Assessing our own emotional health can be a valuable tool for getting to know ourselves more deeply and lead us toward living more authentically happy lives.
Looking at Self- Love, Trust, Candour and Communication can be a useful place to start.
Self- Love
Would you say you’re a friend to yourself? There can be many situations in life where we can lose our self- confidence. We might meet somebody new and start to feel inferior or question the quality of ourselves or what we have. Another person may put us down or humiliate us and we can be left feeling devastated and internally agreeing with them. We may stay in abusive relationships believing it’s what we deserve. We may find it difficult at work to apologise due to fear of admitting a mistake.
Trust
Can we trust the world that we live in? Catching colds, everyday travel, financial stability, meeting new people, romantic relationships, confrontations. How do we navigate our way through life? Can we trust how others will react to us or us to them? Are we able to live and communicate authentically, finding happiness, or do we fear that our worlds are simply not safe enough, forcing us to live inauthentically potentially unhappy lives?
Candour
Are we honest with ourselves about who we really are? Do we allow ourselves to explore and accept our most difficult thoughts and ideas? Exploring each dark corner of our minds, without having to look away, can we admit to ourselves that we sometimes feel jealously, sadness or hatred? Or do we prefer to deny these aspects of ourselves, simply finding such thoughts too unpleasant, maybe ignoring potentially valuable learning experiences because they feel too much like painful attacks.
Communication
We may find it difficult to calmly express our disappointments, so that others are able to understand, instead choosing not to speak and keep our frustrations in, or let it out in a seemingly unproductive rage. When others upset us, we may feel that our right to communicate is taken away, so retreat and slam a door for good measure. Then when the other person doesn’t react how we hoped, we may again feel unable to communicate our feelings and reactions. Hoping they can guess what we felt so upset or angry about. We maybe don’t have the emotional resources to understand that others aren’t trying to be nasty in misunderstanding us?
All of these can be valuable questions and situations to ask ourselves, privately within personal development and journaling or explore further in therapy. Helping us to ask ourselves more deeply and empathically, deepen our self trust and help us communicate more effectively within ourselves and the world around us. Guiding us to live more authentically happy lives.