CHAPLAINCY&
WELLBEING
“Emotional literacy, defined as the ability to recognize, understand, and manage one’s own emotions as well as the emotions of others, plays a critical role in mental health and wellbeing. Recent research highlights emotional literacy’s profound impact on psychological resilience and overall mental health.
According to Brackett et al. (2004), individuals with high emotional literacy are better equipped to handle stress, navigate interpersonal conflicts, and maintain positive relationships, all of which are essential components of mental wellbeing.”
- Tiffany Sauber Millacci, Ph.D. “Cultivating Emotional Literacy in Adults.” (https://positivepsychology.com/emotional-literacy/)
Higher levels of Emotional Intelligence and Emotional Literacy are often correlated to higher levels of life satisfaction – and this makes sense. Emotions give colour to life, they communicate to us the unwritten meaning and values within ourselves and in the world, they signal that needs are being fulfilled, threatened, or harmed. Emotions often stop us from pushing ourselves and others too far into burnout, and they help us learn our limitations, rely on others, and give grace to the imperfections and challenges of community living. The challenge of emotions and emotional intelligence/literacy is that - like learning the meanings of a newborn’s cries as a first-time parent - it takes time to learn what emotions mean, how to make time to feel them at all, and how to savour the elation, survive times of deprivation, discover and meet their underlying needs, and establish boundaries on the behaviours they often incite.
As I often say to students when they struggle to learn something new, “you’ve got to take some time to be bad at something before you can get good at it.” The good news is that emotional intelligence and emotional literacy are skills that can be built with a bit of time, intentionality, and willingness to move forward from our silly mistakes and embarrassing failures to have another go. The end results? A skillset that will systematically and comprehensively improve every aspect of your life from your relationships, hobbies, mental and physical health, passions, interests, and challenges. Learning how to understand and navigate our emotions and the emotions of others will give you the freedom to learn who you are, accept yourself in your flaws, make conscientious plans to grow, adapt to challenges and change, and how to heal and persevere through the many stresses of life – approaching them with growing strength, determination, and grace.
This lifelong road is not a race against others; it is a journey we pursue with the goal of maybe being a few steps further along than yesterday. Sometimes we will pause the progress, sometimes we’ll realise we aren’t as far along as we thought, sometimes we might feel like we’ve taken steps backwards (though once we have learned these skills, regardless whether or not we are always proud of our choices, we are never actually moving backwards), despite the challenges there is immense beauty, dignity, and strength to have the courage to keep your feet wandering back to this road.
So where do we begin? The starting place for this journey is the same for everyone, and it is learning notice your emotions as they arise, making time to study them with curiosity and without judgement, name these emotions, try to figure out why they are visiting and what they are communicating, then make a decision about what they mean to you and what actions you want to take. Each person is different, each experience unique, everyone’s priorities and values fill will endless variation from one another – so this process is one that is custom, specific to you and the season of life you are in right now, and subject to change over time. This means that no one can accomplish it on your behalf – in the same way I cannot lift weights to make you stronger – and it also means the outcomes will be tailor-made to your exact needs and situation, with any gaps or shortfalls being fully within your ability to address at a time and using whatever resources suit your preferences best. It is incredibly rewarding and empowering to develop this skillset.
If you have read this far, then you have my sincere respect and I will let you off the hook after this last honourable mention. A principle I realised and shared with my 6-year-old son earlier this week. After waking up scared and confused, covered in the water from a large cup he had spilled on himself while sleeping, my son got out of bed and alone in the dark he tearfully changed his clothes and tried to dry his sheets. When my wife and I heard him crying and moving around in his room, we went to find him standing still, sad, and frightened at his bedroom door. We gave him a cuddle, comforted him, helped him get dry, changed his bedding, and tucked him back in for a sleep. In this moment the following realisation found its way to my dull mind, and it is the encouragement that I will leave with you today.
Life is full of overwhelming challenges that we cannot always control, the horrors persist, joy and fear often mingle into a maelstrom that can sweep aways the best and brightest – so whenever the need arises and the challenge is beyond you, reach out for help from those trusted allies or wise practitioners who have strength or wisdom to lend you in your time of weakness. Do not choose to make this life, being already so full of strife, a single feather’s weight heavier than it needs to be. It is true that we need challenge to grow, we need to push our limits to gain strength and there is value in this; However, when you are at the end of your rope – having probably lent much of your lashings to the people who need you - please take the courage to ask those good and reliable folks who love you for a bit of theirs to tie you over for a while.
The horrors persist, but together, so do we.
-Christopher Powers, Chaplain @ Kerang Technical High School.