Emotional Hygiene

[Candy]

Today I learned the term Emotional Hygiene. When and why has our physical health become more important than our mental health? I googled it and found a Ted Talk of a guy who talks about what emotional hygiene is and why we all need to practice emotional "first aid".

When we get sick or injured, we do everything we can to heal and get better, so why don't we do the same when we're emotionally hurt?

Failure, rejection, and loneliness are all real issues that create deep psychological wounds and makes us believe things that aren't necessarily true. Our minds are very hard to change once we become convinced of something, and when our self-esteem hurts we begin ruminating.

Many studies show that when our self-esteem is low, we're a lot more vulnerable to the hurt of failure, rejection, stress and anxiety. Why then don't we treat ourselves with compassion in these moments of hurt?

In this video, Guy Winch says to battle negative thinking by forcing yourself to concentrate on something else until the urge passes. Protect your self-esteem, change your responses to failure, and take action when you're lonely. But what if your loneliness or low self-esteem is related to some other issues such as Social Anxiety Disorder?

 

 

[Li****]

That's really interesting, thanks for sharing @Candy ! 

[Ka****]

I think even if it is related to social anxiety, this can be changed by changing our mindset... we have to be willing to explore the fears we hold and work through those so that we can see the world as a safe and fun place to be rather than a scary one

 

And thanks for the video

Edited December 12, 2019 by Kalila

[Candy]

2 hours ago, Kalila said:

I think even if it is related to social anxiety, this can be changed by changing our mindset... we have to be willing to explore the fears we hold and work through those so that we can see the world as a safe and fun place to be rather than a scary one

 

And thanks for the video

I hear you, Kalila :) 

I think social anxiety comes from deeply routed fears of being judged or rejected by others, which for some has been the case their whole lives, including in their family situations. In these instances, it's easy to say to someone "just change your mindset and your life will change", but no one really knows how absolutely difficult that is to do for the person dealing with this issue (except probably that person). For many people, the world is a very scary place because that's all that they've been exposed to, and it takes a LOT of work, resources and patience to let go of such fears. And this is not available to everyone.