How emotional swings ruin our mental health
Scientific litsketch on boosting mental health
We all experience emotional ups and downs everyday. But how do emotional swings affect our mental health? Can we protect our mental health from emotional swings despite the good and bad times in our lives?
Research shows that people whose happiness is greatly affected by emotional ups and downs have poorer psychological wellbeing than those whose happiness is less affected by emotional ups and downs (Wilroth et al., 2020).
The research measured people's psychological wellbeing, and their daily experience of positive and negative emotions and life satisfaction at the end of each day for 8 consecutive days. After two months, life satisfaction and emotions were measured again over 8 consecutive days. The results showed that people who were satisfied with their life more consistently despite feeling emotional ups and downs had much better psychological well-being compared to those whose life satisfaction changed drastically when they felt more positive or negative emotions.
Developing a belief that our life is full of emotional ups and downs but that they should not determine how happy we are will protect our mental health. Accept and acknowledge that life will present both positive and negative emotions, that both good and bad things happen to everyone.
It is the bad times that make our good times ever more worthwhile.
Willroth, E. C., John, O. P., Biesanz, J. C., & Mauss, I. B. (2020). Understanding short-term variability in life satisfaction: The Individual Differences in Evaluating Life Satisfaction (IDELS) model. Journal of personality and social psychology, 119(1), 229.