What do we really mean when we talk about emotional health? Everyone feels some degree of emotion all the time. Sometimes we feel an intense emotion such as rage or passionate love, sometimes a much milder emotion such as boredom, a slight depression, or quiet cheerfulness and contentment.
Emotional health means a balance among our emotions. When we are in good emotional health, we feel we can generally live with our emotional ups and downs. They do not get in our way to any great extent, or make it hard for us to lead our everyday existence.
To put this more clearly, emotional health means that we are not unduly troubled by ongoing conflicts among our emotions-feelings that pull the individual in many directions at once. We all get into emotional conflict from time to time-because of problems with our family, friends, teachers, or spouse; because of difficulties with our careers, our academic environments, or our communities; or because of other pressures that bear down on us. Some of this conflict comes from opposing forces within us: The bachelor in our story is torn between love and fear of commitment.
Some conflict comes from forces in the environment: The student is being increasingly pressured by his school assignments. If we can resolve most of these conflicts within a reasonable time and go on living our lives more or less as we want to, then we are probably in good emotional health. If we can`t resolve our conflicts, then we need to take steps to help ourselves.
Some conflict comes from forces in the environment: The student is being increasingly pressured by his school assignments. If we can resolve most of these conflicts within a reasonable time and go on living our lives more or less as we want to, then we are probably in good emotional health. If we can`t resolve our conflicts, then we need to take steps to help ourselves.
Reference :
Marvin R Levy, Mark Dignan, Janet H Shirreffs, Essentials of Life & Health, Fourth Edition, Random House, New York, 1984.
