004: Do You Have a Sense of Emotional Well Being?

What does it mean to have a healthy functioning brain, emotional health and a sense of well-being? When you are at your best, well-being brings a sense of inner peace, contentment, harmony, balance, emotional flexibility and the combined feeling of being well-connected to your moment-to-moment experience and well connected to others through friendship and love.

This podcast draws from neuroscience or newer findings about the brain, and highlights Dr. Daniel Siegel’s Interpersonal Neurobiology concept of integration. Integration means that different parts of the brain link and function well with other parts of the brain, leading to emotional self-regulation, and an internal sense of harmony. New learning can help you reshape your brain so you can use your mind to change your brain and your brain to change your mind.

Well being involves the combined experience of having enough order and routine in your life that it creates a sense of stability, predictability and continuity and having enough emotional flexibility so you can handle change and the unpredictability or uncertainties in life without being overwhelmed by anxiety and without living chaotically.

It also involves interdependence. Think of it as the combined experience of being able to engage in your own individual pursuits AND asking for help when you need it. The extremes of fierce independence (never asking for nor relying on help from others) to clingy indecisiveness or dependence (fear of being alone, afraid to pursue things on your own, afraid to fail) are reflective of less emotional health.