Emotional Hygiene

Emotional hygiene is a new term for me. Learning about it today, was a big thing. With
the knowledge that I got from the video I also identify myself to have a poor emotional hygiene.
Way back in my high school I used to have a high confidence. One thing that allowed me to have
that is having a great appearance. A skin with no pimple, marks, blemishes allowed me to openly
face people without being worried of how I look. Upon stepping up to senior high school I
started getting pimples and very stubborn ones, they are huge, red, and full of puss. I
immediately feel ashamed because of how I look and knowing that people around me saw me
without pimples, them seeing me with one really alarmed me with how they think about me. After
that my pimples never went away, it left marks and all sorts of unpleasant trademarks on my
face. However, I do wonder; what if I just had enough knowledge about emotional hygiene and
think of myself a someone still worth of being seen despite of having imperfections on my face.
Then I would not have stressed myself of things that should not be stressed of and my body
would have recovered much faster. Being lonely does not only mean being alone, in my case I
became only about my appearance it really brought me down and caused me to be doubtful of
the things that made me confident before. In the video it talked about how loneliness can cause
an array of physical problems to a person. The loneliness that I had, made me feel that people
around me did not like my as much as they do before when I had a nice skin. Even though that it
is not the case, it suppressed my ability to function at my greatest during the time and it was very
horrifying thinking about it now.

In this state of my life now, I have learned to properly accept myself from the
imperfections that I have although I struggle from bad thoughts every now and then I still make
myself proud by tending to my needs especially emotionally. Un until now I am slowly
recovering from the downfall that I had years ago and forming a state of myself where I can love
myself despite my appearance. Learning about emotional hygiene opened me to a new horizon of
self-improvement, being healthy does not solely base of being physically healthy but also
psychologically.

Leaning into the video. It pointed out three big elements that hinders us to not tend to our
psychological needs which translates to our emotional needs. First being loneliness. In the video
it discussed how loneliness makes 14% more vulnerable to dying early, we humans already have
a high chance of dying from every other thing and loneliness making more possible to die it
horrifying. This only means that our mental health absolutely matters no matter the how we look
at it. With loneliness it can separate us from the people that we can get support from and put us
deeper in malevolent thoughts. Second is failure, now all of us can easily discouraged when we
fail. Being able to accept failure requires a lot of courage to learn from it and be better each
time. However, recovering from a failure can be extremely difficult when we fail at the things
that we greatly anticipate having a chance of succeeding because we prepared and invested a lot
into it. Things like board exams, businesses, project, love life and getting emotional support. It is
not only on the physical things that we fail, but also on the non-physical ones. When we ask for
support, and we fail to get it we become afraid to even ask for it the second time even if it is from
a different person. It prevents us from trying. It makes us thinks that some of our goals or needs
seems to far out of reach. Which applies to emotional hygiene, failing to practice it makes us feel
that it is impossible to do. Lastly is rejection. Now failure and rejection has something in
common, both stops us from getting to the place that we want. What makes rejection something
of a lethal one is that it often happens in the beginning where you are trying to just open
yourself, growing and being open then absolutely getting rejected is extremely dejecting. To not
succeed even at the first try where we have not gotten anywhere yet is deeply wounding
experience.

To conclude, I think it really is important that we start to become aware of our needs
because and to practice emotional hygiene is really the way to go. There is nothing more
important than paying attention to both our physical and emotional needs. Like said in the video
learning emotional hygiene has the possibility to enhance our way of living just like how
personal hygiene did when we started practicing it.