What is Emotional Health?

When people look at my website, they ask me – what is emotional health, what do you mean by this? I quickly say that it was a nice name– it got a nice ring to it – as ‘mental health’ for me was so overused and common.

But don’t worry, deeper thoughts do inform this concept.

Our emotional health is just as important as our physical health, all part of the well-known concept of us being holistic beings.

Emotional health highlights the role of our emotions in our daily functioning. Together with our thoughts and beliefs, and the way we are in this world, both with ourselves and others, we can think of it as the more inclusive term, mental health, a state of psychological well-being. Having an academic background, I observe my mind going into the details of every word (like the difference between emotions and feelings), and drawing on a variety of philosophies and theories. But then I also observe the impulse to bring it back to something more simplified, and hopefully more dignified. Maybe we’re all after the notion of living a good (enough) life.

Our emotional health is at the core of our being-ness, our existence in this world. Connecting with yourself, knowing what you feel, sensing or noticing how you feel inside about what you see and experience outside, in order to find a sense of being alive, to experience the range of emotions that life has to offer, to embrace and live life to the fullest, for your own and other highest good.

Then, when you are in a good place, connecting with others – our relationships, becomes a space where we can be more than just ourselves, as a shared smile and laughter, and shared pain makes life more bearable and easier to navigate. We become a reflection of each other in our relationships.

But at the heart is the self, and the quest to find compassion, kindness and self-love …

Emotional health for me shows up in a regulated self, which is the ability to access inner resources, express a wide range of emotions and function in daily life with the sense that you can deal with any challenge, but more so the ability to be present in the moment, but also live with a positive sense of future directedness and hope.