Emotional Selfcare

The provision of what is necessary for identifying and nurturing your feelings, your conscious inner state, and your intellect.

Emotional self-care means to become aware of, and identify, what you are feeling, and then allow yourself to lean into the feelings in a way that honours yourself, your feelings, your intentions and your emotions. We can try to ignore, deny, and suppress our emotions, but eventually they come out, one way or another. Emotional self-care is the act of nurturing and tending to your inner feelings and emotions.
In today's stressful world, caring for your whole self, including your emotional life, is more important than ever!

It’s all too easy to get lost in the whirlwind of hectic family life these days and find your emotional self-care needs get left on the back-burner. Emotional self-care is more than just massages and mani-pedis, it’s about listening to your thoughts and feelings (that inner dialogue) and honouring them in a way that allows you to move forward and feel happy within. Once you learn to handle your thoughts and feelings you will be able to get through any tough emotional situations. You will find if you don’t honour and express your emotions, they can cause a roadblock in your mind, resulting in anxious thoughts, the ‘burn-out feeling’ and general restlessness.

How Membership Can Help

7 Ways To Improve Your Emotional Selfcare Today

1. Monitor your internal dialogue!
2. Create boundaries in family and work!
3. Find your zen by regularly meditating!
4. Make time in your schedule for ‘me-time’!
5. Unleash your creativity!
6. Accept that nobody is perfect!
7. Seek out a healthy support system!

Top Tips For Improving Emotional Selfcare

1. Allow Yourself To Feel

 Arguably the most important step to emotional self care is allowing yourself to feel and experience the emotions that come to you. Many of our problems arise when we try to fight off said emotions and don’t address them. By allowing the experience of our emotions we can then begin to take further steps to heal them and then let them go.

 2. Get To Know Your Emotional Triggers

 Once you allow yourself to sit with your emotions, you will become much more familiar with them and you will start to observe patterns. What causes you to feel sad? Is there a particular person that you experience anger around? Ask yourself what causes your emotions and you will know how to reduce negative ones in the future.

3. Put Yourself First

 Many of us really struggle with putting ourselves first. When we have other people who are dependent on us we can see our own needs as a last resort and neglect to take care of ourselves. Switching your focus to yourself is the best thing you can do, not only for yourself but for others (these self care quotes may inspire you to do just that!).

4. Set & Enforce Your Own Boundaries

 Boundaries are essential when it comes to emotional self care. If you have a problem putting yourself first, then maybe you also struggle with enforcing boundaries that are necessary for your wellbeing. Try getting comfortable with saying no more often - some people may not like it but that’s okay! If something is harmful to you emotionally, you are entitled to say no to it.

 5. Protect Your Energy From Others

Surround yourself with people who lift you up and make you feel good. Obviously this cannot be achieved all the time, but if anybody makes you feel drained or negative too often then distance yourself from them or let them go entirely. It is much harder to protect your own emotions when you surround yourself with negativity.

6. Practice Meditation

 Meditating regularly can help to increase resilience in difficult situations and make you react from your emotions less often. Try to meditate daily for the best results. If you’re new to meditation, you can get started with my free beginners guide to meditation. 

7. Start A Journal

 Journaling is an amazing way to release your emotions and gain some clarity. If you feel like you get too caught up in emotions and can’t let them go, try making a regular habit of writing them down in your journal. You’d be surprised how beneficial journaling can be!

8. Practice Self-Compassion

One of the most important things you can do to care for yourself is to practice self-compassion. Become aware of the dialogue you have with yourself within your own head. Are you too hard on yourself? If you find yourself constantly criticising yourself and using negative language, you need to switch it up and start treating yourself with the love and respect that you want from others. A great way to start is by using self love affirmations! 

9. Ask For Help When Necessary

 Sometimes we just need to accept that we can’t do everything alone and ask for help when we need it. Maybe the reason you’re feeling overwhelmed with emotion is because you’re trying to take on the world on your own. There is no shame or weakness involved in seeking support where necessary!

10. Schedule Time To Rest

 Scheduling specific time to rest each day can help to ensure that you have adequate down time and don’t work yourself into the ground. Feelings of overwhelm can arise quickly when we don’t allow ourselves to rest and recharge. Learning to switch off can be hard but the more you do it the easier it becomes! Practicing meditation can also help to learn how to allow the mind to relax.

11. Do Something You Love Each Day

Not only is rest important, but so is doing something fulfilling each day. If you feel yourself caught up in the mundane and watching life pass you by… do something! You’d be surprised how much better you feel when you add a little more positivity into your life each day!

12. Practice Gratitude

 Gratitude is such a simple but powerful tool, which can change your life forever. Incorporate more gratitude in your life to switch your focus to the positive and take control of your own emotions. Get started by creating a gratitude journal with these gratitude prompts for extra assistance!

13. Learn To Accept Compliments

It may sound silly, but every time you dismiss or deny a compliment you are knocking your own confidence and selling yourself short.
The next time somebody compliments you, try responding with a simple “thank you” and acknowledge how the compliment makes you feel. You don’t have to necessarily agree (at least not at first) but learning to accept compliments can positively affect the relationship you have with yourself!

14. Stop Apologising For Everything

 Similarly, when you apologise for doing nothing other than being you, you’re putting out the idea that who you are isn’t acceptable. Of course, apologise where and when it is necessary - but stop apologising when you may feel shame, embarrassment or like a burden. You are worthy and accepted just as you are. 

15. Learn From Your Mistakes

 One of the biggest ways we can change the relationship we have with ourselves and care for ourselves emotionally is to see our mistakes as a learning opportunity, rather than a failure. Mistakes are an inevitable part of life and they help us grow and become better. Each time you make a mistake, acknowledge where you went wrong and work to improve it in the future. Make sure to forgive yourself too! 

16. Create A Playlist Of Calming Music

Creating a calming playlist is a great way to soothe our emotions when we need some TLC. If you feel like you need to take some time to relax then dedicate some time to just sitting and taking in the soothing sounds of the music you love. You can even honour your emotions further by creating a playlist for each mood. If Sade or George Michael help you let off some steam when you’re angry then honour that!

17. Focus on what you can control 

One of the reasons we often feel anxious is because we think we can control everything. And no, that is a fantasy, an unrealisable purpose. Believing that it is possible surrounds us in a constant feeling of losing control and that frustrates us and detracts from reality. Faced with a situation, observe and assess what you can really do and what is not in your power. Ask yourself: What can I do to change, improve or alleviate the situation? In what aspects can I improve? What depends on me? It is very useful to do it in writing, dividing it into two columns. Everything you can control, write it down. Sometimes in our imagination everything can happen, but when we put it on paper we see that it is not possible. The important thing is to be aware that, despite everything, we control important things in our life, but not all of them. Free yourself from unnecessary burdens and allocate your energy to everything that you can do.

18. Find out what you want

The immediacy, the monotony and the current rhythm, causes us to live so immersed in day-to-day tasks that we find it difficult to differentiate between what we really want to do and what we should do. The desire for duty. A very fine line that, although it seems difficult to identify, it is enough to be more aware each time we are going to do something. Learn to stop, not to get carried away and to identify and differentiate what you really want from what you have been told you should do. A very simple but valuable act is to ask yourself before taking any action and say to yourself: “I do it because I must” or “I do it because I want to”. 

19. Love yourself

It seems like a cliché, but although it sounds typical, loving ourselves as we are is a difficult task. One of the most complicated and necessary practices. Working to accept and love ourselves as we are is crucial to enjoy good health and emotional stability, because we show ourselves that we can stop focusing on our flaws. We must not confuse “accepting and loving ourselves” with forgetting about ourselves and losing the illusion to improve in certain aspects of our life. It means, working to obtain a degree of emotional maturity that allows us to identify those parts that we do not like, know why (ask us if we like them or if it is due to some kind of pressure from your social and / or cultural environment) and assess if we can really change them. If we can, we must work on them to improve them, and that does not take away any kind of value as a person.

20. Avoid toxic people

Sometimes we surround ourselves with people who do us no good, either because they are childhood friends, family members or because we add more well-known people in our social relationships. They are toxic people. Those people who do not bring us anything in our lives, but who somehow fill our days. They are people who have not matured emotionally, insecure and selfish people who need to have someone close to them to establish a relationship in which to vent their frustrations. Toxic people usually do not contribute anything positive, causing negative emotions in the victim that lead to deep exhaustion, energy consumption, stress and disappointment. The objective is that you can choose and decide about your emotional health and not that it is always taken away from you. For this reason, the recommendation is that you avoid these types of “friendships”. Do not confuse the bad specific situation that someone in your environment may be living. For toxic people, this attitude towards life is permanent.

21. Accept your emotions, allow yourself to feel

Did you know that when we repress our emotions we can feel pain, both physical and emotional? Keeping what we feel under the rug is not useful, quite the opposite. A person who enjoys good emotional health knows that emotions exist in him / her, and allows himself/herself to feel them when they arise, observes, identifies and externalises them, without being tied or depending solely on them. Instead of fighting negative emotions, for example, try accepting them, but without the resignation that they will never change. Try to say to yourself “I’m sad, this is important to me and I’m worried about“, without judging yourself (because the judgment ends up always making us feel guilty) and without exhausting struggles. Because all emotions are valid and because they all make us human. At first it may seem like exhausting work. But over time, if you allow yourself to feel them without struggling to change them, you will understand them, you will get to know yourself more every day and with time, you will understand that each one has its own course and you will have the ability to identify them.