There’s increasing awareness around personal care these days — and it’s just as vital that we apply the same attention to our emotional health. Your ability to regulate your emotions is an integral part of your overall well-being.
Being emotionally healthy doesn’t mean you’re happy or positive all the time — it means you’re able to acknowledge your feelings and process them effectively.
But don’t let this simple description fool you — the journey to better emotional health requires effort and dedication and a willingness to overcome obstacles, which are inevitable. You’ll need to break free from bad habits and cultivate the discipline to establish new ones. You may have to let go of what feels easy to embrace what’s truly good for you — and you may need help along the way.
In Dealing with Feeling: Use Your Emotions to Create the Life You Want, bestselling author and Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence director Marc Brackett delivers an actionable guide to improving emotional health, showing us how to harness our emotions — the good, the bad, and the complicated — to create positive change and transform our lives for the better.
One crucial lesson Brackett demonstrates in his new book? To improve our emotional health, we must also care for our physical body. Though we often “trick ourselves into believing that the mind and the body are totally separate entities” (page 195), that isn’t the case. Physical health is directly linked to our emotional well-being. In particular, three lifestyle factors — regular exercise, good nutrition, and restful sleep — play a critical role in brain health and therefore impact our emotional well-being.
Ready to learn more about these lifestyle factors to improve your emotional health? Excellent. Let’s dive in together!
1. REGULAR EXERCISE
We all know that exercise is beneficial for our health. Your doctor tells you at every checkup, and, of course, an entire fitness industry exists to encourage you to get off the couch and into the gym. But with all the photogenic fit-fluencers vying for your attention on social media, it’s easy to forget that exercise is beneficial for your mind as well as your body.
Brackett reminds us that while exercise improves our muscular and cardiovascular health, it is also vital for our brains. Physical activity has been shown to help reduce depression and anxiety and to boost our mood through the release of endorphins, serotonin, adrenaline, and dopamine. There’s also evidence that working out can decrease the risk of developing Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia.
Even exercising in small doses can help us feel better fast — take a break from answering emails to stretch your legs and move your body. “After just five to ten minutes of exercise,” Brackett says, “there is a mood-enhancement effect that makes unpleasant emotions decrease, pleasant ones increase, and our ability to respond to stress improve” (page 202).
Even better? These positive effects last for up to 24 hours after exercise is completed.
So, step one to improving your emotional health? Integrate exercise into your daily life. If you’re feeling overwhelmed by finding the right time and place to work out, don’t sweat it. You don’t need an expensive gym membership to get your body moving. Any form of exercise — from morning walks around the block to cleaning the house or mowing the lawn — plays a role in emotion regulation and will benefit you. When you strengthen your body, you’re also strengthening your mind.
2. GOOD NUTRITION
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You are what you eat, as the saying goes, so it’s no surprise that eating well is part of being well. Brackett breaks down the ways that our diet impacts our emotional health, from the importance of carbs to the science of hunger signals, and he advocates for balanced meals and mindful eating.
When we pay attention to what we’re eating, we’re doing ourselves a full-body favor. And if the idea of yet another complicated diet plan has you looking for the exit, consider Brackett’s five simple nutritional tips for your emotional health:
- Carbs matter – A healthy and happy brain requires stable levels of glucose in the bloodstream, without massive spikes or dips.
- Fats matter – Certain fats, such eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) and docosahexaenoic acid (DHA), lower inflammation and have been shown to help people with depression and mood disorders.
- Intestines matter – The microbiome found in our gut is “the source of half of the body’s supply of dopamine” (page 206), the neurotransmitter responsible for feelings of pleasure and reinforcing positive behaviors like exercise.
- Water matters – Dehydration exacerbates emotional distress and can trigger stress reactions in the body, which hinder emotion regulation.
- Feelings matter – Emotional eating is very real, and when we turn to food to combat stress and anxiety, we rarely reach for the healthy stuff.
It’s not just about what you eat, but how you eat. Brackett encourages us to eat mindfully and with intention by removing distractions during meals. Put away the phone, block off the time in your work schedule, and allow yourself to savor your food and listen to your body’s signals as you eat.
Step two, simply put: Eat well to fuel your brain and boost your emotional regulation.
3. RESTFUL SLEEP
Remember back in kindergarten when we complained about nap time? We had no idea how good we had it.
As adults, many of us struggle in vain to achieve a good night’s sleep. It’s a valuable goal to pursue: Sustained, restful sleep plays a crucial role in improving our physical well-being and emotional health.
Sleep is when our brains refresh, recharge, and shake off mental fatigue. The less sleep we get, the more difficult it is to function effectively during our waking life. As Brackett says, “improper sleep hygiene causes the body to react as if it’s constantly under stress” (page 214). If our bodies are flooded with cortisol and we experience perpetual anxiety and irritability, it’s no wonder we struggle to understand our feelings and react to them appropriately.
Getting a good night’s sleep isn’t necessarily easy, though. It can be hard to stick to a healthy bedtime regimen, even when you’re already lying down. Brackett offers a wealth of advice in his new book on fostering better sleeping habits in your own life, including helpful dos and don’ts:
- Do power-down and say good night to your devices — phone, computer, TV — at least an hour before your head hits the pillow.
- Do incorporate slow, deep breathing exercises into your wind-down routine.
- Don’t sneak snacks before bedtime, and try to eat your last meal of the night three to five hours before bed.
Step three? Prioritize restful sleep. Give your brain the time it needs to recharge and reset. Your morning self — and your emotional well-being — will thank you for it.
Our body and mind are intertwined, and the health of one benefits the well-being of the other. If we want to improve our emotional health, we must get our bodies on board, and Dealing with Feeling is an excellent resource to guide us on that journey. As Brackett tells us: “If we don’t look after how we move, eat, and sleep, then our ability to deal with feelings — our own and those of other people — will be impaired” (page 196).
