Father’s Day Gifts That Keep on Giving
Fatherhood and history often repeats itself. I woke up this morning with an old Harry Chapin song from back in the 70’s playing in my head. The song is called “Cats in the Cradle” and the lyrics that stuck in my head and keep playing over again go something like this….
“My child arrived just the other day
He came into the world in the usual way
But there were planes to catch and bills to pay
He learned to walk when I was away
And he was talkin’ fore I knew it, and as he grew
He’d say, “I’m gonna be like you, dad
You know I’m gonna be like you…
I’ve long since retired my son moved away
I called him up just the other day
I said “I’d like to see you if you don’t mind”
He said, “I’d like to Dad, if I can find the time
You see my new job’s a hassle and the kids have the flu
But it’s sure nice talking to you, Dad
It’s been sure nice talking to you.
And as I hung up the phone it occurred to me
He’d grown up just like me
My boy was just like me.”
If I had known then (when I first heard those lyrics) what I know now, I would have understood that it doesn’t matter whether you believe you’ve had the best father in the world or the worst. Whatever story you tell yourself becomes your past, present, and future. What you believe is who he becomes regardless of who he really is. And, if you tell yourself something long enough it becomes a fact.
Sometimes it’s hard to separate the facts from the story we tell ourselves.
My bet is that at one time or another every son or daughter would have loved to have a father available 24/7, providing unconditional love and acceptance, and offering immediate forgiveness. Fathers like that don’t exist simply because we are human.
So unless and until you CONSCIOUSLY choose every moment of the day who YOU want to be and become that instead of doing your best NOT TO BECOME who your father is, was, or has done, then fatherhood and history will repeat itself for more than just one generation.
That said I’d like to ask you ask this question…
If you are spending your life doing your dead level best not to be, do or become who you believe who your Father is, was, or what he has done wouldn’t it be better to just BE WHO YOU ARE INSTEAD?
What I do know now that I’m sharing with you today is this.
Regardless whether you believe you had the BEST FATHER or the WORST FATHER ever YOU have the option to decide how to show up and BE WHO YOU ARE in your relationship with your father.
Unconditional love and acceptance, forgiveness, and the gift of time with you are four gifts you can give BOTH yourself and your dad on this Father’s Day AND every day throughout the year.
Those gifts will instantly, dramatically, and irrevocably transform your relationship with your dad. And, will ensure that history repeats itself in a powerful, positive, and profound way. Relationships are like a boomerang. What you give comes right back and has the potential to transform generations.
Stress Relief- The Challenge and the Journey
It’s not surprising that stress relief, a state or condition most of us desperately seek, continues to elude us.
We simply don’t have time to find it.
Too many demands and too little time prevent us from discovering the real truth about stress relief. WE ARE the reason we can’t find it.
That is, until we get the unexpected “wake-up” call.
That call often presents as… a personal health crisis… the death of a loved one.. the break-up of a marriage or friendship… the termination of our job… a crisis involving one of our children… or a global crisis like 9/11 or Hurricane Katrina.
And…. if we’re lucky…somewhere in the midst of the “wake-up” call…we WILL wake up and remember…
Remember that…
We have a Choice and a Responsibility to reclaim our life… our health… and our time.
When we CHOOSE to reclaim ourselves, reclaim our life, and our health….
When we CHOOSE to be and do what matters most to us…achieving stress relief is less than a heartbeat away.
Continuing to live our lives in “default mode”….rushing around at breakneck speed…ignoring or overriding our internal guidance system…
GUARANTEES…we will soon receive a ”Wake Up” call…and life as we know it will never be the same.
Health and Emotions-Are Your Emotions Making You Sick?
As medical science struggles to understand the direct correlation of the mind-body connection, it is becoming more apparent that our emotions can choreograph the interaction the brain has with every cell of our body, and vice-versa. What is recently coming to light is that the condition of our emotional health and our overall emotional well-being play a direct role in our mental, emotional and physical health. While a poorly functioning emotional state can have a debilitating effect on the body and create illness, ailments and disease, optimal emotional health can provide an active role in the healing process.
Emotions Control Our Immune System
Clinical studies are showing the effect emotions have on the nerves, hormones and molecules that connect the brain directly with our immune system. This connection from the body to the brain can signal the immune system and make us much more vulnerable to many types of illnesses. Additionally, the immune system has the ability to send signals to the brain that directly affect the way we handle our emotions. The ramification of this single understanding plays an important part in the treatment of chronic diseases and treatable maladies.
Emotions Play a Key Role in Brain Development
Research has demonstrated the direct role our emotions play in developing the adolescent brain. It is now known that during the most intense major phase of brain development, in adolescents, the onset of most critical adult health problems such as bipolar disorder, psychosis, depression and anxiety are developed. Many of these health problems are directly related to the risk
of many physical disorders including diabetes and the disruption of the immune system.
Creating an Overall Psychological Well-Being
Emotional health and mental health are in direct correlation with our overall psychological well-being. The overall health of our psychological well-being would include specifically the way we feel and think about ourselves, our level of self-confidence, the quality of our intimate relationships, along with our ability to cope with our emotional feelings and how we deal with
specific life’s challenges.
Quality mental health is not specifically defined as the absence of mental health problems, but of course that would be included.
Emotional and mental health are better described as being free of anxiety, depression or some other type of psychological condition. Rather than looking at it as a negative, or an absence of mental illness, it is better to think of emotional and mental health as positive characteristics. “Feeling good” is not a direct correlation of “not feeling bad.”
Positive physical and mental health, along with a sense of emotional well-being would include those individuals that have a sense of contentment, along with the ability to laugh and have fun. An individual who lives with the zest for life, has the ability to bounce back from any type of adversity, and has the capability to handle stress would be described as someone
with optimal mental and emotional health.
Luckily, our optimal emotional and mental health is not defined as never having to experience emotional problems or tackle hard times. Through the role of emotional resilience we are given the chance to overcome sadness, stress and anxiety to live a healthier life.
3 Tips to Improve Your Emotional Health and Well-being
Most men and women are very aware of whether they have optimal emotional health and well-being. They know if their thoughts, behaviors and feelings are appropriate, and if they have the mechanism required to cope with the stress of daily living. Whether they have a good sense about themselves, they know whether they are healthy or not.
Coming to Terms with Our Emotional Health
Every one of us, at some point in our life, has to deal with fear, anger, worry, depression, stress and anxiety. These strong emotions can have an enormous impact on the quality of our mental acuity, physical health and the state of how we interact with the important relationships in our life. Typically, the state of our emotional well-being displays itself at critical times in our life when intensive challenges present themselves and require us to deal with them directly.
When We Hit a Brick Wall
Some of these intensive challenges show themselves when we have been laid off from a job, a child of ours is leaving or returning home, or when we have dealt with the death of a loved one. We may have gotten divorced or married, received a
job promotion, suffered an illness or injury, experience ongoing money problems, had a baby or moved into a new home.
How to Improve Your Emotional Health and Well-Being
When intensive challenges present themselves, you realize you need to improve your emotional health and well-being to center ourselves to effectively manage your emotions and handle them in an appropriate way. 3 tips for improving your emotional health and well-being include the ability express your feelings and behaviors in an appropriate way, live a balanced life and develop quality emotional resilience.
Expressing Your Emotions in Appropriate Way
Men, more than women, have the tendency to hold emotions of sadness, anxiety or stress deep inside themselves, which typically makes them feel them stronger. Women tend to discuss, loudly or softly, the stressful situations and anxiety they feel, directly at loved ones when anything is bothering them. However, it is important to remember that friends and family are not always the suitable choice to help you deal with all your emotions and feelings in an appropriate manner. It might help to use an outside source to assist you in gaining insight about your situation and seeing it from a different perspective.
Living a Balanced Life
Harboring intensive negative feelings usually does not provide an environment for positive feelings. No matter what negative aspects you are dealing with directly, there are positive things that exist in your life too. Focusing on the positive as a balance to the negative can help you move through most any situation more gracefully and help bolster your emotional, mental and physical health.
Developing Quality Emotional Resilience
Whether you believe it or not, you hold great emotional resilience deep within yourself, and are a capable individual with the ability to cope with most any type of stress in a healthy normal way. Your emotional resilience can be strengthened using different strategies including keeping a positive attitude about yourself, searching for social support, accepting the inevitable change and keeping things in their correct perspective.
Living a quality life is about how you look within yourself, and at the world around you. Understanding the highs and lows
that will happen over the arc of your entire life will help you keep things in perspective and improve your emotional health and well-being.
Toxic Emotions -The Impact on Your Health
When you avoid dealing with specific toxic emotions, you can create a negative dramatic impact on your health. Just like detoxifying your physical body, it is important to eliminate the toxic effects on your emotional health. Even when faced with your toughest emotions, such as the ones that have seemingly taken over your life, you can improve the quality of your emotional, spiritual, physical and mental health.
What Are the Toxic Emotions?
The main toxic emotions most individuals will experience at some time in their life include sadness, hurt, hopelessness, fear, anger, shame, hate, pride, greed, jealousy and guilt. Just some of the sensations individuals feel include blame, helplessness, self-pity, regret, embarrassment, humiliation, loneliness, desperation and regret. They may also have a sense of self blame, false responsibility, insatiably, self-righteousness, emotional hunger, better than thou, possessiveness, envy, resentment, bitterness, meaningless, vengefulness, panic and anxiety.
Are These All Unhealthy?
Our feelings are like most things we experience in life, in that it is not bad for us unless we have too much. While it is natural to experience shame, anger, pride and jealousy, and others, it can be all-consuming and devastating to our emotional health if we cannot express these emotions in their proper form.
Natural Steps to Releasing Your Toxic Emotions
There are very basic and natural steps you can use to release the toxic emotions you harbor deep within yourself. These include:
- Identify Your Emotions – At the time you experience emotional turmoil, it is important to find that space inside to ask yourself, “what am I feeling right now?” The answer may be betrayed, hurt, happy, sad, upset or whatever. Dealing with it immediately, is one way to prevent the toxicity from building up from the emotion you are experiencing.
- Take Responsibility – The biggest way to heal yourself of the harm caused by emotional toxicity is to take responsibility for how you feel over any situation. Through responsibility you can correctly interpret what is happening and respond accordingly.
- Feel the Feeling – You are certainly aware that all of your emotions are felt in your physical body. These sensations you feel are the physical way you embrace your emotions. Experiencing the physical sensations can allow the emotionally charged impact of the situation to naturally dissipate.
- Express Yourself – Consider writing down your emotions and feelings or saying them out loud in a private location. Describing, or talking out in private, each situation or event that has a negative impact on your soul and heart actually diminishes its emotional toxicity. Journaling or writing down in a diary any emotional experience is great way to gain insight.
- Get Physical – Nothing releases toxic emotions like doing physical exercises, breathing deeply, getting a massage or dancing like no one’s watching. Releasing tension is a natural way to release the toxins from an emotional event.
Once you have survived the precipice of releasing your toxic emotions, treat yourself in celebration. Your reward will be an acknowledgment to the commitment you made to release all the past grievances you harbor deep inside yourself. The impact on your health will result in a positive one.
Post Traumatic Stress Disorder – An Emotional Response to Trauma
It is a natural reaction to have an emotional response to the everyday events in your life without suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. After any type of traumatic experience, it is typically normal to feel sad, anxious, disconnected and frightened. For some of those individuals who experience trauma, the feelings can fade in time, allowing the individual to start living life normally again.
However for others, the sensations of their intense feelings are too overwhelming, keeping them firmly rooted in the experience. The disorder showers them with the constant perception of immediate danger, filled with the painful memories that simply will not go away.
The Cause of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder
Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is a very real set of mental emotions and physical reactions that usually develop after one has experienced a traumatic event that either threatens their safety, or others, making them feel helpless. We often think of all PTSD as coupled with military combat from battle scarred soldiers. However any overwhelming life experience has the ability to trigger Post Traumatic Stress Disorder especially when the life threatening event makes the victim feel the situation is uncontrollable and unpredictable.
Generally, any traumatic event can lead to Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, but specifically can include war, car crashes, terrorist attack, natural disasters, the sudden death of someone you love, kidnapping, assault, rape, physical or sexual abuse, and child neglect. Additionally, it is not uncommon for anyone experiencing some type of disturbing event to experience PTSD, if only for a short while. The symptoms are typically very short-lived, maybe lasting just a few days or weeks until they naturally lift away.
Extended PTSD Symptoms
The larger arc of PTSD affects not only the person who experienced the major event, but also those who might have witnessed it, along with the individuals that are there to help put the pieces back together. This would include family members, social workers and even the emergency staff at the hospital.
The Normal Response to PTSD
Generally, typical sufferers who react to any trauma are not aware that their body and mind are experiencing shock. Rationally, your mind begins to make sense of all that you witnessed, or experienced, allowing you to process your emotions and find your way back out of it. With Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, the mind and body of the individual stays locked in a psychological shock, keeping them feeling disconnected, and unable to face their painful memories of the event.
PTSD Signs and Symptoms
The most common symptoms and signs of PTSD are shared by nearly everyone include the re-experiencing of the specific traumatic event that is causing the disorder. Additionally, the individual works hard to avoid any reminders of the traumatic event, and has increased level of anxiety and emotional arousal. Many of the symptoms include upsetting memories, nightmares, flashbacks, extreme distress and intense physical reactions to any reminder. They may also experience avoidance or the inability to remember an important aspect of the event, feeling detached and showing a loss of interest.
There is help for PTSD, in that individuals can release themselves from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, especially when treated early. As the medical world works to understand this disorder, it has expanded the treatments they offer to help those that suffer the emotional response to trauma.
Emotions and Health-Are Your Emotions Making You Sick?
As medical science struggles to understand the direct correlation of the mind-body connection, it is becoming more apparent that our emotions can choreograph the interaction the brain has with every cell of our body, and vice-versa. What is recently coming to light is that the condition of our emotional health and our overall emotional well-being play a direct role in our mental, emotional and physical health. While a poorly functioning emotional state can have a debilitating effect on the body and create illness, ailments and disease, optimal emotional health can provide an active role in the healing process.
Emotions Control Our Immune System
Clinical studies are showing the effect emotions have on the nerves, hormones and molecules that connect the brain directly with our immune system. This connection from the body to the brain can signal the immune system and make us much more vulnerable to many types of illnesses. Additionally, the immune system has the ability to send signals to the brain that directly affect the way we handle our emotions. The ramification of this single understanding plays an important part in the treatment of chronic diseases and treatable maladies.
Emotions Play a Key Role in Brain Development
Research has demonstrated the direct role our emotions play in developing the adolescent brain. It is now known that during the most intense major phase of brain development, in adolescents, the onset of most critical adult health problems such as bipolar disorder, psychosis, depression and anxiety are developed. Many of these health problems are directly related to the risk of many physical disorders including diabetes and the disruption of the immune system.
Creating an Overall Psychological Well-Being
Emotional health and mental health are in direct correlation with our overall psychological well-being. The overall health of our psychological well-being would include specifically the way we feel and think about ourselves, our level of self-confidence, the quality of our intimate relationships, along with our ability to cope with our emotional feelings and how we deal with specific life’s challenges.
Quality mental health is not specifically defined as the absence of mental health problems, but of course that would be included. Emotional and mental health are better described as being free of anxiety, depression or some other type of psychological condition. Rather than looking at it as a negative, or an absence of mental illness, it is better to think of emotional and mental health as positive characteristics. “Feeling good” is not a direct correlation of “not feeling bad.”
Positive physical and mental health, along with a sense of emotional well-being would include those individuals that have a sense of contentment, along with the ability to laugh and have fun. An individual who lives with the zest for life, has the ability to bounce back from any type of adversity, and has the capability to handle stress would be described as someone with optimal mental and emotional health.
Luckily, our optimal emotional and mental health is not defined as never having to experience emotional problems or tackle hard times. Through the role of emotional resilience we are given the chance to overcome sadness, stress and anxiety to live a healthier life.
The Physiology of Emotions-How & Why You Feel What You Are Feeling
The Interconnection of Mind and Body
Many medical doctors, social workers and doctors of philosophy understand that there is a direct correlation between the body and the brain and vice-versa. Once thought that the mind was harbored in the brain, they now understand it actually exists in the communication network throughout the entire body. It is not simply a mechanical expression, but a consciousness manifestation that exists at the cellular level throughout the body and in the brain.
It has only been in the last few decades or so that we have looked at the mind-body as connected entities. We now know that the neuropeptides that are secreted from the endocrine system and immune system have a constant interaction with receptors within the brain. This two-way connection provides a level of communication that is only now being understood.
The Link between Matter and the Mind
In describing the physiology of emotions, experts are quick to note that emotions are the nexus between the mind and matter. Our emotions are actually a cellular signal that is involved in a convoluted process of translating information between the brain and every cell of the body and influencing both systems.
Listening to Our Gut
It is not an imaginary dream that we feel our emotions in our gut. Deep inside our intestinal tract we have a myriad of receptors and neuropeptides that fire off when we experience “butterflies” in our stomach. Our “gut instincts” are a product of our emotional reasoning, and serve to work in unison with our intuition.
Creating a Response
Additionally, our thoughts can create a physical response immediately in the body. Like a woman in labor using controlled breathing to reduce her pain during childbirth, her body produces a high level of endorphins, simply by doing a physical act of altering her breathing. It is also true that merely thinking of food can create your mouth to salivate. The deliberate act of a thought or feeling can create an immediate physical change in the body.
Ready for Anything
While we might think some of our emotionally-spurred physical responses as negative, they all serve a function in helping us survive in our environment. As far back as humans have existed, our reaction to fight or flight, fear, anger, anxiety, worry, and depression has instantly called our nervous system immediately into action. Our pulse may quicken, our breath may shorten, or we may begin to tremble. We may have the instant desire to run away, become anxious or lash out in anger.
Our emotions might bring on grief, regret, or heart ache which will significantly slow down many of the functions of our body. These are all survival mechanisms that help us stay alert when we need to, or give us rest if that is what the body and mind demands.
The physiology of our emotions makes us who we are, define our personality and create the environment to help us communicate effectively with everyone and everything we will ever meet. Effectively managing our emotions will develop optimal emotional health and provide us the opportunity to live a happier and more joyful existence.
A List of Emotions-Which One Do You Feel the Most?
In the world of emotions, there is an enormous list that all humans are capable of experiencing, throughout every day in everything we do. However, women and men tend to limit our emotions to just a few. By narrowing the boundaries of our emotions, we tend to set boundaries of our emotional health and create a limited emotional well-being. The same few emotions often include love, happiness, anger, anxiety, stress, relaxation, and confidence.
Making Our Life’s Experience More Colorful
However, the more emotions we can feel, the more we can open up our life’s experiences and the more colorful our world can be. Instead of labeling certain emotions in major categories, instead we should be defining specific emotions, to remove the limitation of the experience of what it is we are feeling. This simple adjustment in the way we think can improve the quality of our life by experiencing the emotion to its fullest, whether good or bad.
Expanding Our Definitions
As an example, imagine the last time you felt “Happy”. Was a really happiness you were feeling? Or, did you feel Glad, Delighted, Joyful, Elated, Thrilled or Exhilarated? Let us look at another example. Last time somebody did something kind for you was their service “Good”? Or, was it Adequate, Great, Excellent, or Sublime? See the difference?
By specifically defining what emotion you were actually feeling, you will naturally change the overall experience. Experiencing an event that made you feel “joyful” is better than “happy”, and experiencing something that is exhilarating is the ultimate feeling of the event, at that moment.
Changing a Negative to a Positive
By specifically defining our emotions to exactly what they are, we stand a better chance of altering the emotional energy it creates, especially if it is something that is doing us harm. If we experience anger, fear, worry, or anxiety, and specifically define it for what it is, instead of “I feel bad,” we can effectively manage that emotion and find a way to reverse it. Determining specifically what you are worrying about or feel anxious about allows you to take responsibility for it, improve it, and change the negative feelings into positive ones such as happiness and joy.
We Are What We Think
Our emotional health not only determines the effective state of our consciousness (such as sorrow, fear, hate, stress and anxiety), they can also create physiological changes. In turn, our emotional well-being helps form our cognitive state, or how we perceive and understand things. It also affects our volitional state of consciousness, or the things that we are willing or intending to do.
In effect, even against our will, we become what we think. The result of that makes it all that much more important to maintain a high quality level of emotional well-being. Next time you begin to generalize exactly how you feel, think about a list of emotions that are better descriptions of what you are truly experiencing. The little “tweak” you make in describing the event and how you think about it can expand your life’s experiences and make your existence all that much richer.
What Is Emotional Health?
What Is Emotional Health?
A well-balanced emotional health and well-being is the positive condition of feeling emotionally strong and able to tackle the many challenges in our daily life. Every man, woman, boy and girl has at times felt the struggle in maintaining a good positive emotional well-being. There are many external and internal conditions that can affect our emotional well-being, which can fluctuate between happiness and joy to sadness and despair, every month, week, day and hour. How we handle these internal and external forces will determine our emotional resilience and affect the quality of our existence.
Recognizing an Unhealthy Emotional State
Just like we deal with our physical health by eating right, exercising and taking care of our body, so too do we need to make sure that we effectively manage our mental health. Certain mental health issues, such as worry, depression, addiction, bipolar disorders, anger, stress and anxiety can wreak havoc on our mental acuity, our decision-making process and how we handle the situations that appear in our life each day.
Taking Control of Our Emotions
Maintaining an emotionally healthy state requires us to manage our everyday issues including altering our bad habits, keeping and maintaining friendships, working on our personal intimate relationships, dealing with good and bad stress along with expressing our individual creativity. Any action we take to promote healthy emotions has a direct positive impact on the quality of our physical health, and how well we age. Taking the time and energy needed to nurture both our physical and mental health can improve the quality of our life, to live a more happy and joyous day-to-day experience.
Achieving Optimal Emotional Health
Understanding how to optimize our emotional health means that we need to pay attention to the overall level of our happiness and well-being. It means maintaining the control over our emotional feelings and deepest thoughts. Individuals who have a healthy emotional and mental health are extremely resilient when facing many of life’s challenges. They are people that have found a way to express their individual creativity and the way that they positively connect socially to others.
The Power of Positivity
Certainly one of the most important tools for maintaining optimal emotional health is the power of staying positive. Positivity differs from optimism in that thinking positive in the face of all situations can be used as a tool to effectively manage the health of our emotions. Optimism sometimes places responsibility away from ourselves, and takes away the control we need to manage our mental health.
Everyone meets challenges in life that tests exactly how emotionally healthy they are. Even faced with the impossible, we have the ability to maintain positive emotions in finding contentment with the past, understanding the happiness we can find around us and hope in the future. Recognizing the positive traits we have within us including resilience, curiosity, integrity, compassion, knowledge, creativity and most importantly, encourage, will help us stay focused on maintaining quality emotional health.
In your search for “what is emotional health?” it is important to seek the evidence of happiness that exists inside yourself, and the ability to effectively manage and nurture your well-being. Once you begin to focus on the joys in your life, your emotional health will naturally heal.
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