Emotional Wellness is Creating Space

Emotional wellness is not a destination. It is not a goal. It is not an achievement and it is most certainly not a 'nice to have' or something to have at all. Emotional wellness is harmony, not discipline. Discipline is only a component of harmony. Emotional wellness is vast and it challenges you to exist in expansion, finding comfort in the only constant this journey has to offer, change. To live emotionally well is a state of being. It is having the user manual for your spaceship and actually using it. Let's take a few steps back and ground ourselves in what we know emotions to be and the normalized response to them.

Our emotions can be piercing, intense, uncomfortable, wildly euphoric, or heavy. Most of the time, it is when they shake things up internally that we notice them at all. This is how insensitive we can be to ourselves and the energy that is flowing through us without emotional wellness. But our emotions are just that, energy flowing through us, or trying to. When our emotions are trapped within us, this energy is absorbed by the body (muscles, nervous system, gut, mind, heart, etc.) and until it is released, our body finds ways to cope with this excess energy.

The body is designed to handle stress in this way but there are limits. Just because the intensity of the emotion has passed doesn't mean that the emotion has been released and that it is gone. In fact, when we don't intentionally process our emotions for whatever reason we only put more stress on the body to absorb the energy trapping it within us. This causes symptoms such as fatigue, headaches, constipation, negative thoughts, anxiety, aches and pains, higher levels of stress hormones, irritability, impatience, stomach aches, irregular periods, the list goes on.

Has anyone ever taught you that to be emotionally well you have to create space for your emotions, lean into them, explore them, and process them to allow the flow of their energy through you in a healthy way? Did you know that this process can take anywhere from a day to years depending on the emotion and circumstance? Did you know that even during this process you may lose yourself and find yourself again? Did you know that you don't have to experience your emotions in real-time to process them?

We created a method of processing your emotions at SenterME called Keep It R.E.A.L. and while it has proven to be effective and more importantly, useful, there is a preliminary step to keeping it R.E.A.L. Creating space for yourself or even noticing that space is needed to begin with is a solid preliminary step. When you are always on the go, value time, value convenience, and value getting things done this is a huge ask and I recognize that.

But what if I told you that a daily habit of creating space for your emotions and state of being could result in greater enjoyment of your time, increased patience, and increased quality of your expression and how you get things done? How can creating space for your emotions just to acknowledge their presence do all of this? Our emotions have one job and that is to teach us more about ourselves. When we create space for our emotions, we are creating space for ourselves. When we create space for ourselves, we learn more about who we are. When we become more aware of ourselves, we strengthen our ability to respond to emotions in a healthy way.

Creating space for our emotions is the structural element of emotional wellness that is essential. Whether it be journaling or meditating daily inviting our emotions to a safe space helps you to build trust with yourself and this trust is powerful. When you trust yourself, you maintain and enforce boundaries, you invite healing, you encourage confidence, and you grow more comfortable with change. Reflecting, expressing, accepting, and letting go is dependent on you creating space for yourself and your ever-changing nature. It can be scary opening that door to yourself and not knowing how long will the experience last, how painful will it be, or if progress is even happening. The thought of creating space for your emotions can be triggering itself.

Creating space for yourself is no cakewalk, it is the climb up, it is slow, and it is humbling which is the process of the real you surfacing. It is worth it because you are worthy of the life that is well.

Here is a journal prompt that can help you get started:

In this moment I am creating a safe space for the emotions that went unnoticed and/or unaddressed this week. This space is free of judgment and vast in acceptance. The emotion I feel surfacing is...

Remember to be patient with yourself and if you need to dump first, do so. This helps clear the path for emotions to surface as well.

Are you interested in learning how to live emotionally well? Do you desire easy access to stress relief? SenterME is gearing up to deliver a platform designed to create a clear path to emotional wellness and stress relief for women professionals. Not only will you learn emotional wellness and grow to build a personalized stress management system you will also have access to a community of like-minded women who desire to get the best out of their journey creating space for themselves and daring to explore it.

Join the waitlist today to be the first to experience emotional wellness with SenterME.

Join Waitlist