Emotional Resilience Mental Wellbeing

Emotional

by Lorna Graham

The last few years, the words ‘unprecedented times’ seem to be ringing in our ears for too long. The words themselves even cause discomfort. With lockdown in our wake, but the pandemic still lingering, exposure to conflict on our TV screens not to mention the cost of living crisis, a cold blanket of anxiety has wrapped around us all. According to the World Health Organisation, the pandemic triggered a 25% increase in the prevalence of anxiety and depression world wide, calling for a desperate need for services and support.

The emphasis on mental well-being during lockdown inspired many to consider important aspects of life. With new-found time to exercise, spend quality time with family, meditation, enjoying new or rediscovered hobbies that had been neglected etc. we learned how to be creative with the time we were given and used it as a tool to calm ourselves during a time of great unease. Yet here we are, still in a time of anxiety, the unknown looming, and the media’s focus on highlighting all the chaos surrounding us, only this time round, we are maintaining normal living of jobs and a faster paced life engulfing all of us respite seems unattainable for many. The world seems overwhelming. And there is no longer the time to reflect and re- engage with what makes us happy.

Practising emotional resilience is important in combating day to day stressors. Unexplained anxiety is inevitable. Unexplained emotions surface in all of us all the time. We live in a society of composure, to the extreme that we like to control our own emotions. Emotional avoidance and repression is a coping mechanism used to avoid emotional suffering. This is a defensive technique, fighting off negative emotions and only focusing on positive feelings. So, this myth that ‘we are in control of our emotions’ is hindering emotional development. Emotions are instinctual, fundamental to our consciousness. They cannot be prevented, only regulated.

Furthermore, embracing your negative, positive, and all emotion in between makes you much more emotionally resilient. Researchers think that ‘people who experience a wider range of these types of specific subcategories of emotions are more resilient in the face of adversity because they’re better at identifying what triggers those emotions’. This coincides with the theory that suppressing a physiological emotional response will increase the intensity of emotional experience. Studies show emotional avoidance is correlated to high cortisol levels (the stress hormone).

Therefore repressing your negative emotions actually causes a negative psychological response. Moreover, investigations into the possibility of a positive association between repression of emotions and symptoms of depression indicate its negative consequence. It is clear that expressing your true feelings in a healthy manner is crucial to your general wellbeing. In the midst of collective social adversity in our recent past, present and future, the acceptance of your negative emotions will only make you stronger. Finding a way that suits yourself to let it out rather than burying anxiety, worry, guilt and anger inside you. The more emotions you feel, the more resilient you become in your own regulation, ultimately making you more relaxed which we can all do with. Accepting unexplained triggers, negative feelings is a key happiness technique, and as a society, normalising the acceptance of identifying and accepting negative feelings will ultimately make us stronger as individuals and a collective community.

This will without a doubt make you feel much more in control, by allowing yourself to stop trying to control your emotions.

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