Addressing Emotional Health

Emotional Health:

 

We live in a society  where everyone is always on the go. From parenting to coaching to school to cooking to working out to reading to mentoring to athletic teams to supporting friends to dinner with the family to sleep. Every minute of our day is literally on a schedule. 

But then...


When we do have a chance to rest; we feel bad for sleeping or occupy it with homework, hanging out with people, cleaning or completing all the chores and errands we just haven't had time for. We literally do not know how to sit still, rest and relax. 

However, we need rest. We need to take care of ourselves in order to take care of everything around us. Health is more than diet and exercise. It's a lifestyle. While the physical health is important; we can not correctly take care of our physical without the emotional health.


What is Emotional Health?  
According to Mental Health Foundation emotional health is defined as: 
"A positive sense of well being which enables an individual to be able to function in society and meet the demands of everyday life; people in good mental health have the ability to recover effectively from illness, change or misfortune."

How do I regulate my emotions?

Holly Nemec from Behavioral Health Response (BHR) and Robin House a school counselor from Stix Elementary came and spoke to our students about Emotional Regulation. Both professionals discussed how to regulate emotions for an every day life. According Nemec, regulation can be defined as "calm. focused or relaxed." It's a state where we can handle our every day life activities and the stressors in our life. Nemec described it as a window of tolerance.

What is dysregulation?
Nemec also described dysregulation as "the state of being out of the window of tolerance." We can see this when we are referred to being stressed out. 

 How to handle Stress?
Grounding- Grounding is a set of simple strategies to self-regulate, manage stress or detach from emotional pain. You can think of it as a distraction, centering, safe place, looking outward or health detachment (Truman Medical Centers).

Examples of Grounding (Truman Medical Centers)
Mental Grounding: helps focus your mind

• Count to 10 or say the alphabet slowly
• Describe your environment in details

Physical Grounding: means focusing on your senses

• Run cool water over your hands
• Stretch
• Focus on your breathing

Soothing Grounding: talking to yourself in a very kind way

• Say kind statements
• Remember a safe place
• Say a coping statement 

House and Nemec gave examples from their person life on how they handled stress and what they used to stress about when they were high school. They had a lot of barrier to overcome, but now they are both in fields where they are assisting other people to overcome their barriers. Both professionals brought different and educated outlooks on emotional health. 

HEC Upward Bound is very grateful for Robin House and Holly Nemec! 

HEC Upward Bound has taken a stance on learning and teaching about Emotional Health. We realize that our students deal with a lot of different situations when it comes to education and their lives outside of education.  Emotional health is not a subject that is taught often and if it is; there is a real basic knowledge of it. HEC Upward Bound hopes to provide the knowledge and opportunity for resources if the HEC UB Family needs it. Even if the HEC UB family does not exactly need it right now; we hope that you take the resource and know that you have it for someone else or for the future.