Knowing what emotion you are feeling at each moment of the day allows you to have better control over your reactions and decisions. On the other hand, knowing how to manage that emotion you are feeling makes it easier for you to have greater confidence in yourself, because managing emotion involves knowing how to express it.
Therefore, if you know how to properly express and discharge your emotional tension, there is a free space available in you to feel well-being. This well-being gives you the security of having done what is right for you, and the result of that is a direct improvement in self-esteem. That is why I have decided to write this article to emphasize the need to know how to manage your emotions so that your self-esteem improves.
Self-esteem and emotions are not the same, but the truth is that there is a direct relationship between both concepts, and both have an influence on your general well-being.
When your self-esteem is high, you feel your authentic emotions and you use them to express your individual uniqueness. That is, you love and see yourself as you are, you respect and value yourself with your qualities and you are interested in working on your areas of personal improvement. You are also satisfied with your present, you feel joy, and you appreciate what surrounds you and happens in your life, with an attitude of unquestionable acceptance.
When you have a low level of self-esteem, your concept of yourself is distorted by the pain of your experiences and the results of them, and that makes the perception of your emotions negative. It also does that you try to avoid feeling or expressing those emotions with which you feel uncomfortable/or with which you fear being rejected/or not being valued/or in your environment such as frustration, rage, anger, self-pity or sadness.
It is common that, when faced with these emotions, if you have low self-esteem, you generate defense mechanisms, or even use filters with which you express emotions different from the ones you feel, or even deny yourself what you are truly feeling with the person. experience that concerns you.
Emotions you don’t feel cause confusion
This causes internal confusion, and it also confuses the people around you, no matter how much they know you, because your emotions do not help them orient themselves with you.
That means it is more difficult for you to identify what you need because the way to do it correctly is through your true emotions.
The discomfort you feel as a consequence is inevitable, because by not recognizing what you need, due to not feeling or expressing your true emotions, you cannot satisfy your need, you do not even manage to identify it. And not satisfying your needs puts you in a circle of dissatisfaction and personal frustration, which further reduces your level of self-esteem because internally you think that either you do not deserve to have what you need, or you are not capable of obtaining it. And in both cases your discomfort is guaranteed.
Follow these tips to strengthen your self-esteem and make it balanced.
1. Use filters consciously
The first indication would be to understand that using filters to express what you feel is okay, as long as you are aware of that filter and use it only in those moments when you know that the harm of using it is less than the fact of not expressing yourself authentically.
2. Create internal permission for your emotional feelings
Don’t forget that you may also need to enable internal permissions with which feel free to feel what you feel. Sometimes the way you have been educated, and the learning you have done in your childhood of what emotions could be felt, and which ones could not, for reasons beyond your control, certainly, has meant that you do not allow yourself to express what you feel. true, and that affects all your emotional behavior.
3. Follow the steps of emotional management
You must also keep in mind that managing emotions involves a series of steps:
4. Become aware of your need and cover it
At this point it is very important to become aware of what you would need to do so that the discomfort that pushes you to these negative reactions ceases to exist, because there is the key to the need that you have to take care of that is, the need that you have to satisfy, to recover your well-being, and from there, realize that you and only you have been the architect of your improvement.
When you manage to consciously choose another way to express what you feel without hurting yourself or anyone, so that when you look back you feel proud of your actions (not reacting), and you have taken care of your need in a way satisfactory, without leaving it in anyone’s hands, it is when you can write it down as an achievement so that it is added to the favorable emotional account, and your self-esteem levels rise.
