Emotional wellness is an under-discussed topic. When it comes to health and well-being, most people naturally think of physical—and perhaps mental—health. Emotions play a vital role in how you function and behave. Emotional wellness affects how you cope with stress, relate to others, and make wise choices in life. Emotional well-being can also affect physical and mental health. A holistic approach to addiction recovery considers the state of the body, mind, and emotions together.

What Is Emotional Wellness?

Emotional wellness is a person’s awareness of both positive and negative emotions and their ability to cope with them. Emotionally healthy people have adequate, healthy coping mechanisms when negative emotions emerge and know when to reach out for help from family, friends, and professionals.

Emotional health has to do with regulating emotions, awareness, and coping skills and may be affected by mental health disorders, especially mood disorders. Emotional wellness often overlaps with mental health because both involve how the mind works through cognition and feelings. In situations of adversity, a person’s emotional and mental capacities are both challenged. Lack of emotional regulation and mental well-being may both lead to physical illnesses.

What Are the Warning Signs of Poor Emotional Health?

Not everyone is aware of their emotional wellness. Sometimes, family and friends can detect warning signs better or earlier than you can, including social isolation, neglecting of personal hygiene, substance use, overeating, and more interpersonal conflicts than usual. People with poor emotional health may live in constant moments of high drama as poor emotional health can make you become angry, yell, and fight with family and friends. In many instances, poor emotional health can be a byproduct of anxiety, depression, and substance addiction.

For people with awareness about their emotional well-being, they should be on the lookout for feelings of irritability and lack of overall contentment in life. This does not mean that one needs to be always happy and content to be emotionally well; it is more about having the resources and skills to manage the ups and downs of emotions in your everyday life. This may include noticing upsetting emotions when they arise and catching your negative self-talk.

Why Is Self-Care Important to Emotional Wellness?

Emotional health flourishes when you are curious about your thoughts and feelings and why they arise. Working on these aspects of your emotional wellness is just as important as physical wellness through nutrition and exercise and mental wellness through mindfulness and rest. You are the only person fully aware of your emotional state, so self-care includes connecting with your emotions in a deeply engaged way.

When you are able to manage your emotions, you can connect with yourself more deeply, and your relationship with others may also grow deeper. Emotional wellness through self-care also trains you to become more resilient to stress and external adversity. With this deep-rooted sense of yourself, good emotional health helps you gain higher self-esteem. Most importantly, having a regulated emotional life can give you more energy and help you focus.

How Do You Achieve Emotional Well-Being?

First, be aware of the different pressures in your life, including familial, societal, and economic sources of stress and pressures. Because the external environment is often stressful, caring for your internal thought and emotional environment can help you deal with that stress.

Second, understand the principles of emotional well-being, including honesty, peace, gratitude, positivity, and connectivity. Be honest with yourself about your emotional state, as denial can only make things worse. Make peace and calm the goals in your life. Practice gratitude and positivity even when faced with stress and adversity. Stay close to key relationships that emotionally support you and nourish you to become a better person.

Lastly, set realistic goals for improving your emotional well-being. The first step is always self-awareness: the ability to perceive yourself accurately and understand how your emotional expressions come across to others on social occasions. Determine ways to up your emotional honesty, resiliency, and compassion with yourself and others.

When you progress on this path toward emotional wellness, make agility your long-term goal. Emotional agility refers to a person’s ability to deal with stressors and discomfort in life. Emotionally agile people can adapt to a range of emotions and can continue daily life while experiencing those emotions. They do not suppress or ignore their emotions but hold them loosely and acknowledge them without being held back because of them.

Some skills can help you build on your emotional well-being. These include meditation and relaxation techniques, spending social time and sharing feelings with friends, nurturing a fun-loving social environment, maintaining an exercise regimen, and finding time for favorite hobbies.

Have you sometimes felt emotional pain but are not sure how to deal with it? Do you know what emotional wellness is? Emotional wellness affects how you cope with stress, relate to others, and make wise choices in life. It can affect both your physical and mental health. In general, but especially in recovery from substance use, a holistic approach to healing that includes physical, mental, and emotional health gives you the best chance at overall wellness. At Laguna Shores Recovery, we believe in caring for the whole person. Our team of licensed mental healthcare professionals and therapists, many of whom are in recovery themselves, are experts in building healthy emotional management techniques into your custom treatment plan. Our full medical residential facility offers a range of treatments, including diagnosis, behavioral therapies, and 12-step programs. If you want to see changes in your emotional health, help is here. Call us at 954-688-5806.