Posts Tagged ‘emotional distress’

EMOTIONAL HEALTH AND EMOTIONAL DISTRESS

Emotional health involves the ability to function as comfortably and productively as possible. Typically, people who are mentally healthy are satisfied with themselves and their life situations. In the usual course of living, emotionally healthy people focus on activities geared to meet their needs and attempt to accomplish personal goals while concurrently managing everyday challenges and problems.

Often, people must work hard to balance their feelings, thought, and behaviors to alleviate emotional distress, and much energy is used to change, adapt, or manage the obstacles inherent in daily living. A mentally healthy person accepts reality and has a positive sense of self. Emotional health is also manifested by having moral and humanistic values and beliefs, having satisfying interpersonal relationships, doing productive work, and maintaining a realistic of hope. When people have unmet emotional needs or distress, they experience an overall feeling of unhappiness. As tension excalates, security and survival are threatened. How different people respond to these troublesome situations reflects their level of coping and maturity.

Emotionally healthy people endeavor to meet the demands of distressing situations while still coping with typical issues that emerge in their lives. The ways in which people respond to uncomfortable stimuli reflect their exposure to various biologic, emotional, and sociocultural experiences. When stress interferes with a person’s ability to function comfortably and inhibits the effective management of personal needs, that person is at risk for emotional problems. The use of ineffective and unhealthy methods of coping is manifested by dysfunctional behaviors, thoughts, and feelings. These behaviors are aimed at relieving the overwhelming stress, even though they may cause further problems.

Coping ability is strongly influenced by biologic or genetic factors, physical and emotional growth and development, family and childhood experiences, and learning. Typically, people revert to the strategies observed early in life that were used by family members, caregivers, and others to resolve conflicts. If these strategies were not adaptive, the person exhibits a range of painful and non productive behaviors. Dysfunctional behavior in one person not only seriously affects that person’s emotional health but can also put others at risk for injury or death. As these destructive behaviors are repeated, a cyclic pattern becomes evident; impaired thinking, negative feelings, and more dysfunctional actions that prevent the person from meeting the demands of daily living.