Five Days to a Better You 

Day 3: Emotions

Emotions are what gives life’s tapestry its colour. Whenever we experience something and are describing it back to others, we say things like “I felt so happy, I felt scared, I felt awful” etc. We experience a wide range of emotions arising from many sources such as interacting with those around us, the “big life” events and the ongoing daily hassles. They do not just happen out of the blue. Our emotions are a way of describing our experience to us. They have something to tell us about a situation or event that is in in our life. Behind each, there are thoughts causing them in the first place resulting in body sensations and then behaviours, each emotion having its own chemical footprint in the body and thus different effects. We all like to feel good rather than bad so it makes sense that we do anything to achieve good feelings and avoid bad, which can lead to avoidance or self-medication (e.g., drugs, alcohol, food) to mask negative feelings. Understanding ourselves better can help us to accept and tolerate negative feelings, choose more productive ways of handling them and build instead more positive ones in our lives. No one has all the answers, and we all need to work through things.

Action:

When you experience difficult moments and times leading to feelings that are hard to handle:

• Remember, this is all part of what everyone experiences, remind yourself it won’t last, you can get through this
• Think about what is behind the emotion and why it has arisen
• Problem solve where possible, bring actions that will help
• Don’t be too hard on yourself
• Take time out by doing something nice that you enjoy or distracting yourself from the situation
• Do things that help on an ongoing and regular basis – this will help keep you more balanced and less reactive to stressors