About Emotional Strength
Welcome to the Human Condition.
Life can get you down. And once you are down, you may have heard people tell you to “keep your chin up” or “be strong” but what they really mean is that you should use your Emotional Strength to help yourself. This may very well be the thing you see in others that you are missing. You may be in a situation and come out of it feeling down or depressed. You might be thinking, there is a better way.
For some, Emotional Strength may seem like having control over your emotions. For others, it is being able to understand and feel your emotions.
Let’s look at the definition of Emotional Strength:
“The ability to respond in an open and vulnerable way in the face of intense emotional experience, feeling one’s way deeper into the emotion which allows access to implicit functional processes driving action.”
Explained simply:
“Emotional Strength is the response you have when reacting to events. Emotional strength also helps you to navigate difficult circumstances and influences so many areas of your behavior.”
Emotional strength is something we all must practice and strengthen so life doesn’t creep up and wreck havoc.
Different from psychology practices of turning a negative experience into a positive one, the core of practicing emotional intelligence is to honestly and deeply feel the emotional experience - And allow yourself to be vulnerable. This helps you open your emotional responses and change the way you understand your emotions in daily life. Just like the first time you rode a bike or tried something new. You might not have succeeded the first time, but as you did it more and more, you got better and gained confidence. When you did fall after hitting a curb or riding over loose gravel, you were able to get back on the bike again without too much trouble. Emotional strength must be practiced and maintained.
As defined by Sciencedirect.com:
•Emotional Strength is proposed as a new way of responding to emotional life.
•Emotional Strength involves an open and vulnerable response to intense emotional experience.
•Emotional Strength involves feeling one's way deeper and further into emotion.
•Emotional Strength allows access to implicit functional processes driving action.
