Gaining emotional well-being is inextricably linked with the emotional maturity of a person, but not all adults can be considered emotionally mature.
Signs of emotional maturity
Mature people stand out among others because they are successful in social relations and live in complete harmony with the outside world. They are distinguished by a benevolent disposition, a steady good mood, and a generous attitude towards others. They do not panic, are not inclined to submit to fears, and are not in prolonged melancholy. Emotionally mature people can also feel sadness, sadness, and other negative emotions, but they can cope adequately. Therefore, they are considered an adult, harmonious personality.
To determine how emotionally mature you are, answer honestly three simple questions:
- Are you safe?
- Are other people prosperous?
- Is the world around you safe?
Answers to these questions will help assess your emotional state and, accordingly, the level of your emotional well-being. If at least one of these questions you answered negatively, there is a reason to think about your emotional state. The answers to these questions determine the underlying emotions of a person. If you consider yourself a dysfunctional person, this is an alarming sign that may indicate the onset of depression.
If you find yourself a prosperous person, and other people dysfunctional, you elevate yourself above others or belittle other people and see your enemies in them. That can cause anger emotions on a subconscious level because you have to fight the enemy. If the world around you seem dysfunctional, it gives rise to other negative emotions: anxiety, the expectation of troubles or dysfunction, and the unconscious envy of those who have confidence in this shaky world.
A bit about emotions
We refer to emotions as states associated with feelings about satisfying or dissatisfying our basic needs. The primary emotions are anger, surprise, fear, joy, and sadness - these emotions are the same for all people regardless of their nationality, traditions, and culture.
Anger fills our muscles with energy and allows us to feel strength or adopt a defensive posture. In a state of anger, the body produces certain hormones that prepare us for action.
The surprise is a misunderstanding of a situation caused by a lack of information. With wonder, our eyebrows rise, and our eyes widen to see more and understand what is happening.
Fear for a moment causes numbness, in which there is an intensive outflow of blood from head to legs ("the soul goes to heels"), and the person first freezes in place and then tries to escape.
Joy causes a desire to jump, dance, and move to splash out energy created by a change in hormonal levels.
Sadness or grief causes a sharp inhibition in the body, a decrease in energy. Sorrow is necessary for some immersion in oneself: a person must turn away from the world and remain alone with himself to better think about it. If grief is caused by loss, then he must find solace for himself. We need such an energy reduction so that we can find wisdom at rest and plan something, and when the energy returns to us, we can begin to implement this new plan.
Our emotions are simultaneously controlled by the call of the heart and cold reason: the subcortex of the brain provides the emotional component, and the feelings of the cortex regulate. To achieve harmony, it is necessary to find a balance between these structures and make them work synchronously, but not everyone succeeds.
Four steps to emotional well-being
Step one: learn to recognize the feelings that we have.
If, for example, you are prone to anger or irritatedly react to a person ("he just infuriates me"), then you need to understand and realize this fact. An emotionally immature person denies such an emotion, and recognizing this emotion will be the first step to emotional well-being.
Step two: learn to control your emotions.
If you are angry, you need to deal with it. Otherwise, your anger can harm others and lead to unpleasant consequences. Once you understand what is happening to you and why you can choose the right solution to help calm your anger.
Step Three: Learn to Suppress Momentary Desires.
Control over impulsivity is another essential quality of an emotionally mature person. If a person is used to the fact that all his desires are instantly fulfilled, this can lead to emotional intolerance. If a person's emotion is not realized and does not cause a response concerning his needs, he begins to behave inappropriately and impulsively. For this reason, children need to be pampered with parental love, not gifts. If the child has everything except parental love, he becomes nervous and requires the immediate fulfilment of his whims. In adults, everything happens the same way, and mature people should understand this and control impulsive desires, including the urge to throw their negativity onto others.
Fourth step: learn to recognize other people's emotions.
You must learn to put yourself in the place of another person and understand what feelings he has: if the opponent has no aggression, then there is no reason to fight him.
How to calm emotions
Anger
One of the main ways to pacify anger is to change the beliefs that cause it (primarily its attitude to the world), and a peaceful solution. Try to understand that the world is not so hostile, and no one wants to harm you: perhaps someone pursues their interests and can negotiate with him without entering into conflict. Anger arises in disputes most often, and to calm it, you need to stop communication with the enemy for a while or be distracted by something pleasant. That will help kill the negative emotion, and then it will be easier to find a peaceful way out of the situation. I highly recommend playing sports for all angry people - they will help to discharge the energy accumulated for the struggle efficiently. But anger cannot be suppressed in oneself - it is fraught with hypertension and heart problems.
Anxiety
Various circumstances can cause tension, worries, and fear. That may affect their health. It can alert the phobia of returning the negative. That can cause obsessive thoughts: what if something inconvenient happens? If a person maintains such tension and frequently scrolls through a shocking situation in his nightmares, anxiety can become chronic. You need to learn not to worry and take trouble only as they arrive. To do this, you need to track situations in which anxiety most often occurs and identify its first signs. By figuring this out, you will understand what kind of conviction is behind your concern. Then you can abandon your usual "what if it happens?" and find arguments or facts of statistics that can refute this alarm (how likely is it to meet a maniac?). After this, you need to carry out the relaxation procedure: even breathing and conducting an autogenic training.
Sadness, annoyance
These emotions are sometimes called depression, but this is not true: depression is not an emotion, but a condition. The most dangerous thing in sadness is the appearance of thoughts about your worthlessness, the lack of life plans, prospects, or the motivation for your existence. To overcome this emotion, you need to start doing something. The simplest thing is to do the cleaning in the apartment: this simple job guarantees a quick result and will give pleasure upon its completion.
Sorrow
The grief needs to survive: it is a protective mechanism, and a person in this state only needs to cry. But there is also pathological grief that lasts more than a year: in this case, depression occurs - and then a person needs the help of a specialist.
Learn to feel well now!
