LesTout: Emotional Health Just as Important as Physical Health

Emotional Health Just as Important as Physical Health : Open in New Window

Living a balanced lifestyle will ensure your emotional health can help you manage life’s changes and stresses. But emotional health is also about how you see yourself, your goals, the roles you are playing in your life, and how you cope with your emotions through your life’s experiences. This includes incidents from our childhood, our early adolescence and our adult life. Together they all add up in your mind to make up your emotional health. And if you are under too much stress, you are at risk of heart attack, high blood pressure, and many other health conditions.

And let’s face it, if you are a career-oriented person, you are probably juggling a busy lifestyle with a desire to achieve optimal results at work, putting in overtime if required and attending courses or seminars as requested.

If you are also a mother, you have the extra responsibilities of raising children and finding quality time to spend with them. You and your husband or significant other need to spend time together too, nurturing your relationship. And you may feel duty-bound to volunteer for your children’s activities, in your church, or even in a professional organization. In other words, your emotions are often topsy-turvy as you struggle to balance your many chores.

You must ensure you take some time for yourself or you won’t have the emotional health to attend to the other people in your life who are depending on you. Look for a few minutes when someone can watch the children or pick a time on the weekend when other family members can take them out to allow you the opportunity to take a relaxing bath, read for an hour, or give yourself a manicure. Try to plan evenings with friends occasionally so your social life continues.

Listen to your inner voice – are you constantly criticizing yourself for being too late, too slow, too busy? Instead look for the many positive factors in your life, your great kids, thoughtful husband, caring parents, good friends, dream job, smart wardrobe, skills in music, writing, crafts, and so on. You’ll find focusing on the positive will give you more satisfaction with your life, and you’ll have an active immune system, preventing colds and the flu from taking you down regularly.

Make sure you are getting enough sleep. People who are perpetually tired cannot cope with everyday problems and unexpected incidents. Perhaps you need a new mattress. If noises are keeping you awake, consider running a vapourizer in the room to cover the traffic or loud neighbours. Try to get into a regular schedule, going to bed at the same time as often as possible, and don’t sleep in on weekends.

If, however, a serious problem is bothering you, face it head on. Schedule some time to analyze it, then plan an attack to get rid of it or at least modify it so it’s not haunting your thoughts. If you need to talk to a counsellor, a priest or pastor, or your human resources officer at work, ask for an appointment. If you need to talk to your spouse about household worries, get a babysitter and plan an evening away from the house where you can discuss it free of distractions. Don’t let the problem grow into a monster that affects every thing you do. And remember, you are not a superwoman or superman – there’s only so much you can do in a day so you must set priorities and try to get through them, then rest and stop, satisfied with your efforts. Everything else can and will wait. Look carefully to see if there aren’t some things that you can drop totally. Men can find some good tips on emotional health at http://www.malehealth.co.uk/userpage1.cfm?item_id=149 and women can find some great thoughts at http://www.authenticloving.com/womens_emotional_health/index.HTML.

Body image can also cause poor emotional health. If you are overweight, if you are aging, if you are going through menopause, you can feel a loss of self-esteem and sexuality. If you need to lose some weight, try to realistically take some steps to be more active and watch more closely what you are eating. You can’t do anything about getting older, but you can ensure you are dressed attractively, with your hair done in a neat style and your makeup tastefully applied so you are pleased with your appearance. Think often of all the things you do for other people and feel good about yourself.

And be proud of who you are, regardless of what stage of life you are entering. Each age has its own beauty and you will be attractive to the people with whom you interact if you stay positive and reassured. You will experience huge satisfaction with yourself. What more can we ask in order to be happy?

1Re: Emotional Health Just as Important as Physical Health

That's a great article, Heather. The opposite of mental health, mental illness, is still a huge stigma in our society and so many people feel like this is out of their control. The reality is that we can mold our mental health just as we mold our bodies through proper nutrition and exercise. I would add that talk therapy (through a psychiatrist, psychologist or licensed social worker) is invaluable when we need professional advice for our mental health. Scientific studies have show that talk therpay can alter our brain chemistry for good as mcuh as anti-depressant medication.