How Emotional Awareness Can Improve Your Mental Health
- May 5, 2022
- 6 min read
Updated: Sep 4
The complexities of our emotional world can often feel overwhelming, leading many of us to simply push our feelings aside. However, ignoring emotions isn't a long-term solution and can have significant negative effects on both our mental and physical health. It's time to understand why confronting your emotions is a crucial step toward a healthier, more balanced life.
Why is emotional awareness important for mental health?
Emotional awareness is essential for mental health because it allows you to process your feelings instead of suppressing them. This practice can reduce stress, improve relationships, and increase self-esteem by helping you understand your boundaries and needs. Learning how emotional awareness improve mental health can support this process in meaningful ways.
If you’re ready to learn how to cultivate a deeper connection with your inner self, keep reading. We'll explore the hidden reasons you might be ignoring your emotions and provide actionable strategies for building a healthier emotional life.
It is not healthy to ignore your emotions.
Emotional awareness can improve mental health because feeling, identifying, and processing your emotions is better than stuffing them away. You may be tempted to not process your emotions for multiple reasons. Whatever the reason may be, ignoring your emotions does more harm than good.
Why You Might Ignore Your Emotions
There are many reasons why you might ignore your emotions or choose to not deal with them. Growing up, you might have been taught that showing emotions is a sign of weakness. You also might have been taught that showing any emotion is bad, that there is only one acceptable way to express emotions, or that in order to “keep the peace” you need to hide your true feelings. This is nothing to be ashamed of, and there is still time to unlearn what you were taught before.
Another reason why you might ignore your emotions is that you had to put them aside for survival. Vulnerability seemed like a liability. This might have been proven to you by a negative experience with vulnerability in the past, or situations where you felt that emotions negatively affected your judgment.
In those moments of survival, you might not have been able to take the time to process the emotions felt during those survival moments. After the fact, that you still have not had time to process those emotions and out of habit, you have begun to ignore emotions even when things are safe and stable.
How Ignoring Your Emotions Affects Your Mental Health
Regardless of why you have not been able to connect with yourself emotionally, it can take a terrible toll on your mind and body. Ignoring your emotions can contribute to your stress levels, raising your blood pressure, disrupting sleep, and causing fatigue. Those who do not process their emotions, especially after experiencing trauma, can develop PTSD symptoms.
If you are not aware of your emotions you might struggle to relate with others on a deep level. This can cause feelings of isolation. You might also not honor your own boundaries because you are not aware when you feel uncomfortable, afraid, or violated. This can negatively impact self-esteem and personal identity.
When ignoring your emotions, you might form unhealthy coping mechanisms such as self-medication in the form of substance misuse, overworking, or over-exercising. Perhaps you overeat or undereat as a way to deal with emotions. You might even self-harm or develop suicidal thoughts as a way to escape your emotions. It can be easy to spiral when emotionally unaware.
Emotional Awareness Improve Mental Health
Developing emotional awareness can lessen the effects mentioned above tremendously. It reduces stress, raises self-esteem, and allows you to develop healthier relationships, process emotional experiences, and have an earlier awareness of when you may need help. Understanding how emotional awareness improve mental health can support this process in meaningful ways.
Emotional awareness can also help you develop a healthier sense of self. Your passions, motivations, and values are wrapped in your emotions. By knowing how things make you feel, you know what you care about. This allows you to not only honor your boundaries, but develop a more complete perspective of your place in the world.
Being aware of your emotions also opens the door to better self-care. Your body and mind are interconnected. If something is wrong with your body, if a need is not being met, your emotions will indicate that something is wrong. You might get cranky when you are tired, angry when you are hungry, or anxious when you do not feel safe. Knowing and owning these feelings can help you take better care of yourself and meet these needs.
How to Be Emotionally Aware & Emotionally Intelligent
This practice allows you to sit with yourself uninterrupted and really feel in your mind and body. Mindfulness exercises like yoga, tai chi, and meditation can allow you to slow down and process the day. Mindfulness allows you to catch each thought and emotion that comes, honor it, and then let it go.
Journal
There are many different types of journals you can start to help you gain a better understanding of your emotions. You can write about your day and how you felt. You can use a journal to track your mood throughout the day, and what caused that emotion. It can also be used as a venting space to get out the negative feelings that are plaguing you.
Talk Therapy
Talking about your emotions with another person can be very helpful. A therapist can help you connect where emotions came from, teach you healthy coping mechanisms, give you a space to talk about your problems, and enable you to work through solutions.
Develop Deeper Friendships Through Emotional Honesty
You might be afraid to be emotionally open with your friends. Although, emotionally shallow friendships can only cause feelings of isolation and even resentment. If you are in a romantic relationship, you might lean on that one relationship for emotional support, which can lead to codependency and fatigue. It is healthier to have a support system of many people you can talk to when things become difficult.
Name Your Emotions
It might feel silly, but the best way to increase emotional awareness is to name the emotions as they come. Your emotions might come at you fast, and before you know it, you feel overwhelmed. Take time to slow down, name how you feel, and accept that it is what you are feeling.
Another important thing to do is to own your emotions, without judgment. Shame can cause people to disregard their feelings. You might feel like your emotions are wrong, given the situation, but the truth is that people have complicated responses to things. Recognize your emotions, understand where they are coming from, and own them.
Frequently Asked Questions:
• Why might someone ignore their emotions?
People might ignore their emotions because they were taught that showing feelings is a sign of weakness or because they had to suppress them for survival in difficult situations.
• How does ignoring emotions affect a person's physical health?
Ignoring emotions can raise stress levels, increase blood pressure, disrupt sleep, and cause fatigue.
• What are some unhealthy coping mechanisms that can result from ignoring emotions?
Unhealthy coping mechanisms can include substance misuse, overworking, over-exercising, overeating, or undereating.
• How can I become more emotionally aware?
You can become more emotionally aware by practicing mindfulness, journaling, engaging in talk therapy, developing deeper friendships, and taking the time to name your emotions.
• Why is it important to name your emotions as they come?
Naming your emotions helps you slow down and accept how you're feeling, which prevents you from becoming overwhelmed and allows you to own your feelings without judgment.
If you or a loved one are struggling to process emotions and feel the weight of these challenges, we want you to know you don't have to carry that burden alone. At Chateau Health and Wellness Treatment Center, we've created a supportive and compassionate environment where we can work together to explore emotional awareness and develop healthy coping mechanisms. Our team is dedicated to guiding you on a journey toward healing and well-being. We invite you to take this important step with us. Please, reach out to our team at (435) 222-5225—we are here to help.
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About The Author
Ben Pearson, LCSW - Clinical Director
With 19 years of experience, Ben Pearson specializes in adolescent and family therapy, de-escalation, and high-risk interventions. As a former Clinical Director of an intensive outpatient program, he played a key role in clinical interventions and group therapy. With 15+ years in wilderness treatment and over a decade as a clinician, Ben has helped countless individuals and families navigate mental health and recovery challenges.
