What’s emotional hygiene? And how do I practice it?

There are clear double standards when it comes to looking after our wellbeing: we treat physical issues far more seriously than psychological ones.

And yet not only are psychological wounds more common than physical injuries, they get worse if they’re ignored and can have an enormous impact on our lives. 

One of the most dangerous psychological afflictions of all is loneliness: it can increase your mortality rate by 14%. That’s worse for your long-term health than smoking.

Another dangerous affliction is failure. We’ve all developed thought patterns that we fall into when we encounter setbacks, and these habits are hard to change.

It means most people never get to realize their potential because they’ve convinced themselves that they can’t.

When we experience failure, we tend to double down on the emotional wound: blaming and criticizing ourselves without restraint. Now imagine deliberately making your physical injuries worse. It wouldn’t make any sense, would it? Yet we do the mental equivalent all the time.

This is known as bad emotional hygiene. It works just like your physical immune system: when your self-esteem is low, you’re more likely to fall into a rut (and take longer to recover).

Rumination is one of the most common examples of poor emotional hygiene. When we dwell on the past, we’re more likely to develop depression, alcoholism, or cardiovascular disease.

Practicing good emotional hygiene is the equivalent of putting a band-aid on whenever you need it. If you find yourself ruminating, for example, break the cycle by finding something else to concentrate on until the impulse passes. This can take as little as two minutes.

When physical hygiene dramatically improved a century ago, life expectancy soon rose by 50%. Now imagine what could happen if we all put a little more effort into emotional hygiene.

Bottom line: Emotional hygiene can be as simple as identifying as recognizing a pang of loneliness or a cloud of negative thoughts. By treating mental wounds just like physical ones, we can gradually build up our emotional immune systems - and learn to flourish.