Quick! Think of one thing you’re grateful for. I am pretty sure that everyone has heard that at least once in their life. Maybe from your mom, third grade teacher, or maybe on an Instagram reel after mindlessly scrolling for an hour and a half. Having gratitude is essential to leading a good life, and it is also essential for today’s topic — emotional self care.
Emotional self care starts with feeling your feelings. All of them, good or bad. Many of us have had the mindset instilled in our minds from a young age that we can only express our positive emotions. Only expressing our positive emotions leads to the suppression of all other emotions, but suppressing our emotions doesn’t just make them magically go away. In fact, it can have the exact opposite effect. Bottling up our emotions makes them grow bigger and bigger until eventually they all spill out and instead of us controlling our emotions, it is our emotions controlling us.
You have to be vulnerable in order to feel your feelings, you have to acknowledge that you are feeling sad or angry in order to feel better. These emotions aren’t inherently bad, it just means that we have to focus on addressing what is causing the negative emotion. Like if you are sad, try to figure out why you are sad and then take action on it. Feeling our feelings helps us to have a more balanced circadian rhythm.
Back to the start of this column, what are some students' responses to the question “name one thing you are grateful for?” Berkeley High School freshman Camila Babij-Ross and sophomore Quincy Wilks both said that they are most grateful for their friends. “Since I started high school, I've had really good friends supporting me,” Babij-Ross commented. Wilks said, “(my friends) make me so happy even when other aspects of my life are really challenging and they remind me what I love about life.” Meanwhile, BHS senior Camden Bernhard said that sports are the first thing that comes to mind.
There are so many interesting things that you can find out about people just by asking what they are grateful for. I highly recommend asking your friends.
There is a children's book called "Have You Filled a Bucket Today?" written by Carol McCloud, it discusses how everyone’s emotional well-being can be shown as a metaphorical bucket which can become full or empty based on the intent of actions. The book encourages everyone to be a “bucket filler,” what it means by that is if you show love and kindness to other people, then they will show you love and kindness back. This book beautifully illustrates that caring for yourself and others helps improve your emotional self care.
So, Jackets, remember all of these points contribute to your emotional self care and try to fill someone’s bucket today.