How To Let Go... And Move On

You’ve probably got a first-aid kit tucked away at home for medical emergencies, but how do you treat emotional wounds and injuries?

- Sarah Marinos

Catch a cold and you might boost your vitamin c. Cut yourself and you’ll reach for the antiseptic cream. But there isn’t a quick-fix ‘plaster’ for hurt like guilt, rejection, and loneliness. ‘Instead, we try to be stoic,’ says Dr Guy Winch, psychologist and author of emotional first aid (plume). ‘You don’t see someone bleeding and other people telling them, “Just be stoic”,’ he explains. ‘Yet that’s often the advice dished out when you’ve suffered an emotional upset. But the problem with small hurts is that they tend to fester and can affect both mood and self-esteem,’ says Dr Winch. ‘There are tools for dealing with emotional distress,’ he says. ‘Some are simple and take a few minutes, but when you sprain a muscle you sit with an icepack for 20 minutes, so taking 10 minutes to think something through – especially if it has to do with your mental health – is time well spent.’ Here, Dr Winch shares how to treat emotional wounds.

THE HURT: FAILURE

Failure affects our motivation, confidence and self-esteem. Often with this kind of emotional hurt, we feel that we are less capable of achieving our goals. Our goals may suddenly seem overwhelming and we shrink away from them. It takes only one or two incidents to set this vicious cycle into play and we start to see our willpower as weaker than it really is – we no longer see the other reasons why we might have failed at something. We feel less able, more passive and more helpless.

THE REMEDY... LOOK FOR THE LIFE LESSON – AND LAUGH.