When someone asks you how you are doing, do you auto-respond with “fine,” because you can’t put into words how you are actually feeling? Or maybe you’ve gone through the day with an emotionally “heavy” feeling that you just can’t shake? Maybe you’ve just told yourself you are “stressed” when the truth is something much deeper and complicated. If so, know that these moments are not unique to your life. Many people go through their lives, reacting to how they think they feel, or trying to ignore it, rather than trying to understand the emotion itself.
We spend years in school learning math, reading, and science, but very rarely are we taught how to correctly recognize, understand, and respond to our emotions in healthy ways. Yet, emotional awareness is one of the most important skills a person can develop for overall mental well-being. In this article, we’ll discuss emotional awareness, why it matters, and what happens when it’s lacking. More importantly, we’ll learn why developing emotional awareness is the foundation of healthy relationships, greater emotional balance, and improved mental health. Let’s begin by gaining a better understanding of what it means to be emotionally aware.
What Is Emotional Awareness?
By definition, emotional awareness describes one’s ability to recognize, identify, and understand one’s emotions, and to some extent, the emotions of those around them, as they arise. More than putting a label on the way you feel, being emotionally aware includes noticing the physical and psychological effects that accompany the feeling. Going beyond feeling happy or sad, emotional awareness involves asking oneself:
- What am I physically feeling right now?
- Why am I feeling this way?
- Did someone, something, or some place trigger this emotion?
- How are these feelings influencing my thoughts and behavior?
- What would be a healthy way to respond?
All the information gathered from these questions is like the dashboard of a car, if you will, alerting you to what needs attention and guiding you on how to solve the issue if there is one. Our emotions provide valuable information that, if we take the time to gather and process, we can use to respond in a thoughtful, healthy way instead of overreacting or pushing it aside for another day.
Why Emotional Awareness Matters for Mental Health
Every emotion felt serves a purpose. For example, fear protects us from danger, gratitude strengthens relationships, sadness alerts us to injustice, and so on. When we are emotionally aware, we have better control over our response to life’s situations, good and bad. When emotions are recognized as a valuable source of information, they can be used to make better decisions, avoid impulsive behaviors, and encourage strong, healthy relationships by enabling us to communicate our feelings clearly. By staying in tune to physical and emotional responses, we can develop greater emotional awareness, making positive improvements in our lives through healthy:
- Emotional regulation
- Stress and anxiety management
- Decision-making
- Coping behaviors
- Communication
- Conflict resolution
- Relationships (personal and professional)
Serving as a protective measure against mental health struggles, people who have better emotional awareness experience lower levels of stress, anxiety, and depression, and are just overall better equipped to deal with life’s challenges.
Unfortunately, many people go through life reacting to the way they are feeling, and not fully understanding the reasons behind those feelings. Let’s look at what can happen when emotional awareness is lacking.
5 Negative Consequences of Lacking Emotional Awareness
Sadly, many people live their lives thinking that if they ignore their emotions, especially the negative ones, they will just go away. The reality, it turns out, is that emotions that go unrecognized will eventually find a way to manifest themselves. When individuals lack emotional awareness, they may experience:
Heightened Anxiety: Anxiety is a natural stress response, but when it becomes persistent, even without a current circumstance to blame, it may be that it’s stemming from unresolved emotions that have never actually been recognized or processed.
Chronic Stress: Like anxiety, unidentified emotions can keep a body in stress response mode. This is both a mental and a physical response, with symptoms including ongoing tension, headaches, stomach problems, fatigue, and difficulty relaxing.
Depression: One of the most common mental health conditions in the U.S., depression caused by emotional suppression can eventually make a person feel hopeless, disconnected, and emotionally numb.
Relationship Problems: Have you ever heard the saying, “we hurt the ones closest to us?” There is so much truth in these words. When we struggle to identify how we are feeling, communication becomes very difficult. Unfortunately, a lack of emotional awareness can impact relationships with misunderstandings, increased conflict, emotional withdrawal, and trouble building trust, all of which negatively impact relationships with others (and self).
Impulsive Behaviors: Have you ever had an emotional outburst without knowing why? Or maybe you’ve chosen to sleep all day when you knew you had a million things to do. Without emotional awareness, people react in ways they don’t understand, without even thinking. Whether it’s an angry outburst, overeating, substance use, or any other unhealthy coping behavior, the inability to manage emotions often leads to impulsive and unhealthy behaviors.
Many times, these negative consequences do not exist alone, but rather feed off of each other. Without emotional awareness, everyday stressors become much larger mental health challenges that can become overwhelming, destructive, and for some, life-threatening.
How Therapy Helps Build Emotional Awareness
Developing emotional awareness doesn’t happen overnight, but finding help is the first step a person can take towards improved mental health and a foundation for meaningful connections with themselves and others. Working with a mental health therapist, those who are struggling can open up about their emotions (or lack thereof) in a safe and supportive environment. With professional support, individuals can identify emotional patterns, develop healthy coping mechanisms, and increase emotional awareness needed for improved mental health and overall well-being. With time, therapy can teach people to:
- Recognize emotions early on.
- Understand their emotional triggers.
- Improve communication with self and others.
- Build healthy coping strategies.
- Improve existing relationships and build new, healthy ones.
- Respond thoughtfully instead of reacting impulsively.
For those seeking support in Northern Utah, working with a mental health therapist in Layton offers an opportunity to build emotional awareness skills while staying close to home. For those living elsewhere or who prefer more flexibility, many counseling practices offer safe and secure online options.
Greater Awareness Leads to Greater Well-Being
Greater emotional awareness does not mean that difficult feelings are eliminated from our lives or that we stay positive ALL of the time; it’s about investing in a healthier, more balanced life. It’s about learning to recognize how we feel and why we feel a particular way. It’s about using the signals our mind and body give us to improve our responses and relationships, and to meet our emotional needs. When we work to understand our feelings rather than ignore them, we are better able to manage stress, communicate effectively, make healthier decisions, and build stronger relationships with those around us.
If understanding or even identifying your problems has always felt difficult, you are not alone. Many of us are never taught these tools, and about 10% of the population is missing emotional awareness altogether. The good news is, there is always hope. Emotional awareness can be learned and developed with patience, practice, and, when needed, the help of a qualified mental health therapist. Taking the time to learn about and understand your emotions is one of the most important investments you’ll ever make in your mental health.