Don’t you at times feel no one understands you? Or in fact, you yourself don’t understand you. You don’t feel self-worth.
One of my favourite ones is which I usually think about is emotional vocabulary. Harvard, you can Google this, has this great table and it shows how limited our emotional vocabulary is.
What I mean by this is, if someone asks you, “How’s your week been?” All you answer is “All right, good, bad, fine, okay.” Right? “How’s your week going?” “Good.” “How’s your day been?” “Okay.” “How’s your doing tonight?” “Fine.” Right? That’s literally how we describe our lives. Our emotional vocabulary is so limited.
Now, there’s a challenge here. We don’t get to understand how we truly feel because we never articulate and express it. When you say you’re angry, are you offended? Are you irritated? Are you defensive? There’s so much more to the word, “angry” than just anger.
Or when you say, “I’m sad” when you say you’re sad, are you upset? Are you regretful? Are you triggered? Right? There’s just so much more. When you self-diagnose and you limit your vocabulary, you’re just like, “Oh, I’m just sad.” “I’m just angry.”
Which means you can’t articulate to yourself, what you’re really dealing with and you can’t articulate to your friend what you’re dealing with so you don’t feel understood. Feeling understood is such an important part of self-care.
Also Read: Negative patterns – Spot, Stop and Swap!
The feeling that I can articulate what I’m really going through and someone understands me. That’s huge for self-care, I think it’s one of the most important things about self-care. When you look at someone and you feel, “They really get me”. Doesn’t that – isn’t it that so good for your confidence and your self-worth and your significance?
For me, one of the best self-care techniques is, when I am struggling with something, let me not settle for the base level emotion. Let me really understand it, and then if you’re speaking to your therapist, or you’re speaking to your doctor or friend, you can actually articulate it better so they can actually help you back and can understand you.
Author: Ankita Mundhra