Modern Body Xperiment

Navigating Emotional Wellness: Mastering Self-Awareness and Compassion

• Dan and Jenni

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As we navigated the choppy waters of a standard life with all the standard turmoil, we discovered that one of the keys to steering one's life in the right direction often lies in mastering emotional wellness. This revelation is precisely what we unpack in our latest podcast episode, where personal tales of transformation guide you toward a more fulfilling existence. We dissect the art of emotional self-awareness, look into strategies for regulating emotions, and underscore the power of empathy and compassion in our interactions. With the right tools, such as mindfulness and deep breathing, expressing feelings becomes an avenue for growth rather than a roadblock.

This conversation is more than just an exchange of ideas; it's a lifeline for those seeking to anchor themselves amidst life's storms. Together, we explore how shifting our perspectives can turn the tides of our relationships and personal development. Our anecdotes serve as a compass, showing that even in the face of failure, there's a path to hope and emotional health. We also shine a beacon on the significance of communication, active listening, and the importance of leaning on a supportive network that includes professionals and clergy. Join us as we chart the course to a happier, healthier life, and prove that emotional wellness is a journey well worth embarking upon.

Speaker 1:

Welcome to the Will of Wellness podcast where we embark on a transformative journey through the intricate facets of health and well-being.

Speaker 2:

Join us as we explore the interconnected spokes of the wellness wheel, telling us about physical, mental, emotional, social, spiritual and environmental health.

Speaker 1:

Our experiences and insightful discussions will help empower you to achieve balance and harmony in your life, guiding you towards a healthier happier.

Speaker 2:

You. Get ready to spin the wheel and uncover the secrets of a fulfilling and well-rounded life.

Speaker 1:

We're back Wheel of Wellness podcast guys. I'm Dan, I'm Jenny. We really appreciate your time. We thank you for coming back to us Today. We're going to be going over another spoke of the wheel. We're going to be going over emotional wellness. It's a fundamental aspect in your overall well-being.

Speaker 1:

It influences how we think and feel and act in our daily lives. We have a lot of ways to deal with the emotions and attain a state of emotional wellness. When we do that, we can turn to the wheel of wellness. We all know that we've been covering the wheel of wellness, but just to backtrack, the wheel of wellness is a concept that incorporates different facets of our life into a comprehensive model for well-being. These facets include, for us, physical, emotional, social, intellectual, environmental and spiritual dimensions. In this podcast, we will primarily deal with the emotional dimension.

Speaker 2:

We do some of the dimensions, but there's actually up to 10. Just to be clear on that. For the first one here, emotional wellness. It involves recognizing, understanding and effectively managing your emotions. It's about achieving a balance between experience and expressing our feelings in a healthy and constructive manner. Let's delve into the various components of emotional wellness within the wheel of wellness.

Speaker 1:

The first thing I'm going to be talking about, as far as for your emotional wellness, is self-awareness. The foundation, the baseline, the bottom that you're going to build on is self-awareness. You have to recognize and acknowledge your emotions, and when you do that, that's the first step in understanding yourself. You know you have to see where you are and see how you feel, and acknowledge it. Self-awareness is crucial for managing stress, for building resilience and for fostering healthy relationships. It means being able to recognize and understand your own emotions, what triggers your emotions and how they impact your thoughts and actions.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so that regulation for emotional wellness. Once you're aware of your emotions, the next step is to actually regulate them. This involves techniques like deep breathing, which I'm terrible at mindfulness and meditation, like we talked in our last episode, and to manage intense emotions and reduce the stress. Emotional wellness involves the ability to regulate your emotions. This means having healthy coping strategies to handle life's challenges and setbacks, which we all go through. It also includes managing stress and preventing emotional overload.

Speaker 1:

You know, when that emotional overload you go back to the first one and the self-awareness, being able to say, hey, this, being able to acknowledge this is a time when I'm getting ready to freak out, and then obviously coming forth and being able to regulate that, being able to see that and have healthy coping strategies for that, that's amazing to be able to do that. Now with that once you go ahead and you figure out how to, be self-aware and you figure out how to regulate them.

Speaker 1:

You have to look into how to express them. You know, if you suppress your emotions, it can be detrimental to your wellbeing. We've all seen people that you know they hold in their emotions, they hold in their anger and all of a sudden they just explode.

Speaker 2:

Well, that was me, oh yeah, and then, of course, I fed off of that. So, boy, those were some fun days, so yeah, they were.

Speaker 1:

So when you're dealing with your emotional wellness, you have to be able to express it, and it encourages open and healthy expressions of your feeling, whether it's positive or negative. This can lead to improved communication and strong connection with others. I know it's improved our relationship.

Speaker 2:

Tremendously. And then you know the second one here is empathy and compassion with that. So understanding and empathizing with the emotions of others in another aspect of emotional wellness, it can enhance your relationships and contribute to more compassionate and supportive community, which I think you know, our relationship, we have gotten there.

Speaker 1:

finally, yeah, when we I know okay, they'll be into a personal area when I start dealing with anxiety and I recognize that I had severe anxiety I tried to express that to you. You really didn't understand it and that's not your fault, it's just you didn't have any education in it.

Speaker 2:

No, and I really. I look back on it now and think, wow, I should have really tried to educate and have more of an open mind about it For me. I just didn't recognize anxiety and didn't understand it. So therefore I just thought, well, he's just stressed out and he's just acting like a jerk, when really it's a true thing and people really do suffer from it.

Speaker 1:

I will say now, you do recognize what I was going through and you recognize how to help me with that. I appreciate that. So the compassion that you give me is wonderful and I will say that the empathy that you have is also amazing. But being able to effectively communicate, that you know. You have active listening, you have effective communication and they're essential in building and maintaining that healthy relationship. So just because you acknowledge it and you have sympathy for it, you have to be able to talk about it and that's the toughest part.

Speaker 2:

It is, and I think that's the communication and knowing how to speak to someone who's going through an issue, especially when you've never done it yourself. You've never been through it, so I didn't have issues with anxiety at the time. I think eventually ended up with some anxiety, but I didn't really recognize it, so it's hard for me to relate, which made our communication pretty unstable at that time.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, it did. But we've grown and we've gotten to a point now where we're better. I'm not going to say we're perfect.

Speaker 2:

No, but we are a lot better.

Speaker 1:

And that's been able to help us build what?

Speaker 2:

Resilience. So emotional wellness equips us with a resilience to bounce back from setbacks and adversity. It involves developing a positive outlook and ability to adapt to life's challenges. This is the hardest part is to become resilient. This is where we struggle. Most people struggle because life gets in the way and there's always challenges.

Speaker 1:

Oh, that's so true. You can acknowledge all these things down the line, you can be self-aware, you can go ahead and you can be able to regulate your emotions, you can be able to express them, you can be able to have compassion for them, but if you don't have the resilience to grow from it, then you're not going to be able to effectively just that be able to grow from it. So, now that we've talked about the connection between emotional wellness and the wheel of wellness, we should look at some steps to be able to some practical steps to be able to enhance everybody's emotional wellness. I think, personally, the first one is self-reflection, and that goes back to the first thing we're talking about being able to take time to be able to self-reflect, to better understand your emotions, your triggers and responses. One way that I've been able to grow with that is journaling and mindfulness practices. Meditation, that's a wonderful thing. Using breath work that's awesome. All those things can help in this process to where you learn more about your emotions, your triggers and your responses.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I think self-reflection is kind of hard, for I know for me it's hard. Nobody ever wants to look at themselves in some sort of con or negative way, right, but everybody has negatives.

Speaker 1:

Oh, it's not just that this isn't demeaning and aiming in any way whatsoever, but men have a real problem with this because they don't want to feel like showing weakness whatsoever.

Speaker 2:

And for me, I think some of the reasons I had issues with this with you is because I'm thinking to myself I married this strong man who can get you know he's my safety blanket right, and then all of a sudden I have to be your safety blanket, and it's hard to switch those roles sometimes.

Speaker 1:

You were definitely my emotional safety blanket, definitely.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. So to be able to look back and say, hey, I did this incorrectly and I have to self reflect on how I mean that's. That's part of the process in itself is finding the triggers and being able to respond, and it takes some time to be able to accomplish that. The second one here would be to seek support. So don't be afraid to seek support from friends, family or even a therapist. Sharing your emotions and experience can provide a sense of relief and connection. I think when you tried to seek support, I really didn't know how to support you, which made things a little bit more difficult. And it's good if you can, if you can talk to your spouse or you can talk to a friend that might be having those same issues. I know that, and for me, I don't necessarily I'm not able to open up to just a stranger, so a therapist for me might not work, but it could work for others.

Speaker 1:

The therapist is something that I think is a very effective thing. Just for the fact of when I went to you with what I was dealing with, it was like you said you were. You had preconceived notions of how I should be and what I was going through.

Speaker 1:

So a therapist is a third party person, whereas a therapist might be a good friend that just can take an outside perspective, look at things and be able to tell you okay, I understand what this is. Okay, I can go in and help try to mediate what's going on here.

Speaker 2:

And you know, with that, some people and you can do the flip side of this. So a therapist might be somebody you don't know that's going to be able to give you that third party. They have nothing involved in it other than sending their listening to you, right. So they're going to be able to be completely honest with you and not worry about how they word thanks to you but be very blunt on what's going on. Sometimes friends can't do that, or spouses.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, because the preconceived notions are there. We have self reflection, we have seeking support, and next thing we want to look at would be mindfulness. That's one thing that I talked about with self reflection, you know, meditation, deep breathing. That way you can do those when you're in retrospect, when you're dealing with a situation, but you work it enough times that you can do it in the face of your emotional challenges.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, this is something that I struggle with, which I've talked about many times, but I do think for you it worked wonders. You've really come a long way. What was the whole acrimony of catching the issue?

Speaker 1:

You had three C's. You had 10 seconds to catch that intrusive thought. You had to challenge it. You had to say, okay, this thought is not true, I'm not going to die here just because I'm in a stressful situation. They had to change that example.

Speaker 1:

Let's say I, this didn't happen. But let's say I got pulled over for speeding. Okay, the first thing is, oh my goodness, I'm going to get a ticket. Maybe I'll get shot because the cop doesn't like me or I do something stupid, and anxiety just flows. Okay, the first thing I do is I catch that thought this is a simple traffic stop. This isn't anything that's going to be out of the ordinary. Second thing I have to challenge it. Okay, this cop doesn't want to do anything stupid. I don't want to do anything stupid. Especially, you have to change it. When you change it, it's like, okay, this is going to be an effective stop. I might have to humble myself, might have to take that ticket and say, yes, I was speeding, but I took that entire process and I was able to slow down my heart rate. I was able to interact with the police officer effectively, I was able to reframe the entire situation. So you had the three C's.

Speaker 1:

You catch it you challenge it and you change it.

Speaker 2:

Yes, I'm glad that's just an example, because insurance is already enough money nowadays.

Speaker 1:

Everything's enough money nowadays. I swear, what you do all these things and it's going to build resilience, and resilience essentially is being able to bounce back from each individual episode that you have when you have to stress or work out the muscle of your emotional wellness.

Speaker 2:

Yep and then to cultivate positive relationships. This is going to be huge and be able to help you Nurture your social wellness by building and maintaining positive relationships and a strong support system can significantly impact your emotional well-being overall.

Speaker 1:

You know, that's when people are going through trying times. They're going through challenges, they're going through adversity, they're going through crisis. People always tend to try to distance themselves from others because they feel ashamed. They feel like the other person won't understand, they feel like they'll be judged. And this is where, if you're able to cultivate positive relationships, those people are going to be able to help you, they're going to understand and you're going to actually be able to be there for them as well.

Speaker 2:

And this is for everybody, not even if you don't have anxiety. This is good, because everyone needs a support system. It doesn't matter If you're a human being. You need a support system.

Speaker 1:

We know just by example, life and experience we are all going to deal with adversity, we are all going to have crisis, we are all going to have traumatic things happen in our life and if you have that group of positive people in your life, positive relationships in your life, that's going to be a great support system to have.

Speaker 2:

Absolutely.

Speaker 1:

Now, if we look at some practical applications right now, we can take all the things that we talked about cultivate a growth mindset by refraining negative thoughts into opportunities for growth. In my job I'm a probation officer I tell people when they first come in and see me in the initial interview your experience with me is going to be largely based on how you act towards me. This is all about you, it's not about me. People will come into my office and they'll have this negative attitude, which might be there for a reason. It might not, but they have this perception that I'm an evil person. I'm out there to get them.

Speaker 1:

I say listen, if you label this as a negative experience, you're going to set yourself up for negative things. You're going to go ahead and try and hide things. You're not going to be able to communicate with me. I'm here to try and help you. I'm here to try and help you be a better person for yourself. Not that they're terrible people, but they might have a little defect. In fact, they might have a misunderstanding about certain aspects of life, and I'm there to try and help them. If they come in and label it a positive experience, it's going to be better for them, it's going to be better. For me, it's going to be a relationship to where we can grow. Reframing negative thoughts is an important and vital part of having strong and vibrant emotional wellness.

Speaker 2:

Yes, I think for everyone that's listening, emotional wellness is key to happiness too. I think that will have that support system and to be able to catch your emotions and not freak out about things. That's going to help with your happiness and help with your health overall, definitely.

Speaker 1:

There's been so many times where I've recognized in the past where something would happen and I would totally freak out about it and then find out that I was totally mistaken about what had originally occurred. I'd be like okay, I made things 10 times worse by my reaction and jumping to a conclusion.

Speaker 2:

Then I would react in a negative manner and then we would be at it and there's no happiness in that.

Speaker 1:

There's no emotional wellness in that. That's so true.

Speaker 2:

Yes.

Speaker 1:

So work on your emotional wellness, cultivate the positive relationships, label things positively. There's so many different things that we covered here Self-reflection, self-awareness, mindfulness techniques. All of this is going to go ahead and help you grow that growth mindset and cultivate a vibrant and positive emotional wellness, part of the Wheel of Wellness for you.

Speaker 1:

So, emotional wellness is a very important part of our overall well-being, and the Wheel of Wellness provides a comprehensive framework for nurturing it. By focusing on our self-awareness, emotional regulation, empathy, stress management and resilience, we can embark on a journey toward emotional well-being. Remember that achieving emotional wellness is an ongoing process. It's okay to seek support from professionals or loved ones when you need it. You can also throw in your clergy, your pastors, your deacons, things of that nature. But ultimately, a balanced emotional life can lead to a happier, healthier and more fulfilling existence for you and those in your life.

Speaker 2:

And, trust me, we are the ones that have gone through this, and by experience, it definitely helps to have that emotional wellness intact.

Speaker 1:

I can say I have gone through this and failed at this.

Speaker 2:

Well, we have failed too, but I think now we're in a much better place, and that gives people hope. So hopefully.

Speaker 1:

Let's hope so. Well, hey guys, once again, I appreciate your time so much it's valuable. This is another spoke of the wheel emotional wellness. We appreciate you going on this journey with us and checking these things out. If you want to, you can reach out to us. We can try and communicate on the emotional wellness part of the wheel or just anything you want us to talk about. Reach out to us at our website, which is wwwwheelofwellnesspodcastcom. Got it that time.

Speaker 2:

Yes.

Speaker 1:

Email us, or also on Instagram and Facebook. Okay, guys, we appreciate your time. Until next time.

Speaker 2:

Yeah.