Emotional First Aid

Generally, people are pretty good at calling the doctor when worrisome symptoms pop up. But why don’t we see a health professional when we feel emotional pain like, guilt, loss, loneliness? Most of us deal with common psychological-health issues on our own.

If you’re human, you can’t avoid these most common and inevitable psychological injuries:

• Rejection – emotional cuts and scrapes of daily life
• Loneliness – relationship muscle weakens
• Loss and Trauma – broken bones
• Guilt – toxic in our system
• Brooding & Rumination –  picking at emotional scabs
• Failure – emotional colds become psychological pneumonias
• Low Self-Esteem – weak emotional immune systems

We all suffer emotional wounds like these, it is as common as psychical cuts and scrapes. Uncared-for psychological injuries can damage our self-esteem, which lead to social isolation where we become defensive and push people away. Eventually we find ourselves feeling lonely and not care for, which can easily lead to a full blown depression.

You know how to clean and care for a cut. You have first aid box all ready for emergency at home, office or even in car. But where is your emotional first aid box? Why it is that you ignore your emotional pains and cuts and not attend to it? Today, I want to tell you. You don’t have to stay sick!

You can learn to practice emotional hygiene by taking care of your emotions, our minds, with the same diligence you take care of your bodies. It’s time you practiced mental health hygiene just as you do dental and physical hygiene.

7 ways to practice emotional first aid:

1. Pay attention to emotional pain — recognize it when it happens and work to treat it before it feels all-encompassing.
2. Redirect your gut reaction when you fail.
3. Monitor and protect your self-esteem. When you feel like putting yourself down, take a moment to be compassionate to yourself.
4. When negative thoughts are taking over, disrupt them with positive distraction.
5. Find meaning in loss.
6. Don’t let excessive guilt linger.
7. Learn what treatments for emotional wounds work for you.

If the emotional first aid can’t stop your bleeding or suffering, that mean is times to see a health professional and get some psychological treatment. You should know that you don’t have to suffer your pain, there is hope for a better tomorrow! Take this next step and contact me to arrange a time to talk.

© Faith Foo, www.faithfoocounseling.com  [2019]. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Faith Foo and www.faithfoocounseling.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

See Guy Winch’s TED Talk, Why we all need to practice emotional first aid.

Bibliography : Emotional First Aid by Guy Winch, PhD

Featured image via Pexel.