Is Your Emotional Health Neglected? (+Journal Prompt)
Consider these two scenarios:
1) Your kid comes home to you with a black eye and a cut up lip.
2) Your kid comes home saying her classmates were mean and ended up eating lunch alone.
Perhaps you might react differently to the two situations.
Most of us know that we have an emotional side that inevitably comes out from time to time. We’re happy to see our friends. Our coworker is being an ass and we feel outrage. There is an accident on the road, and we are stressed. We often live believing that this is the full scale of our emotional landscape- the bursts that happen from time to time.
Because it is not visible, it is harder to recognize its enormity and the impact it has on us. This makes it harder to give it as much importance as the physical. Perhaps that’s why we might be more inclined to get more alarmed and prone to act upon the first scenario in comparison to the second.
We might also be more inclined to set aside time to get into the gym and spend money on expensive workout gear, versus setting aside time to spend with ourselves to reflect on how we are feeling. We often just don’t put the same importance on the emotions, leading to its inevitable neglect. Just to be clear, when neglected it doesn’t go away. It is still ever present, manifesting in distressing ways, until we are ready to listen with compassion. More on this on a coming blog.
In one of the most significant books on my healing journey, “Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving”, Pete Walker dedicates an entire chapter called “What if I was never hit?”, helping us understand that the same amount of pain and trauma can happen on an emotional level. Sometimes the effects are even more devastating because it’s hard to understand the gravity of hurt that can happen that are invisible, making us deny to ourselves or even to loved ones the pain we are in.
While physical health is important, today I wanted to bring awareness on the not-so-visible aspect of our health. A lot of us weren’t taught to consider it, so here it is: an invitation for you to spend a moment checking in on how you’re doing. You deserve it. If you don’t know how to do this, I have provided journal prompts below for you to write about somewhere.
Advocating for your inner self,
Chickadee 
Journal Prompts to ponder:
