The Hygiene of Life: our pathway to happiness
To live a balanced life…that is a life of health, success, and happiness, we must think in terms of the full integration of the 6 dimensions of our personal life: our physical, social, emotional, intellectual/mental, occupational/financial and spiritual.
For the most part, we understand what it means to take care of ourselves in each area
· Physical wellness: How you care of your body - eat right, clean and exercise the body daily, get adequate sleep, take care of injuries right away.
· Social wellness: How you interact with others - create and maintain quality relationships with others, use healthy communication, boundaries and create a healthy support system.
· Intellectual/mental wellness: How you cope with the demands of daily life, greet and recognize reality and meet your desired level of intellectual stimulation - expand your mind with new ideas, concepts, and viewpoints, which lead to fresh understandings and opportunities to share your gifts with the world.
· Occupational/financial wellness: How satisfied are you at work and with your financial standing – create flexibility and make adjustments that relieve these stress points, find a work, family and leisure balance.
· Spiritual wellness: How connected and purposeful do you feel with a grand plan – be in harmonious relationships with other living things, establish a direction and purpose, connect to something that is larger than you. This includes living according to personal ethics, morals, and values.
· Emotional wellness: How do you feel inside? Learn to cultivate an awareness of thoughts, feelings, and behaviors and manage them in a healthy way.
This is the Hygiene of Life... Taking personal responsibility for the tasks that keep our life in order and on track.
Most of us are on a continuum in each area. Some days and years are better than others.
We all have a good deal of clemency for ourselves and others when we slide to the “not so healthy” end of any given area. We pardon and accommodate broken legs and cancer, menial or stress-filled jobs, mind-numbing media, and hobbies. As we drift thru life, we are not particularly alarmed when we find our self or others isolating from social events or being in debt. We are quite cavalier about other peoples issues. We assume they will figure it out….or they will find a resource to help them relatively easily.
It is common to be taught, either at home, in schools, clubs, and in faith groups, the basic and advanced skills needed in most areas of wellness…
Except for EMOTIONAL wellness...
To date, our emotional education is completely informal. We gather emotional cues and patterns from watching and listening to those around us, mostly from our original families. Their behaviors are the most deeply understood and cultivated messages, much more so that any graceful platitudes about how to act that they may speak or try to teach us.
When someone has emotional “failures”, displaying “negative” emotions for others to witness, it attracts bigger attention and causes bigger problems than in other wellness areas. Disruptive emotions can spill into, effect and, pollute anything going on in the other wellness areas.
Built-up stress levels and uninvited direct inter-personal pressure can cause our emotions to erupt into displays, behaviors, and patterns that cause harm to every other aspect of wellness in some way. Many times, emotional displays are not socially acceptable and we are expected to regain control of ourselves and make amends.
Historically, unless there is a clinical problem, there is no guidance or help to regain this control. We just shove down the feelings of the moment. Then later, we act out toward others or indulge in addictive behaviors to soothe the emotional beast.
But now we have EmRes!
Emotional Resolution (EmRes) is a simple protocol or set of steps, that is used to eliminate an emotional response, permanently. EmRes utilizes a natural process that resyncs the body-emotion-subconscious links to the “triggering”, howver safe situation.
Briefly, the subconscious mind senses that the current situation resembles a past disturbing situation or trauma. In order to prepare you, the subconscious mind predicts upcoming events and generates corresponding physical sensations that will be acted upon by the mind as emotions, anger for example.So now you are angry, even if the current situation was misread and anger is the exact wrong reaction to have at the moment. The cascading effect of anger is to blame the people and environment around us. So again, we try our best to control it by breathing, acting out, going to the gym, meditating, praying, shopping, drinking, etc.
But if we were to take the time for EmRes, either in the moment or later in a session, the link between the subconscious mind, the situation, and the emotion will be broken. That situation and very similar ones will no longer prompt the emotional need from the subconscious mind.
Ta-Dah—no anger.
EmRes doesn’t just work with anger. It works with every emotion that we consider negative, disruptive, disturbing or unpleasant. Fear, trauma, anxiety, PTSD, emotional blocks, separation, abandonment, paranoia, procrastination, inhibitions, and on and on.
It turns out that pleasant emotions like love, joy, happiness, etc, can’t get stuck like the unpleasant emotions. Our natural life is fueled by pleasant emotions and they keep us in a state of contentment and in an appropriate relationship with our current reality. If contentment is missing in your life, removing the negative and troubling emotions will restore it.
One of the great benefits of eliminating disturbing emotions is the mental clearness that comes with it. When you are no longer flooded with emotion, there is much more mental space to assess and find the reasonable and appropriate action to address the situation in front of you. Even though the new response takes the same amount of time, it feels like there is time for a pause to consider options, instead of just launching into improvised action. It’s a sweet deal.
EmRes can be employed in 30-minute sessions with a professional (https://www.emotionalhealthinstitute.org/practitionerdirectory) on the phone or in person.
You can also learn to perform EmRes for yourself, on yourself when in the moment of the emotion (https://www.emotionalhealthinstitute.org/sessions-and-training-for-individua)
Most people find a combination of sessions and self-EmRes works best.
Working on emotions develops its own priority. Usually, the big-stuff, the most problematic issues in your life are tackled first. What has come up for you in the last weeks and months? Those emotions are active in you now. They can easily be addressed with EmRes.
Going forward, other emotions and situations will come up to work on. And as the work continues, we get calmer and happier, finding joy and peace where it was absent before.
It’s a wonderful journey to undertake.
Emotional wellness spills over into the other areas of wellness in our lives: our physical, social, mental, financial and spiritual wellness will start to open up as well.
This is the Hygiene of Life: integrating all dimensions of our being into wellness. It is wellness that we all strive for, but that few can even imagine.
Are you ready to clean up your emotions?
Sue Siebens