Guy Winch, TED Talks: Why Practice Emotional Hygiene

Guy Winch, a licensed psychologist. He is the author of  The Squeaky Wheel (How to protect your psychological health, improve your relationships, and enhance your self-esteem.) on Psychology Today website. In his TED Talk called “How to practice emotional hygiene” he has befitting message on what being psychological unclean can do to you.

“Because you can’t treat a psychological wound if you don’t know you are injured.”

Most of the times we don’t realize how ill we get psychologically. Honestly, how many of us would give a thought to consult a psychiatrist when feeling depressed or lonely? Only countable in number, right? The very thought of psychiatrist scares us because all we associate to him is as the person who treats mental illness. Doctor in general is someone who treats illness. All that is extra here is the word “mental” And that’s what scares us the most.

Not all mental illness means mental disorder. Illness is a “period of sickness” and disorder is “disrupt the systematic functioning.” Now you will agree with me if I say illness can be cured quicker than disorder. And if you neglect your illness maybe you are allowing it to turn into a disorder very soon.

“Even a 2 minutes distraction is sufficient to break the urge to ruminate in that moment.”

So… What Guy Winch says is that, when you are disappointed , sad or heart broken please don’t turn on the pathos. If you do, you are ruminating, chewing it to such an extent that you actual forget the real shape and size of your sorrows.

Isn’t it amazing to know that 2 minutes of distraction can save 20 minutes or even a day long contemplation of sadness.

“By taking action when you are lonely,by changing your responses to failure, by protecting your self-esteem, by battling negative thinking, you won’t just heal your psychological wounds,you will build emotional resilience, you will thrive.” 

And that’s what Guy Winch is trying to tell. When you take right actions at the right time you end up doing right for yourselves.

And how do you do it right is left to you. You are not being a victim of your emotional trauma, you are being a winner here. Tackle it all the way you can. Meet the right people, talk to them about everything, don’t hide yourself. Let go your grudge, anger and embarrassments. Learn something new, stay away from things that bother you for time being. Start a new hobby, make new friends, read good books, watch comedy shows, travel around, play a sport, sing loud, dance crazily, do whatever it takes to be away from the pain and most importantly if you need a psychiatrist do visit. He will be there for you!

You can cleanse yourself emotionally, all it needs is to feel the need to get out of the present state to be in a much better state.