Emotional hygiene – what is it and how can you tend to yours?

Cutting through all the confusing trends is a gentle reminder on how to treat ourselves with kindness, and keep up the little things that make us happy. 

While sleep hygiene takes the online world by storm, it is met with its counterpart, emotional hygiene. Both promote the idea of mindfulness and rest, but as sleep hygiene refers to how you can put practices in place to have a better night’s sleep, emotional hygiene is an important way to approach your mental health while you are awake. 

By paying attention and taking care of your psychological health, you approach your internal processes like you would physical hygiene. As one may brush their teeth or try to get in their 10k, the trend of emotional hygiene is promoting the importance of noticing how you feel and developing healthy habits accordingly. 

One of the main pillars of emotional hygiene is the idea of addressing emotional wounds, like you would a physical one. Online users are speaking of issues like rejection, failure, or loss more openly, and asking you to look inwards and see yours. To even acknowledge them can help your emotional hygiene, and addressing them with the correct help can prevent them from getting worse. By coinciding with how we see our physical health and our mental health, this trend can be seen as a progressive step forward for those who may be ignoring or suppressing. 

Within this trend, we see a routine-based list of practices follow. Like a ‘Day In My Life’ may include going to the gym and making a meal, a ‘Day In My Life’ that follows the emotional hygiene talk may see a user connecting with nature, speaking on mindfulness, and reducing their screen time. With the dialogue following the line of seeking support when you can recognise your own emotions, this vital conversation can help you balance your input and output to ensure you are not taking in negative experiences without a healthy outlet for processing and releasing emotions.

Here, we look at the steps you can follow to adopt this trend into your daily life, to help you build resilience, encourage an open dialogue with others, and live a more balanced life…

Notice your emotions 

To build emotional awareness, you must first identify how you’re feeling. There are a plethora of methods to do this, including noticing physical sensations like muscle tightness or your heartbeat. Even the shortness of your breath can be an indicator. Ask yourself why these changes may be occurring, and then look at why this may be. The hardest part of building emotional awareness can be labelling your feelings. The ‘Emotion Wheel’ can be a useful tool to help with this (simply look it up online), or even speaking with a trusted close friend or professional can help with this. 

Ask! 

Ignoring your emotions can hinder long-term processing and awareness. But, it is never too late to ask yourself: “How do I feel today?” By doing this to yourself and others, and opening that honest dialogue that helps us acknowledge stress. Always seek support when you need it, and asking yourself this can be that important first step. 

Practice self-compassion 

Emotional hygiene refers to the upkeep and care of internal processes. So, like you would a friend, treating yourself with the same kindness, forgiveness and understanding of an issue can introduce support when things may feel wrong in your head. How would you respond to a friend if they told you how they felt? Acknowledge this, and tell yourself. 

Don’t catastrophise! 

“Worst case scenario” is not a phrase that is welcome in emotional hygiene. This encourages a thought process that is negative, also known as catastrophising. It can lead to heightened anxiety, and having this negative perception can influence behaviour to lead to the very outcome that was feared. Instead of saying “worst case scenario”, ask yourself: “What is the best case scenario, and what do I want to see from this?” 

Take care of yourself

What resources help you keep up your emotional hygiene? This could be physical, such as books, music, walks, friends, or your favourite meal, as well as restricting the resources that stop your emotional hygiene from reaching its full potential. This can look like going on your phone less, drinking less alcohol, or making sure you are in bed by a certain time (sleep hygiene). What does self-care look like for you?