Last October 17, we hosted “Meet Yourself: An Emotional Awareness Workshop” via Zoom and Facebook live.
This was in celebration of the DO Day or the annual day of doing, which encourages doers across the globe to unite and co-create solutions to address some of the biggest problems in the world.
This year’s DO Day was all about facing challenges on “how #WeEmerge stronger from the various crises and disruptions of the past months.” We at Sinaya Cup recognize that because of the pandemic, a mental health crisis is closely behind. This is why we chose to focus on emotional awareness.
As expected, it was packed with learning. More than 80 participants from all around the Philippines learned a lot from resource speakers Kaye Macalinao and Trish O’Leary, who both shared a lot of useful information and insights.
Now we are glad to share with you some of the most memorable lessons we learned during the event.
It is good to be able to recognize and manage our emotions
Emotional intelligence matters! Being able to identify, harness, and manage our emotions can help us regulate them. This means that we can respond to situations more logically, despite challenges.
This is a very useful set of abilities since we all know that things don’t always go according to our plans.
Definitely, being able to logically respond to it can help lessen your stress by making us feel that things are under control. In the long run, this can help us lead a happier and more fulfilling life. It can help us succeed, too.
Failure to foster emotional intelligence can negatively impact our lives
According to our workshop, the inability to foster emotional intelligence can make us selfish and insensitive. It can cause us to behave like know-it-alls. It can cause aggression as well.
When we’re so bad at handling our own emotions, we can have a hard time understanding even our own intentions. This can push us to pursue things just because of our own agenda and say things without thinking first if others would be offended.
It can also make us think so highly of ourselves while being dismissive of others’ abilities and talents. And when things don’t go the way we want them to, we may also have a hard time accepting things and end up having aggressive outbursts.
In other words, having low EQ can make us suck as people. And it can ruin our relationships with those around us.
As modern women, we’re expected to have it all and do it all, and it affects us emotionally
Apart from unrealistic beauty standards, modern women are also burdened by the fact that society expects us to do it all. Each day, we have to play different roles. And we need to be great in all of them.
But of course, no matter how we excel at playing these roles, there will always be people to criticize us.
Worse, we just cannot easily give up. In fact, in many situations, we are expected to remain calm and act as though everything was fine, to the point that we need to fake our emotions.
In many instances, we end up being emotional sponges, too. People around us think it’s just okay for them to unload all their “feels” on us. Exhausting, right?
Indeed, being a woman is not easy. It really involves a lot of work!
But like what our resource speakers said during the workshop, we can use our emotional intelligence to lighten up our load. When we know our emotions so well, we can also help those around us understand theirs as well.
Emotional awareness is a skill
One of the biggest misconceptions about emotional awareness is that you’re born with it, but it’s actually a skill that can be developed with practice. And of course, it’s a challenge, but it’s worth it.
Another misconception is that negative emotions have to be suppressed. That’s actually a no-no. In fact, they should be felt and experienced. They are normal, after all. And no matter what emotions we have, they are all valid.
One practice that was introduced to us was the T.E.A. break, where you take at the moment, name the emotion, and address and affirm to move forward.
With this, we can be more aware of what we’re feeling during challenging moments and have a better idea of what we can do in our next moments.
Of course, this isn’t the only practice. There are many more ways we can manage our emotions. We only need to find the right one for each of us!
Although emotions seem so complex and overwhelming many times, they can be managed. And with continuous practice, we can one day achieve emotional mastery, which is emotional awareness and resilience combined.
It’s okay to ask for help
There’s nothing wrong with asking for help. It’s actually a display of strength to be able to make that decision to help oneself.
In fact, it is so comforting to know that we have the power to seek professional help when we’re in debilitating distress that’s affecting our functioning.
One of the institutions we call for help is PMHA Online Support, which can be reached at 0917-565-2036 and pmhacds@gmail.com. They are open Mondays through Fridays, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.
For those of us needing guidance, specifically with our careers or lifestyles, we can connect with Life Coach Trisha. She can be reached here.
There is also MHAWHEREness, a volunteer initiative that is building a database of all Philippine Mental Health Services and Resources. More information about them can be found here.
Meet Yourself: An Emotional Awareness Workshop was such an eye-opener, and we’re sure other attendees would agree. Yet apart from the interesting discussions on emotions and emotional intelligence, we also loved the meaningful interaction we had with other participants.
And, of course, things would not have been possible if it weren’t for our amazing speakers. We sincerely thank Kaye and Trisha for imparting a lot of useful lessons that night. We are also grateful to DOxManila for partnering with us for this event.
Actually, there were a lot of great points raised, and since we couldn’t track all of them, we just picked the top four that really stuck with us. Anyway, we can always go back to its replay, which can be viewed here.
Do you want to join activities like this one? If you’re a Sinaya Cup user, join the Sinaya Tribe now! It’s more than just a community of menstrual cup users—it is also a safe space where members can openly share their thoughts and discuss other things under the sun!
