Build Emotional Resilience and Reclaim your Life
When it comes to our health, we all want to feel our best.
Often times this can be a greater challenge than we prefer. Especially if we are dealing with chronic physical and emotional issues such as autoimmune concerns or long-term anxiety, or burnout. These conditions can leave us frazzled, frightened, and emotionally tapped out.
In this article, licensed Acupuncturist, Doctor of Metaphysics, author of Acupressure with Essential Oils, and Founder of Touching Spirit, LLC. Merina Ty-Kisera shares unique yet powerful ways to help reclaim your health and build emotional resilience.
Notice Your Body’s Signs of Fatigue and Burnout.
Your body may tell you you’re burnt out in a variety of ways, including insomnia, fatigue, headaches, stomachaches, and changes in appetite.
Although “burnout” is not a formal medical diagnosis, Merina Ty-Kisera advises not to ignore its symptoms. To address burnout, you might consider implementing powerful self-care practices that can help build your emotional resilience in addition to consulting a healthcare provider or a mental health professional.
Calm Your Nervous System
Your body’s nervous system is essentially its command center. It controls a wide range of bodily functions, from the conscious, such as movement, to the unconscious, such as breathing.
It’s like a highway running through your body, connecting nerves, cells, glands, and muscles, and transferring messages from the nerves to the other parts. The nervous system is responsible for how you experience and interpret your environment.
In order to build emotional resilience, we have to be able to shift the nervous system from the state of flight-fright-freeze, to rest and relax. A large part of that is based on our habitual thoughts, which can be changed over time.
However, there are practices we can do to calm ourselves and relieve the immediate feeling of stress.
According to Ty-Kisera, using essential oils on acupressure points, a technique called AromaPoint Alchemy from her book, Acupressure with Essential oils, can be quite effective in interrupting the stress pattern and bringing on a wave of calm. She believes that all essential oils and acupressure points have specific functions. They bothaddress physical, mental, and emotional issues on their own. However, when they are combined, they create a synergistic effect that magnifies their actions providing a more far-reaching effect.
She states that as you do these practices, your nervous system quickly calms down, and by doing them daily, you can retrain your system to become more resilient and less reactive to daily issues.
Know Thyself to Self Heal
If we are to build long term emotional resilience, it’s extremely helpful to understand what triggers you and to understand what your natural stress response is. Which means how we react to an unwanted situation the instant it happens.
We are all born to favor certain archetypes, as introduced by famous psychologist Carl Jung. The ancient Daoist traditions also identified certain archetypes and outlined them in the Five Elements. According to Ty-Kisera, “We all have a unique innate blueprint that the ancient Chinese figured out over 2500 years ago. They realized that we are a mirror of nature and made up of five elements. The one that predominates is our personality or element type and tends to get imbalanced under stress.” See what five element personality traits you resonate with.
The first element is water which sustains life. The water element personality is very introspective and philosophical. Yet its first stress response is fear because they don’t know if they will be safe and protected when change comes. To improve emotional resilience, try swimming or spending time near water.
The second element is wood which is associated with growth and renewal and encourages movement and flexibility. In Daoist theory, the wood personality is a visionary and warrior. Their first response to unwanted situations is anger and frustration. In order to calm the wood-type energy, yoga or tai chi can bring equanimity and resilience to mind and body.
Thirdly is the fire element associated with transformation and creativity and encourages passion and joy. In Daoist theory, the fire element personality’s response to stress is sadness and feeling unloved. To improve emotional resilience, try vigorous movement or hug therapy to elicit love and joy.
The fourth element is earth, associated with stability and grounding. Earth personality types value close family, community, and lots of nourishing food. Earth type’s first response to stress is feeling unsupported and self-pity. To balance the earth element type and build emotional resilience, try gardening, barefoot walking, or preparing healing healthy meals.
Finally, the metal element is associated with organization and mastery. Metal element personality types value respect and embody the alchemist archetype. Metal type’s response to stress is to feel unacknowledged or grief and loss. To improve the emotional resilience of the metal element, try gratitude journaling and practice being open to receiving love and appreciation.
Ty-Kisera states that “By understanding your five-element personality type plus healthy lifestyle practices and self-care with acupressure and essential oils, you’d be able to realize your best self and activate your emotional superpowers, for lasting health and wellbeing.
