25 Bad Ideas for Your Emotional Health
(A mix of the obvious and the quietly harmful patters we all fall into.)
Emotional health starts with awareness and understanding. Often, it’s about noticing what we do by default, those small patterns that quietly make life harder. These habits shape how we experience life, our relationships, and ourselves.
1. Ignore your feelings until they become impossible to avoid.
2. Pretend you are fine so no one worries.
3. Compare your life to everyone else’s highlight reel.
4. Only rest when you have earned it.
5. Expect yourself to “just get over it.”
6. Judge yourself more.
7. Assume discomfort means you are doing something wrong.
8. Say yes to everything so you don’t disappoint anyone.
9. Believe every thought that crosses your mind.
10. Have incredibly high expectations of yourself and others.
11. Avoid difficult conversations.
12. Try to control things you can’t control.
13. Expect clarity before you take any action.
14. Try to do everything by yourself, never ask for help.
15. Treat your needs as inconveniences.
16. Expect perfection from yourself.
17. Only use kindness for others, never for yourself.
18. Ignore your values in pursuit of approval.
19. Use self-criticism as motivation.
20. Only allow “positive emotions.”
21. Assume vulnerability is weakness.
22. Stay in familiar pain because it feels safer than unfamiliar change.
23. Never talk about how you feel.
24. Spend more time in the past and future, never in the present.
25. Expect yourself to navigate life without emotional skills.
Emotional health doesn’t come from perfection. It comes from awareness, curiosity, and small acts of courage to notice and choose differently.
Take a moment for reflection. Consider these questions:
➡ Which of these surprised you?
➡ Which one are you actively working on unlearning?
Let’s Talk
Are you interested in exploring some of these ideas in more depth? Are you ready to start the counselling process and begin to build supportive emotional skills? Get in touch—we can discuss your needs and goals and find ways to personalize this process so you can get the most out of it.
