Emotional Health is important.
We believe that everyone has the right to access emotional health support that is either free or affordable, quickly available, and without the need for long-distance travel.
Emotional Health
is a way of looking at how content, focussed and happy we are. It includes mental health – but is much broader than that. People who don’t have a mental illness may well have poor emotional health.
One important reason for poor emotional health is a basic misunderstanding of what our feelings and moods actually are. In truth, they are a chemical reaction to the many hormones all of us are producing at any given moment. Sometimes this is triggered by our reaction to what’s happening in our lives; and sometimes it’s just the body doing its thing.
But many of us find our feelings and moods overwhelming. If we think of them as real, rather than a passing chemical moment, then they seem to be instructions from within us.
This is unhealthy.
For example, we have all had, at some time, that strange experience where we start the day with a mood we’d rather not have. It can seem as if it’s come from nowhere – sometimes we can be puzzled about why we are feeling down, irritable or fed-up. Logically, everything is OK – yet we still feel unhappy.
When this happens
we have the choice of either letting that mood rule our day, bringing us down, or instead acknowledging that moods come and go, then undertaking actions that will help the mood pass.
We provide training in how to do this in our ELK.Health programmes and online clinics.
Self-Awareness
& Self-compassion
Another important reason for poor emotional health is a lack of self-awareness and self-compassion.
A lack of self-awareness, understandably, limits our ability to improve our emotional health.
A lack of self-compassion means that we waste energy and emotional resources criticising ourselves.
Many people who instinctively show kindness and consideration to other people, find it hard to do the same to themselves. But the simple truth is that it isn’t possible to show others compassion until we practice being gentle and forgiving to ourselves.
We aren’t meant to be perfect – and it would be very boring if we were!
High levels of emotional health
Having high levels of emotional health is critical to living a healthy, happy life.
If we are unhappy often, we are much more likely to become physically ill too.
And if we are physically unwell,
then having poor emotional health can make it much more difficult for us to get better.
Emotional Wellbeing
is about keeping ourselves as happy, content and focussed as we would like.
Regular Exercise
Doing regular exercises that maintain and improve our emotional wellbeing makes us emotionally healthy.