Emotional Dimension | Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center

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Emotional Dimension

Emotional Wellness

Recognizing and accepting a wide range of feelings in ourselves and others, including the productive management of those feelings and related behaviors in the face of adversity.

Strategies: 

  • Acknowledge your value and worth
  • Practice self-compassion and avoid perfectionism
  • Journal your thoughts and feelings
  • Be aware of your self-talk; strive to keep it positive and hopeful
  • Share your struggles and if needed, seek professional assistance

Tips for Emotional Wellness:

  1. Periodically “inventory” your emotions by asking yourself, “What am I feeling at this moment?” and “Why am I feeling that emotion?”  Expand your feelings vocabulary with a resource like “Plutchik’s Wheel of Emotions”.

  2. Be aware of your self-talk since what we tell ourselves becomes our reality.  Challenge your “inner critic” and ask for “receipts” (i.e., evidence of its accuracy) when your self-talk is really negative.

  3. Avoid imaginary stress which results from ruminating about the past or worrying excessively about the future.  Learn from the past and plan for the future, but live in the present to be emotionally healthy.

 

Easy-to-Use Self-Care Practices:

Mindful student relaxing in chair

Mindfulness
  • Our minds are always full of chatter, including rumination and excessive worry, which trigger our brain’s stress response.
  • Mindfulness consists of observing a single phenomenon (e.g., the breath) with compassion and acceptance, thereby quieting the chatter. It looks like this: Focus --- lose focus --- gently refocus.
  • Returning focus trains the mind to reduce chatter.  Effective mindfulness practice can require as little as 5 minutes, 5 days per week, but if necessary, start with just 1-2 minutes each day. Consistency is key!
  • Research has shown many physical and psychological benefits from mindfulness. The latter include:
    • Increased positive emotion and well-being
    • Improved emotion regulation
    • Decreased rumination
    • Improved attention
    • Increased self-compassion
Intentional Breathing

Our breath is a direct pathway to the autonomic nervous system.  Through altering the type, rate, and ratio of breath, we engage the vagal pathways that influence heart-rate and messages sent to the brain.

  • Voluntary regulation of breathing often improves symptoms of anxiety and depression, and slower breathing with prolonged exhalation increases parasympathetic activity.
  • Here is a tool you might find useful as you voluntarily regulate breathing:
    Sync Your Breathing:
Practicing Gratitude

Our brains naturally and routinely scan for bad news, in the world and within us. This “negativity bias” is designed to ensure our survival, but it activates our stress response and has many negative consequences.

Practicing gratitude (i.e., counting our blessings) counteracts our negativity bias. The benefits include:

    • Reduced inflammation in the body
    • Lowered blood pressure
    • Improved mood 
    • Increased optimism and generosity
    • Improved sleep (if done at bedtime)

Consider keeping a “gratitude journal” in which you write down and routinely review your blessings; record two a day and see how long you can keep the list growing!

Student writing in journal

Strategies: 

  • Acknowledge your value and worth
  • Practice self-compassion and avoid perfectionism
  • Journal your thoughts and feelings
  • Be aware of your self-talk and strive to keep it positive and hopeful
  • Share your struggles and if needed, seek professional assistance