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When you are in the midst of chaos and things are falling apart around you, how do you remain emotionally healthy? How do you keep it together? That’s what I’m going to share with you today. 

What Is Healthy Positivity?

Many people think that being positive means you need to always look on the brighter side and never feel sad or unhappy. That’s just not true. Healthy positivity means that you’re able to embrace all the emotions that you feel: grief, sadness, anxiety, feeling a little bit down, etc. You don’t have to shut these emotions off. 

When you experience physical pain, it tells you there’s something going on. If you start having pain on your side or in your back or in your neck, you start examining and trying to figure out what’s wrong. Our emotions play the exact same role. They get us to stop and examine. Instead of distracting yourself from these emotions, stop for a second and embrace those emotions.

Let’s say you are feeling anxious. If you are going to distract yourself by watching something, you are just temporarily neglecting the emotion for a few moments, but it’s going to come back. It’s going to stay in your subconscious mind, only to rise up at the slightest provocation. 

Instead, this is what you should be doing.

Label the emotion, I want you to, first of all, start breathing and then label this emotion. What is emotion? Is it grief?  Is it sadness?  Is that anxiety? 

What is it that you’re feeling? 

Because once you label the emotion, you can actually have a little bit of a distance from it and not get immersed in it. I want you to look at it and think of this emotion. Think about where you feel it in your body. Is this sadness that you feel in your heart? Is it something you feel in your gut? Where are you feeling it? 

And if you could give it a color or a shape or something, imagine it in a physical form. That way, you are able to wrap your head around it and you can control it much better. This is one of the ways of dealing with emotions. 

You don’t want to just distract yourself. You want to label it. You want to give it a physical form. 

Never Suppress Your Emotions:

There are times when a good cry will really help. We don’t need to suppress our emotions. I know that many people have been taught to suck it up, especially men in our society. They’ve been told to not cry and suck it up. When you stop feeling those emotions, you just end up suppressing them. I deal with clients all the time who have suppressed years and years of these emotions. And they’re not even in touch with their emotions anymore. They don’t know what they’re feeling because they’ve been told what they’re feeling is wrong and shut it down. When you start acknowledging these negative emotions, embracing them, and recognizing them, you get a better understanding of how to deal with them and how to be emotionally healthy. Learning why emotional health is important and ways to improve emotional health is very important. 

So, for example, if you are feeling anxious, say to yourself that right now, you’re feeling really anxious, you are anxious because of these reasons, etc. Acknowledging that you have a problem solves half of the problem.

When you accept your emotions without judging them, you begin to realize that you are not a wimp to be feeling that way, you are not being weak, you are not having weak Imaan, it’s just a part and parcel of your life as a human being in this Dunya.

Allah Says In The Quran, 

“...and that it is He alone who causes [you] to laugh and to cry.” (Quran, 53:43 )

You start embracing these emotions which lead to having emotional acceptance and building healthy emotions. This will help you in dealing with life’s stresses. 

Recognize The Problem: 

Those individuals who have a healthy acknowledgment will recognize when they have issues. They will recognize when they have negative emotions, and they will accept it. They are able to have a higher level of life satisfaction. They have a better ability to resolve stresses and challenges that come up. 

When you just pretend that a problem doesn’t exist, because you don’t allow yourself to feel negative emotions, you will either become delusional when you don’t accept the realities, negativities, and hardships of life or will suppress the emotions, only for it to come bubbling up at one point or another. 

So, make sure that you acknowledge the emotions that you have. Healthy positivity teaches us to accept these emotions. When we do that, we are able to be at peace with ourselves.

Cut Out Avoidance Behavior:

When you can embrace your emotions, you end up successfully resolving issues with your loved ones. We’re no longer pretending it’s not there because avoidance behavior- to pretend that something is not happening – will not make it disappear. When we can accept that there is a challenge, it makes it easy for us to rectify our affairs. This is a very critical part of mental and emotional health. We recognize that there are ups and downs. We recognize that there are negative emotions. Ask yourself, if you don’t feel pain or sadness, how are you going to know that you’re happy?

How Would You Know That You’re Proud If You Never Felt Embarrassed?

All of these emotions that Allah has provided for us are something that is giving us some reminders. When we acknowledge and process it, we will be much healthier individuals.

You must accept the fact that you will be sad at times, you will have grief, you will have anxiety and you will have worries. This is a normal part of life. I want each of us to be able to accept this as emotional care means embracing the negative emotions in our life.

The Prophet (peace be upon him) said,

 “Every fatigue, illness, distress, worry, grief, or harm that befalls the Muslim, including the prick of a thorn, will be accepted by Allah as expiation for some of his or her sins” (Bukhari) 

So, how are you going to Insha’ Allah, deal with your negative emotions? Sit back, relax and assess yourself. This will help you in living a life filled with contentment and peace insha’Allah.

For further guidance, you can find some free courses and content on how to enhance your marriage. Also, you can download a free PDF from the website to benefit from it, Insha’Allah. 

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