Dis­placed anger, sor­row, or fear can be dis­as­trous to health, caus­ing high blood pres­sure, heart at­tacks and more. Re­la­tion­ships can al­so be af­fect­ed by con­flict, ten­sion, and dis­con­nec­tion. Learn­ing to ef­fec­tive­ly deal with emo­tions, on the oth­er hand, can put you in a po­si­tion to make good de­ci­sions, proac­tive­ly com­mu­ni­cate your needs, and be more ap­proach­able and aware of what’s go­ing on around you. It may al­so fos­ter im­proved re­la­tion­ships and solve com­plex prob­lems.

Here are some tips to help with emo­tion­al heal­ing:

First, you must be your­self. This means ask­ing for what you want, set­ting bound­aries, hav­ing your own be­liefs and opin­ions, stand­ing up for your val­ues, wear­ing the clothes you want to wear, eat­ing the food you want to eat, say­ing the things you want to say, and in a hun­dred oth­er ways be­ing you and not some­one who is false.

Part of our na­ture as men re­quires soli­tude, alone time, and a sub­stan­tial, rugged in­di­vid­u­al­ism. How­ev­er, this isn’t the whole sto­ry of our na­ture. We feel hap­pi­er, warmer and bet­ter; we live longer and ex­pe­ri­ence life as more mean­ing­ful if we love and let our­selves be loved.

Noth­ing caus­es more emo­tion­al dis­tress than our thoughts. Thoughts that do not serve you well is the equiv­a­lent of serv­ing your­self emo­tion­al dis­tress. On­ly you can get a grip on your mind; if you won’t do that work, you will live in dis­tress.

We are not com­plete­ly in con­trol of our be­ing that we can pre­vent past, sore points from re­turn­ing. They have a way of pes­ter­ing us as anx­ious sweats, night­mares, sud­den sad­ness, and waves of anger or de­feat. Nev­er­the­less, we can try to ex­or­cise the past by not play­ing along with our hu­man ten­den­cy to stay there. We must tell our­selves to move on and mean it. As best as you can, try to let go of the past.

Ram­pant anx­i­ety ru­ins our bal­ance, colours our mood, and makes all the al­ready hard tasks of liv­ing hard­er. There are many anx­i­ety man­age­ment strate­gies you might want to try—breath­ing tech­niques, cog­ni­tive tech­niques, re­lax­ation tech­niques - but what will make all the dif­fer­ence is if you can lo­cate that “in­ner switch” that con­trols your anx­ious na­ture and de­cide that you pre­fer to live more calm­ly by flip­ping it to the off po­si­tion.

by Arnold Best