Emotional fitness – emotion regulation

Emotional fitness is the ability to enhance positive emotions, self-regulate emotions, and enhance one’s relationship to emotions by tapping into acceptance and mindfulness strategies. 

When emotionally aroused or triggered practice ‘opposite action’ to unhealthy solutions you normally engage in. 

Instead of avoiding situations or reminders of things you don’t want to think about, you can reach out to a friend and actually talk about those things. 

Instead of attacking someone when you’re angry, learn to take a break and talk about it later. Instead of putting yourself or others down, learn to let go of judgement. Give yourself permission to feel negative feelings. 

Emotions are normal and healthy and we must learn to be able to sit with them. 

Look up distress tolerance exercises and learn to build that tolerance. Negative emotions are signals that something is wrong, learn to take this information in to inform what you do. 

Learn mindfulness activities in which you learn to simply observe your emotions or thoughts, without the need to judge or act on them. 

Avoid avoidance. It is natural that we try to avoid things we fear. But avoidance only strengthens the fear. Instead learn to practice visualizing what you want to happen in the feared situation. 

Do some reality testing around your fears with trusted others. Think about a fear you have overcome in the past and how you did so. 

If you have had trauma, learning to share your story can help. You can journal or blog to work through past experiences. 

Increase your awareness of what is triggering for you and develop a plan of action for when you are triggered. 

Learn grounding skills. Get into therapy to deal with it if needed. 

Become aware of your self-talk and how it impacts your emotions. Then start changing how you talk to yourself to improve how you feel. 

Get creative as a means to express and process your emotions. It does not matter if you are good, what matters is the doing and enjoying.