Building Your Emotional Immune System

We are in the middle of a pandemic. Over the course of the last year, we have constantly been bombarded with certain terms. One such term that we have encountered over and over again is “Immune system”. Immune System is basically a network of biological processes that protects an organism from diseases. While we have an innate immune system that protects us from a broad category of harmful substances we also have an adaptive immune system that learns from past experience and protects us from things that have caused harm to us in the past. This system grows stronger and more robust when you have been exposed to certain kinds of bacteria, viruses or other harmful substances.

While we all have an immune system to protect us from bodily harm, what do we do to protect ourselves from negative emotions and to become emotionally stronger? Have you ever thought of that? Well, what if there was an immune system for that? An Emotional Immune System?

Unfortunately, we are not endowed with an innate, fully functioning and strong emotional immune system to handle all the negative emotions and hardships that we face during the course of our lives. Let’s be honest, what do you think are the top 3 things that stand in the way of us getting the life that we desire. What are the obstacles that stand in the way of us doing the things we really want to do? The things that we know deep down would change our lives if we just did them? In my opinion they are fear of failure, fear of rejection and fear of the unknown.

Failure, rejection, awkwardness, humiliation and discomfort are all things that we run away from and do everything possible in our power to avoid. When you think about it, it’s not the failure that we actually fear, it’s the emotions that arise when we fail, get rejected or face awkwardness and the mental stories that we make up that we fear. We fear that we will not be able to handle the emotions that accompany these circumstances and hence we do not want to put ourselves in situations where we might have to face them.

You apply for a job or an audition and you are not selected. You ask a girl on a date and she says no. You start a business and it fails. In all of these situations we know that logically, nothing really bad is going to happen to us. They are not life and death scenarios. They are not dangerous and have no grave consequences, yet it feels like that when we think of them. This is because we fear that we will not be able to handle the emotions that these scenarios might cause. Unfortunately, there is no way to achieve what we really want unless we are willing to face these scenarios. So how do we make ourselves capable of handling these scenarios or more precisely these negative emotions that we fear so much? I believe that one way to do this is by building our emotional immune systems. In order protect ourselves from certain diseases, we take vaccines where we inject a small portion of the harmful substance so that our body builds an immune response to it and becomes stronger so that the harmful substance will no longer be dangerous to our bodies. The vaccine makes our immune system adapt and grow stronger and better able to fight off this harmful stimulus if it encounters it again. Similarly, by facing these emotions in small doses we can build up our mind’s ability to handle and overcome these negative emotions.

Constantly doing things that scare us, or that might lead to us facing rejection, failure, awkwardness etc. builds our willpower to overcome the fear that arises when we think of what we might have to handle. And when we put ourselves constantly in these circumstances, we will sooner or later face failure and rejection and the unpleasant feelings that arise as a consequence of these things. When these things happen and the negative emotions arise, it definitely feels awful but in my experience I have learnt that the more we face them, the lesser their impact will be on us. We become stronger emotionally and while these things might have kept us up all night or might have led to us recalling and reliving those moments for days on end previously, when we face them again we are able to brush them off more easily and overcome them and get back on track. Slowly, we realise that things that would upset us or affect our mood negatively before, now no longer faze us or they no longer even register emotionally and we are able to bounce back from these situations very soon. Therefore, I believe that as we vaccinate ourselves to protect us from viruses and strengthen our immune system, we ought to consciously work on building and strengthening our emotional immune systems by throwing ourselves in circumstances and situations that are challenging and that would lead to us facing a certain degree of emotional pain. It is only through facing these difficult circumstances and these negative emotions, that our world expands and our ability to go for what we want in life develops as we are no longer so afraid of the negative emotions that we might have to encounter when things do not go our way. It’s only when we have developed a strong emotional immune system and are ready to embrace failure, rejection, embarrassment etc. that we can focus on playing to win rather than expending most of our mental and emotional energy on trying not to lose! If this resonates with you, think about and mull over it and see what ways you can come up with to build and strengthen your emotional immune system. Until next time….