Managing Emotions: Normalise Emotions

A starting point in managing emotions is to normalise and recognise emotions as part of our mind and body system. It is normal to feel and express emotions. Emotions affirm our humanity and can often be resourceful as they provide us with useful feedback that propel us into action or even change.
Some emotions are challenging to process, because they demand a lot from the mind-body system, for example anger, sadness and anxiety. This does not mean that we need to deny or avoid these emotions, we also need to recognise them as part of mind-body system.
What we need to be mindful of is the extremes in how emotions are experienced and expressed and how these extremes affect our mental health and our actions. We then need to learn to manage these emotions. We discuss this more next time on the blog.

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Notes on Self Management: Few Ideas for Women’s Network

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The face of Stigma in Mental health

Stigma in mental health reflects our beliefs, attitudes and thoughts about mental illness. These manifest through our behaviour towards people with mental health challenges and the language we use to describe their experiences. THOUGHTS AND LANGUAGE Negative assumptions People who stigmatise others often hold negative assumptions about those they stigmatise. Such assumptions are often baseless and are driven by a lack of understanding of the person and their situation. The person is often blamed for their condition through using statements like “depression is for weak people” or “depression indicates lack of faith” and “African people don’t get depressed”. All these assumptions leave people feeling inferior and put an extra burden on them. A belief of Immunity People who have not experienced mental health challenges may believe that they are immune from such. As a result they distance themselves from people with mental health challenges an...

Dr Sibu Qhogwana

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