​Emotional Health: Definition + 19 Tips

Before talking about the strategies you can use to boost emotional health, it can be helpful to create your own working definition. So ask yourself these questions to get a better sense of what it would mean to you to be emotionally healthy.

1. Which emotions do you want to experience more of?
2. Which emotions do you want to experience less of?
3. Which do you struggle most with: changing your thoughts or changing your behaviors?
4. What aspects of your emotional health would you most like to improve and why?

There are no right or wrong answers to these questions. It can just be helpful to know where you are now and where you’d like to be so that you can better map out the steps to get from here to there.

Although people may disagree about which aspects make up emotional health, here are four key aspects worth thinking about. Ask yourself how you are doing with each of these aspects to get a better idea of where you stand. For more tips and a personalized report, take our well-being quiz.

1. Self Love – How self-critical are we and how sensitive are we to rejection?
2. Openness – Are we willing to try new things and accept people as they are?
3. Communication – How good are we at communicating our needs and navigating the world?
4. Trust – How trusting are we of others?

If we are not aware of who we are, how we feel, or why we do things, we have a harder time living our lives in ways that are good for our emotional health. So it can be helpful to spend time in self-reflection. Try to better understand what pushes your buttons and what brings you joy. Then build the skills you need to think happy thoughts and engage in behaviors that make you feel good emotionally. 

I’ve done quite a bit of research on stress because I’ve struggled a lot with stress in my life. I not only have the dreaded COMT gene mutation, which makes it difficult for my body to remove stress hormones, I also have several other genes that increase stress in my body (get your emotional health genes tested here).

Long story short, a few years back all this reached a boiling point and I developed significant stress-related illnesses. No amount of relaxation and de-stressing was enough to fix it. I had to get these stress hormones out of my body and prevent them from returning—I had to do a stress detox. But nobody talks about stress like this so it took me a long time to figure out what really works. Check out my stress detox if stress is what is harming your emotional health.

Judging ourselves harshly or thinking negative thoughts about ourselves is especially problematic for emotional health. In fact, self-acceptance is pretty much essential for happiness and optimism (Oltean, Hyland, Vallières, & David, 2019). So, try to go easy on yourself. Challenge negative thoughts and consider using positive affirmations like, “I love myself for who I am”. Fight back against perfectionism and work to develop skills like self-compassion.

Reappraisal is an emotion regulation strategy where we reinterpret a negative situation in ways that make us feel better. Poor reappraisal in the context of stress can contribute to higher levels of sadness and depression (Garnefski et al.,2002). But the good news is that reappraisal is a learnable skill. You can practice reappraisal by actively thinking about the positives when you encounter tough or negative situations. Practicing this strategy regularly can help you improve this skill and grow your emotional health.

Gratitude is good for your emotional health. In fact, the more gratitude we feel, the happier we tend to be. And there are so many ways we can boost our gratitude. For example, having a gratitude journal is a great way to keep gratitude lists and note down the things we appreciate and are thankful for (Kaczmarek et al., 2015). We can also write notes or letters of gratitude to others or collect things, like ticket stubs or momentos, that make us feel grateful for our experiences.

When we get stuck thinking about something distressing over and over again then we are stuck in a rumination cycle. Rumination is horrible for our emotional health and is often thought to be a key contributor or component of depression. Luckily, there are some techniques that can stop these cycles. 

First, recognize that thinking the way you have always thought is easier than thinking new thoughts or in a new way. It’s not your fault, but if you are a ruminator, your brain has been wired to keep ruminating. And as you probably know, simply willing your brain to stop is futile.

A better strategy for stopping these thoughts is to force your brain and your body to focus on other things. Two of the best ways to do this are by taking an ice-cold shower or going for a high-intensity run. Your body then redirects its energy to your muscles and activates other biological processes that help you short-circuit your negative thoughts.

To savor, drum up positive emotions. You can do this for the past, present, or future. For example, try thinking about a good event you experienced. Then try recalling all the positive things about that event. Now try to focus on the good things in the present moment. Hold onto any positive emotions you’re able to drum up.

Next, try thinking about something you’re looking forward to. It can be something big like a wedding or something small like being done with your workday. Again, try to hold onto these positive emotions for as long as possible. By savoring, we can bring more positive emotions into our lives and boost our emotional health.

Meaning and purpose in life come from many things. By bringing more of these things into our lives, we can enhance meaning and boost emotional health. Some of the things we can work on are living by principles or personal values, having clear intentions for how we want to live, and viewing our life as interesting or engaging (Morgan & Farsides, 2009). Doing these things may not always be easy, so start with what is easiest and go from there.

Knowing our strengthens and weaknesses can help us make good decisions for how to achieve our goals and improve our emotional health. We can use our strengths to get our needs met, we can work on improving our weaknesses to overcome obstacles, or we can do both. That’s why knowing our abilities and where we stand is so important.

If we’re having a lot of negative emotions, we may tend toward avoiding or suppressing them so that we don’t have to feel or deal with them. Unfortunately, shoving down our emotions is bad for emotional health.

Emotions are natural things that arise to motivate us to engage in behaviors that are good for us. Sadness motivates us to rest or seek out comfort. Anger motivates us to make changes in our lives. And anxiety motivates us to avoid danger. Letting these emotions exist and serve their purpose is okay. Where it gets tricky is when we’re creating extra negative emotions with negative thought patterns or negative behaviors. But our negative emotions need to be allowed to exist so we can work through them.

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