What is emotional hygeine? Life without any emotions can be pretty dull – you need a little light and shade in life to really appreciate the good times. Also emotions are important – they help you understand where your life is out of balance and give you an indication of what you need to do about it (see https://www.yourempoweredself.co.uk/feelings-unravelled/). Left unchecked though, they can wreak havoc and create emotional baggage: a burden which can have far-reaching consequences.

What is Emotional Hygiene?

So, what is emotional hygiene? It’s about taking care of your psychological health. Just as you would take care of your physical health by eating well, exercising and seeing the doctor when there is a problem. Or you could even compare it to tending your garden – removing weeds, cut back what is overgrown, sowing seeds to create new growth and watering and feeding to keep it at it’s best. By tackling things as you go along, the little things don’t become the big things and you have everything in perspective. Not only that, but challenges become part of your personal growth rather than personal pain.

Emotional hygiene isn’t the same as ignoring your feelings. That just creates a build-up of toxic emotions. Feelings such as failure, anger, rejection and hurt can become toxic if they are simply buried away. This, in turn, can cause bigger problems and can even be expressed in health conditions.

Ask yourself, are you sowing the seeds of emotional hygiene or emotional toxicity?

6 Strategies for Emotional Hygiene

So, in order to enjoy the positive effects of emotional hygiene, and, in turn, self-esteem, practice the following:

Be conscious of what you say to yourself. Negative self-talk is like piling emotional toxicity onto an already difficult situation.
Learn to listen to your feelings (see https://www.yourempoweredself.co.uk/feelings-unravelled/). Emotional awareness and understanding are paramount to emotional hygiene.
Learn to respond to your feelings appropriately – such as setting boundaries with someone if you are angry. This prevents the build-up of emotional baggage.
Learn Emotional Freedom Technique. This is a healthy way of processing your emotions without suppressing them or expressing them inappropriately. I give detailed instructions in my book Ultimate Energy. And you may want to watch the demonstration on my YouTube channel (see the link at the top of the page).
If you do have emotional baggage that you have been carrying around for a long time, it helps to see a professional to neutralise it. This is an area I do a lot with my clients and the results can be enlightening and freeing.
Practice self-hypnosis. The kind that I teach incorporates the benefits of mindfulness, meditation and hypnosis. It’s easy and it’s effective. Call me on 0345 130 0854 to find out more,

Problems Caused by Poor Emotional Hygiene

Without emotional hygiene you can store up issues and find yourself reacting out of proportion to a situation.

Or feeling cut off from your emotions which means you feel cut off from people.

Poor emotional hygiene can cause problems with self-esteem, emotional reactiveness, relationships, career and health.

It can lead to or fuel anxiety and depression.

Benefits of Good Emotional Hygiene

When you practice good emotional hygiene, the benefits are many, including:

Problems seem less significant, don’t last so long, are easier to deal with and become less frequent.

You feel happier, more confident, stronger, are easier to live with’

You are much less likely to have unhealthy coping strategies like comfort eating, or drinking to deal with stress.

Your relationships are likely to be healthier’

Most probably you will enjoy greater career success.

You will feel liberated.

What now?

Regular use of these strategies will help you with your emotional hygiene. As always, it can really help to have a 1:1 to go deeper and help you develop strategies personal to your situation. In addition, if you want to learn how to do self-hypnosis, do call me on 0345 130 0854 or get in touch here to find out more.