Unfortunately, Humans have evolved to survive not to be happy.

Building or renovating a family home can be an emotional rollercoaster.

 

The whole family is watching, so many decisions to be made, so much money at stake.

Only one chance to get it right…

 

But building sites are not a place to share your emotions.

 

We all talk a lot about stress and mental health, but everyone seems to avoid talking about emotions. Why??

 

Today we are celebrating my father’s 99^th Birthday, quite a feat of human endurance. He grew up during the Great Depression and WW2. He is an amazing man in so many ways, but he has never been one to share his emotions.

 

My mother, who passed 2 years ago, was also a force of nature. Her mother died when she was only 9 years old, so she grew up without a mother. She took on the familial role when she was a teenager and was married at 19. You could not meet a more practical and capable women, but she supressed her emotions all her life.

 

Your emotional intelligence mostly comes from your parents and your upbringing, so it is no big surprise that I’m not very good at expressing my emotions. It just feels wrong. I am not comfortable being that vulnerable and exposed. But I am keen to explore why many of us (especially males) feel the same.

 

Emotions are simply your brains way of telling you something good or bad is happening in your life. They are fleeting, one minute they are there and the next they have gone or changed into a different feeling.

 

“Emotions are like waves, we can’t stop them from coming, but we can choose which ones to surf.” Jonatan Mortensson

 

Explaining and understanding human emotions is quite complex and difficult, even for trained psychologists. However, Mark Manson “The Emotions Whisperer” does a great job. He states “At a basic level, emotions create excitement or fear. The feelings that emulate from excitement and fear are generally happiness or sadness, Guilt, or anger.”

 

Where it gets interesting is that everyone has different levels and intensities of emotions. In a specific situation one person feels a lot of shame or guilt and another person feels none at all. Some people get angry at the drop of a hat and others feel no anger or resentment.

 

“Happiness has little to do with what path we choose in life and everything to do with how much control we take of our lives in getting there.” Mark Manson

 

Emotional hygiene is all about understanding your emotions and managing how you react to your emotions. This takes real effort and commitment just like physical hygiene. Poor emotional hygiene can infect the rest of your life and impact your relationships, your work, your health, and your happiness.

 

Our emotional lives are like any other part of our lives, they must be understood, managed, and maintained. If you ignore or suppress your emotions long enough you will run the risk of not feeling much at all, and eventually you fall into depression.

 

So how do you “get in touch with your emotions” and up your emotional hygiene?

 

Manson recommends starting with self-awareness by asking yourself the following three questions.

1. Are there certain emotions you feel more frequently or more intensely?
2. Do you overreact or underreact to certain emotions?
3. Do you feel you suppress your emotions, and if so, why?

 

A few other things to be aware of when working on your emotional hygiene.

• Humans evolved for survival and therefore we all feel more negative emotions than positive emotions.
• We unfortunately feel negative emotions more intensely than positive emotions, (again that whole survival thing!).
• We find it easier to cope with certain emotions when we know others around us are feeling the same emotions. (E.G everyone shedding a tear in the cinema at the end of a sad movie).
• Every emotion exists for a reason, every emotion benefits us in some small way.

 

“In a very real sense we have two minds. One that thinks and one that feels.” Daniel Goleman.

 

Thanks for reading,

Stay safe and tell someone how you are feeling.

David