenever we notice such symptoms, we should respond promptly and adequately. We shouldn’t wait till the emotional chest colds worsen into psychological pneumonias or wait for time to heal the hurt or even wait till we can conveniently consult the experts.
Second is that we need to get our emotional first aid/medicine box packed and ready for whenever we get emotionally wounded/infected. The challenge here though is that unlike medicines/toolkits for physical illnesses/injuries, emotional medicines/toolkits cannot be easily accessed or acquired or readily available. So, it would seem that visiting the experts for treatment is inevitable. But many of our emotional injuries/illnesses like the physical injuries/illnesses do not warrant a visit to the clinic. And even those that do may require a quick and temporary fix first, in order to prevent them from developing into psychological pneumonias and cancers, before getting there. The good news however is that over the years, through much research, psychologists and psychotherapists have been able to come up with useful out-of-clinic treatments and emotional first aid to manage emotional injuries/illnesses. Guy Winch Ph.D. lists these treatments and first aids in his book “Emotional First Aid.”
Cover page, “Emotional First Aid”, by Guy Winch
For example, he recommends that if a potential romantic partner rejected you, the first thing you need to do is to come up with counterarguments to the justifications you make about your rejection. So, to quote him, “rather than reaching unnecessary and inaccurate conclusions about your faults, consider these alternative explanations: Perhaps the person prefers a specific type that you do not fit (e.g., she’s into blonds and you have brown hair or she has a thing for guys with shaved hair and you have an unruly mop). It’s also possible the person’s ex reentered the picture, or she might be going through crisis at home or in her personal life. Or you might simply be a poor lifestyle match (e.g., she’s a creature-comfort home-body and you love camping and urinating in the woods)." [Please note that I have quoted just a snippet of a whole emotional treatment plan. Do not by any means adapt this as panacea for dealing with rejections; I have only cited an example. Preferably, read the whole book]
Third and most importantly, we need to practice emotional hygiene—prevention is better than cure after all. Practicing emotional hygiene helps you to build resilience and agility against emotional injuries/illnesses. There are lots of resources out there on maintaining a good emotional hygiene but I will mention a few here:
• Regularly exercise. This helps to relieve tension and stress. It also causes the release of the hormone, endorphin (aka "runner’s high"), which makes one to feel good. It also boosts overall mood.
• Eat healthy. Scientific data suggests that diet is as important to mental health as it is to physical health. Healthy diets are associated with reduced risk of depression, while unhealthy diets are associated with increased depression and anxiety.
• Follow a daily routine. A study on the psychology of habits demonstrated that when stressed, people rely heavily on habits. This suggests that following daily routine patterns help people maintain physical, emotional and mental health when stressed.
• Meditate often or practice mindfulness. Studies show that meditation helps in managing negative emotions like anger, depression and anxiety. It is also associated with reduced stress levels.
• Keep a gratitude journal. This helps you stay mindful of the good things in your life and keeps you from excessively ruminating on the bad when times get tough.
• Avoid toxic relationships and negative vibes. You cannot walk on hot coals and expect not to be burnt. Flee from people and places that could potentially harm your emotional health.
• Build a strong social network (obviously I don’t mean making friends on Facebook or connecting to professionals on LinkedIn) that will help you through moments of trauma and affirm your self-worth.
• Use positive affirmations. But not just any positive affirmation. Use self-affirmations that identify valuable and important aspects of yourself that you know to be true (in contrast to positive affirmations that affirm qualities we would like to possess but don’t believe we do. Doing this could do more harm than good). Reminding ourselves of worth and positive characteristics, regardless of the shortcomings we perceive in ourselves, boosts our self-confidence and renders us less vulnerable to negative emotions resulting rejection or failure.
• And rest/sleep regularly. Poor sleep quality is linked to high levels of negative psychological well-being.
Unless we wish to live an unfulfilled and unhappy life, we need to start taking these recommendations to heart and to action. Our emotions matter more than we feel they do.
Ogunkoya Oluwamuyiwa David
Member NIMELSSA EDITORIAL TEAM 19/20
Comments