Coping with Emotional Challenges on the Daily

Coping with emotional challenges is something you’ve probably had to do more than once. It’s tough going through a week full of emotional rollercoasters that makes you nervous and keeps you up at night. Whether it is because of work, important personal decisions, your family’s health, unforeseen expenses…

The reasons may vary, but the feelings we get from it are usually always the same: anguish, unease and discomfort. How can coping with emotional challenges be done successfully and adequately? We’ll give you some tips that will help you face those situations that make you anxious.

Coping with emotional challenges – how to properly do it?

If you know how you usually react to certain types of events, you’re in luck; that way, you’ll be able to choose if you actually like that reaction or if you’d want to change it. If you don’t know or can’t infer what your reaction will be in a determined moment, pay attention and seek into your memory lane to gather clues.

For example, when your boss yelled at you, what did you do? Did you continue on with your work or did you yell back at him? Did you vent with your co-workers? The answer will give you clues as in how you could react to a specific event during emotional challenges.

Let’s put out other examples: if your child failed two subjects, would you ground them right away? Would you enroll them in personalized classes? Would you yell at them? According to your attitude to their lack of responsability, you’ll get an idea on how you’d react in similar situations. This is all a matter of self-observation and self-knowledge.

Count to ten and breathe

It may seem obvious, but we don’t do it as much as we should. You don’t need to count out loud and breathe exaggeratedly: it’s important to remember that everyone uses a different approach when coping with emotional challenges. It might even be better for you to just get up and look out the window for a few seconds!

The most important thing is for you to be able to control your nervousness. The anxiety peak follows a normal distribution, meaning it reaches a maximum that lasts relatively little. If you manage to overcome your anxiety and not adopt elusive attitudes, the feeling of anguish will gradually diminish.

Laugh and have some fun

A joke, a comedy show, a funny situation – look for something that makes you alleviate that internal discomfort and allow yourself to escape for a while. Positivism isn’t forbidden during emotionally challenging times, quite the opposite! Advocate for it and embrace fun, love and gratitude. These are great ways to charge your body with positive energy.

See also Laughter: Good for Your Health

Keep up with your schedule

Keeping a schedule and doing things inside your weekly routine can be benefitial. For example, if you know Friday is going to be a stressful day, it’s best if you stick to your routine as much as you can so that you don’t feel overwhelmed by the amount of choices to make.

An adequate diet and sleeping schedule

Eating chocolate ice cream while sitting on your couch for hours might be common in movies, but it’s not the kind of attitude you want when coping with emotional challenges. Everything you eat has an effect in your body, and getting a sugar rush will not improve your coping strategies.

On the contrary, you might feel amazing at first (the tryptophan in chocolate makes us segregate serotonin), but it’s a short-lasting effect. You’ll probably end up feeling worse because your mood hasn’t changed, it was just disguised shortly.

Sleep as much as you need and consume all the nutrients that your body requires, especially vitamins and minerals. Don’t saturate your body with empty calories.

See also Healthy Food and Recipes for your Heart, Mind and Body

Evaluate the difficulty of the situation

We all perceive events differently. One of your kids might feel nervous at family reunions because they’re not into being social, but you might love them. These differences are vital and should be taken into account.

Knowing your frequent reactions is linked to evaluating the difficulty of the situation. Does this event paralize you? Does it make you upset or uncomfortable? It’d be amazing if you really estimated how important each event is and how they affect you on the daily. If it prevents you from continuing with your day to day, perhaps it’s time to incorporate more emotional control.