Emotional wellbeing

Emotional well-being is also incredibly important in order to reduce stress. I have an example from my own life, from 2009, when I suffered through longer depression, when I was in between positions at work. I got stuck in my own head, I started thinking bad about people, expecting them to be able to read my mind to really know what I felt like, but I never told them. I never told them that I was feeling bad and that I was being depressed.

Whenever they asked: how are you? I said, I’m fine. And I accused them of being bad people, bad friends. And that made me feel isolated. That made me feel alone. And somehow I wanted to feel alone. I wanted to feel bad. I felt like I deserved to feel bad about myself. During that time, I slept incredibly poorly. My stress levels were really high, even though I didn’t have any work to go to. Of course, that insecurity didn’t help, like, what’s happening next? But it got me thinking. I’ve always been a person who thinks a lot about my behavior, that goes into my into myself and considers my own behavior, and what I should do with things.

I’ve also been a person who suffered from low self-esteem my entire life, and been able to reason with myself in a way, why do I feel like this? Should I really feel like this? Why is this happening? And somehow there’s always been a conflict between my feelings or my heart, and my mind that should know better.

And, I learned a few things during this time. This time, it ended after a while when I basically just threw it all to the wind and said, I’m going to confront some people. So I sent emails to five people I respected. I really hoped that they would get really angry or defensive and accuse me of being a bad person or whatever. They didn’t, they were really good people. They invited me to paint their house or invited me for dinner. That was what I needed back then. But,

it was a difficult time, and breaking this and being able to break this with the help of my friend was incredibly important. And communication was the key for doing that, and also understanding why do I feel like this? Why did I react like this? Why do I want to feel bad about myself? How do I break this spiral? Back in the day I was also addicted to World of Warcraft, and I would cry myself to sleep because I didn’t accomplish anything in the evening. I would jump up and down a box in Stormwind; that is one of the capitals in the game. And I would do nothing for five hours, and it was terrible. But I was addicted.

And breaking this bad behavior and doing something else was the key to get out of that. So to reflect upon my situation.

Identify your emotional reactions to certain things. Why did I react the way I did? How do I want to react? How do I make this different, how do I react differently next time? Can I get help from someone? Can I react differently if I just confront someone, or clarify something? Maybe there’s a misunderstanding that made me think about things, that maybe get me paranoid and go in a tangent with my thoughts.

And in the end: how can I react differently? Who can help me react differently? And by doing that, I would feel better about myself. I would engage in activities that built me rather than put me down, and I would tell people, the closest people, have I felt so they could support me and build me up. Do that in your own life, and maybe you also can feel better about yourself and reduce your stress levels and emotional well-being.