Emotion Super-Foods
Here is a short video that I put together to list the key ingredients for an emotionally healthy life. It doesn’t matter where you find each of these forms of nutrition – just as long as you are able to obtain enough of each in a balanced way. Some are opposites such as “Community” and “Privacy” so you are unlikely to find “Community” at the same time and place as “Privacy“. But there are times when you need one of them, and times when you need the other. Think of them as “emotion super-foods”. If you struggle to find any one of these for a while you are likely to experience a sense of un-ease – which we call stress.
A new definition of “stress”
We have names for many of these forms of stress: we call lack of food “hunger“; lack of water “thirst“; lack of security “fear“; lack of community “loneliness“; lack of control “overload“; lack of meaning and purpose “boredom“; lack of respect “anger“. But they are all forms of stress.
… and what it can lead to…
And we also have names for the different ways that people respond if they are unable to get any of these super-foods for long enough: Anxiety, Depression, Addiction, Psychosis… I am not trivialising the difficulty of experiencing or treating these conditions – just pointing out that lack of one or more of these emotional super-foods nearly always precedes the development of these conditions.
in8 has developed a well-being resource which is a great way to get people talking about these things. It is called in8 Cards.
And we occasionally run a fun and informal Facebook programme where the ideas are explored in more depth.
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