Emotional Health: What It Is and How to Maintain It

What is Emotional Health?

An emotionally healthy person understands their emotions and is able to control them in difficult situations. Emotional health is a life skill, not a passive state of being. The results of emotional control improve physical well-being and the ability to cope with mental health problems.  

Robust emotional health helps people better control reactions to stress and make rational decisions when under duress. Since stress-free living is impossible, everyone should work to improve their emotional health habits. 

What is the Difference Between Mental and Emotional Health? 

Mental health encompasses emotional health, psychological disorder management, and socialization, or the ability to fit into society. Strong emotional health enables self-regulation and healthy, rational decisions in emotional situations. 

Poor mental health is one potential source of stress, but emotional stress can come from anywhere. Positive emotional health habits build the emotional resilience necessary to cope with both difficult everyday experiences and struggles like depression, anxiety, or trauma. These mental health disorders can cause mood shifts into sadness or fear. People in tune with their emotions are able to identify triggers of these shifts and are able to overcome them.  

It’s possible to be emotionally healthy, but not mentally healthy—or vice versa. 

Someone with a mental health disorder who never learned the tools to overcome or manage their stressors has poor emotional and mental health. 

A patient with chronic mental health conditions equipped and trained may still have poor mental health but their emotional self-control helps them manage their condition and its effects. 

A third person could have no psychiatric conditions at all (like 80 percent of Americans), and let their emotions control their actions—this is referred to as a lack of emotional regulation. They may express anger at inappropriate times, overreact, or let minor incidents disrupt their mood for days on end.

How to Take Care of Your Emotional Health 

Like most wellness initiatives, improving emotional health requires knowledge, self-awareness, and discipline. First, research indicators of poor emotional health and review past behavior to find opportunities to improve. Identify emotional extremes and common threads between incidents of acting out. This evaluation must be honest, objective, and critical. 

With problem areas identified and isolated, practice emotional regulation techniques. What works for one person may not help another. The process will take time. Review the results with care, and give techniques that don’t work at first the chance to take effect over time. 

What Do Emotional Health Problems Look Like? 

The signs of emotional health problems are many and varied: 

• Self-isolation 
• Low energy 
• Disturbed sleep, both too much and too little 
• Increased substance use, including legal substances like alcohol, cannabis, or tobacco 
• Racing thoughts 
• Neglected hygiene or appearance 
• More arguments
• Decreased work performance 

These problems often come from multiple factors, which is why emotional health improvements enhance overall quality of life. Poor lifestyle choices can cause undersleeping and low energy, as does depression. Poor emotional health doesn’t necessarily suggest the need to seek help, but it is a strong indicator. 

How to Fix Emotional Health 

With problems and their triggers identified, the time has come to experiment with the many different methods of emotional health regulation. Though they approach the problem from different angles, they all build a healthier lifestyle that gives them the foundation to confront difficult situations. 

This baseline is called “resilience.” High emotional resilience empowers people to recover faster from challenging situations and reframe them as opportunities to learn and grow. 

Healthy Physical Habits 

Sufficient sleep, regular exercise, and a healthier diet are all hard work but are worth it because a healthy body promotes a healthy mind.

Mindfulness exercises, meditation, deep breathing, or prayer relax both the body and mind. These techniques are rare, vital opportunities for quiet in a busy life, and people who make time for them are healthier because of them. 

Self-Awareness 

It’s impossible to improve without direction. The emotional health improvement process demands noticing and recording emotional reactions—the situations and people that cause anger, sadness, frustration, and other complicated feelings. Then, decide whether the emotional responses were appropriate. If not, practice changing them. 

Remain mindful of appropriate ways to express emotions—convey feelings through words, rather than actions. Explain aloud to the trigger (if a person) what they did to cause the feeling. Consider the consequences before acting or speaking when emotional—question the benefits of action from impulse. 

Find and Accept Help 

No one can undergo this difficult process alone. Close friends and family make up most support networks, but not everyone has those social resources. It’s possible to build new support networks and close friendships through socializing—which isn’t always easy. Hobbies that require a group or volunteering efforts are great ways to meet new people. The immediate common ground builds connections that grow into friendships. 

Short-term counseling for anger or grief or long-term mental health therapy bring a neutral third party in to help. They give insight into the causes of emotional instability and encourage patients to take action. Therapist’s suggestions direct patients to social changes, adjustments to routines, and advice on coping mechanisms. 

Trained therapists also diagnose and treat severe emotional health disruptors like trauma, depression, anxiety, and substance use disorder.

Contact SoberMind Recovery for Help Quitting Drugs or Alcohol 

Problematic drinking stresses the user and everyone around them. Reach out to SoberMind Recovery to address substance use disorder and improve the emotional health of your friends, your family, and yourself. 

SoberMind is a treatment center dedicated to specialized programs dual diagnosis treatment. Los Angeles residents can visit SoberMind’s campus facilities designed for their unique situation; LGBTQ+ sober living and severe withdrawal management make it easy to find help tailored to you.