Hall

Henry Hall

Professor Olivas

TR 11:30

19 March, 2017

Emotional Maintenance

After listening to the speech "Why We All Need to Practice Emotional First Aid" given

by psychologist Dr.Guy Winch, it is agreeable that there is a crucial need for people to put forth

a real effort to take care of their psychological well-being; the speaker utilizes various examples

of pathos, personal anecdotes, and imagery to explain to his listeners the value of maintaining

one's own mental state. Much of what is discussed is relevant to how people go about protecting

themselves emotionally and how a lack of protection leads to detrimental habits and behaviors

of thought. Throughout life lessons learned through one's own experiences,interactions, and

feelings there is a recurring commonality, and that is the way one thinks about things greatly

impacts their lives and memories of their experiences. In his speech, Winch tells of his personal

experiences; connecting his ideas and information to relatable situations that play into the

emotions of listener's.

Through his use of emotion provoking stories and statistics, Winch utilizes one of

Aristotle's three types of argument, pathos. Winch uses pathos many times while he discusses the

various ways that we harm ourselves mentally by allowing for things to ruminate, ignoring

emotional wounds, and attacking ourselves rather than restoring ourselves. He cites an example

of being his own worst enemy when telling of his first birthday separated from his twin, talking

of how he spent the whole night waiting for his brother to call, "I knew he would call in the
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morning, but that night was one of the saddest and longest nights of my life"(Winch). The

speaker went on to convey how those feelings were rooted in his loneliness, and how loneliness

is so powerful that it distorted his reality making him forget all about what he could have done to

fix what was causing him this pain, call his brother. As he continues, Dr.Winch goes on to say

that not only does loneliness affect your view of the world in a negative way, it can also have

physical implications as well. Which he makes evident when saying, "Chronic loneliness

increases your chances of an early death by 14 percent. Loneliness causes high blood pressure,

high cholesterol. It even suppress the functioning of your immune system..." (Winch). For most

people the threat of death is sufficient enough to incite at least some kind of emotional reaction;

especially when that threat is inside all people and for most beyond their control. From an

emotional connection to the speaker's content, application of the information in one's own life

becomes far simpler and the stories have much more resonating potential.

Many of the concepts Dr.Winch explains are through anecdotes that he has compiled

from his experiences that convey his messages in a more self applicable manner. When speaking

to his audience about failure and it's effects, Winch goes in depth about the ways that it can

impact people in their daily decision making through an instance where he had witnessed a child

fail before any attempt was made because of a fear of failure. Dr. Winch tells, "One little girl

tried pulling the purple button, then pushing it, and then she just sat back and looked at the box

with her lower lip trembling. The little boy next to her watched this happen, then turned to his

box and burst into tears without even touching it"(Winch). From his use of this anecdote he goes

on to explain how people who got in their own heads and have decided that they will fail, will

stand in their own way and keep themselves from reaching their full potential. Winch later
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relates how the mind doesn't put up reality blinders only in the face of loneliness and failure but

it does that in general. Much like in Dr.Winch's story of the officer that almost arrested him for

having seen his twin in the front seat and then him in the back and becoming confused as to

where it was that he had seen him before. Which winch describes as, "But even as we were

driving away you could see by the look on his face he was convinced that I was getting away

with something"(Winch). As Dr.Winch is someone who has gone to school and extensively

studied psychology, his insight and wisdom regarding the human mind surpasses many, and yet

through his ability to associate his main points with relatable stories, the concepts can be easily

understood and the applications of such concepts visualized and perceived in real life instances.

In writing and speeches where the reader and listener are left mostly to their imagination

to visualize the points and ideas conveyed, figurative language and more specifically imagery are

vital to that process of visualization. After speaking on loneliness and failure, the topic of

rejection comes up, and Dr.Winch tells a story of a woman he had worked with who after a long

marriage and terrible divorce was on her first date only to have the man she was out with get up

and leave within the first ten minutes. The woman then attacks herself in her own mind, which is

referred to by Dr.Winch as a friend who says,"Well, what do you expect?... Why would a

handsome, successful man like that ever go out with a loser like you?"" (Winch). The imagery

provided by Winch depicts a situation most if not all are familiar with; sitting or standing

motionless while inside one's own head taking the biggest swings at their ego they can, all

because there is not a norm of restoring our emotional state after a wound is left through a

failure, loneliness, or rejection. Instead the norm is to do nothing, allowing our minds to

ruminate on the negative thoughts and feelings, only making things worse. Dr.Winch compares
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one emotionally attacking themselves to a cringe worthy image by attaching the attributes of

physical wounds to emotional damage described by Winch as, "You wouldn't get a cut on your

arm ad decide, " Oh! I know - I'm going to take a knife and see how much deeper I can make

it""(Winch). Since obviously no one would have any desire or inclination to do something like

that to a cut, Winch has a very valid point when asking why we do that so often to our

psychological wounds. Through the imagery provided continuously in Winch's anecdotes and

knowledge of statistical information the listener is able to grasp clearly and easily the concept of

how vital practicing emotional hygiene is to health and reaching ones full potential.

From his academic accomplishments and personal life experiences, Guy Winch

successfully established and defended his stance in the importance of all people's personal efforts

to take care of themselves emotionally as they do physically. He took his listener's through a

series of personal anecdotes, each conveying a significant point pertaining to the misuse of our

minds. Along with pulling emotional cords as he talked of one of the hardest and longest nights

of his life, and of the woman who experienced a hash rejection and then proceeded to do more

damage herself than the man who rejected her had done. The topics he covered and the stories he

told all came from one intention, to show people that there is more one can do to take care of

themselves, and by doing nothing, we are harming and holding ourselves back. Practice and

time are the difference between a person who is mentally strong and resilient, always aware of

their potential; and a person who may appear strong but internalizes all their griefs and pains,

slowly crumbling under all the weight of emotional trauma approaching their impending

breaking point.
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Works Cited

Winch, Guy. Why We All Need to Practice Emotional First Aid. Guy Winch: Why We All Need to

Practice Emotional First Aid | TED Talk | TED.com, TedTalks.com, Nov. 2014,

www.ted.com/talks/guy_winch_the_case_for_emotional_hygiene. Accessed 15 Mar. 2017.