Protecting your own emotions is incredibly important and far too often overlooked. People have no problem protecting their homes, vehicles, or physical bodies. But they don’t consider protecting their own emotions and emotional health.
Here are some easy ways you can start protecting your emotional well-being and mental state.
Set Your Personal Boundaries
Set clear personal boundaries with anyone in your life, from friends and family members to colleagues and even your neighbors. Know what you can handle emotionally and what you can’t. An excellent way to figure out what personal boundaries you need to set is by thinking about what tends to trigger you.
When you feel particularly upset or defensive, what causes it? Is there a situation or a person that leads to it? Is it from your social media use? Does it have to do with people putting pressure on you to do something when you have other things to focus on?
Make a list of everything you notice that tends to trigger your fragile emotional state, where you experience any feelings that are uncomfortable for you, and then start creating personal boundaries to avoid those as much as possible.
Recognize Toxic People in Your Life
Toxic people are sometimes very obvious, but it is often incredibly subtle, and you don’t recognize how much they are taking from your positive energy. A toxic person can be a co-worker who gossips all day and constantly interrupts your work. It can be a friend you have known for a long time but never seems to respect or acknowledge your feelings. It can be someone in your life who doesn’t respect your boundaries and constantly pushes you, causing you to be angry with them.
Toxic people come in all forms, and it takes a while to start noticing them. But once you do, you will see what a negative impact they have on your life and your emotional state.
Recover and Rest When it is Needed
Make sure you give yourself adequate time to rest and recover whenever necessary. This can help you avoid burnout and will help tremendously when it comes to protecting your own emotions. If you don’t give yourself enough time for rest, you will experience burnout and exhaustion and will never have the opportunity to process what you are going through.
It can be as simple as sleeping a little earlier or taking a micro nap during the day when you have 5-10 minutes to spare. You don’t have to take a week-long vacation to recover.
Get Away From Your Normal Routine
Sometimes what you need for emotional protection is to get out of your comfort zone and do something different. When you keep doing the same thing over and over again, you tend to feel the same types of feelings over and over again as well. This cycle might feel comfortable and predictable because you know what to expect. But you aren’t learning or experiencing anything.
Protecting your emotions requires building up your resilience. You can only do that when you occasionally get out of that comfort zone and try something new. This can feel scary because you never know what to expect, but it will tremendously build that emotional strength.
Pay Attention to Negative Influences
A negative influence is sometimes people, but it can be anything that negatively affects your emotional state. This might look like social media, going to certain places where you don’t feel comfortable, people who tend to be energy vampires, and anything else you don’t think serves you.