Emotional Thali: The Recipe for Balance and Well-being
If sweet is your favourite taste, do you always eat only sweet foods? Can you possibly eat 10 bowls of pudding just because you like sweet? If bitter is your least favourite taste do you refrain yourself from bitter foods completely?
Emotions are exactly like these tastes, some we like,some we don't like, some we even hate! Amidst these preferences however, we end up feeling confused about how much of an emotion is good for us and when does a particular emotion become bad for us?
Joy, being a positive emotion is generally liked and preferred the most by people. Amongst the negative emotions also there are preferences. A lot of people think that fear or anxiety makes them look weak so they try their best to deny feeling these two emotions. Sadness isn't fun too, so quite frequently people feel frustrated when they feel sad. Anger on the other hand makes one look stronger compared to other people involved in the scene, so some people go on to appreciating the fact that they are angry.
When we talk about different tastes, nutritionists recommend that we eat different tasting foods because they are essential for our bodily functions to get carried out smoothly and they also suggest that we consume each taste in the right quantity. All the recent mental health practitioners also speak on similar lines.
Research has shown that the ability and process to keep a check on our emotions (also known as Emotional Regulation) is the key to preventing many of the mental illnesses. Coming back to the confusion we addressed previously; in order to keep a check on emotions it is important first to understand how much of an emotion is healthy or 'helpful for us' and when does the same emotion become healthy or 'harmful for us'
The answer to this question can be understood in a simplistic manner if we remember how our traditional Indian Thali is arranged. A thali usually consists of different food items ranging from pickles and chutneys to dal rice and deserts where each one of these items is served in unique quantities: there is a spoonful of pickle and chutney, and a bowl of desert and dal rice....
Emotional regulation looks exactly like this well arranged thali of emotions. Though we tend to label emotions as good,bad,strong, or weak it is important to understand that each one of them is absolutely essential so we cannot do away with any one of them. Fear gets our body ready in fighting against threating situations, anxiety helps us in becoming vigilant about possible threats that could harm us. Sadness is bitter but it tells us to rethink and reconstruct aspects of our being, while anger protects our ego in situations that can harm our self respect.
It's also equally important to be mindful of how much of an emotion we are consuming...A bowl full of the fear and anxiety pickle will make you sweat and palpitate and ten bowls of happy desert will make you too lethargic and demotivated to work next day. Remember if there was only happiness and no problems at all, the entire zest of living life would have been lost!
So the recipe to emotional regulation is easy : Enjoy a bowl or two
of your happy desert, sharpen your proud,angry ego with a dish of
spicy curry but remember to eat a bland roti of calmness along with
it....Also don't forget the side dishes;a small dish of bitter sad green
salads shall show you your shortcomings, and a spoonful of pickles
shall protect you from dangers!
