Emotional Strength in a Demanding World
- Apr 7
- 2 min read
By Martha Carter, LCSW
What does emotional strength really mean?
Emotional strength is the courage to be uncomfortable, be vulnerable, take risks, mess up, and be bad at something. Having emotional strength doesn't mean things are naturally easy for someone, it means they're willing to do something even when it's hard. This looks like actually sitting with sadness instead of numbing or scrolling, saying the awkward thing instead of biting your tongue, or trying something new instead of avoiding the risk of failing. Emotional strength doesn't just happen, it takes practice to build tolerance and stretch your capacity. Instead, it’s built through small, repetitive choices to stay with yourself, one honest conversation or uncomfortable feeling at a time. Each time you choose to be brave, your body learns that discomfort is uncomfortable, but safe.
How do boundaries protect mental health?
Boundaries are such a buzz word right now, and for good reason. If you don't have boundaries, you'll go anywhere the wind blows – based on other people’s expectations, moods, and needs, rather than your own. Boundaries protect your mental health by channeling your agency, preferences, and internal sense of no. They’re not walls, they’re signals that tell you where you end and someone else begins.
As a trauma therapist, I often encounter people who learned they couldn’t say no, their opinions didn’t matter, and their safety depended on being agreeable and easy to be around. For those nervous systems, boundaries can feel threatening at first. But that doesn’t mean boundaries are bad, it means you learned compliance as a way to survive a dynamic where authenticity was dangerous. Boundaries challenge those learnings and return your power back to you. They are a way to reclaim your needs, empower you to not do things you don't want to, and differentiate you from other people.
What practice helps regulate stress consistently?
I'm a somatic therapist, so I use body-oriented practices to keep my nervous system relaxed. Stress is essentially your body stuck in fight/flight/freeze/shut down, and though all healthy nervous systems should have access to these states, it's not ideal to be in them for long. Deep breaths are so simple and underrated for calming stress – you can do them anywhere, you don't need anything but yourself to do them, and they're a gentle way to help your body feel safe so it can move out of an activated state. I like to do uncounted, unstructured breaths because they feel better for my body, but any deep breath will do.
My personal hot tip to get the most out of deep breaths is to do them proactively, not reactionarily. By that I mean, it’s super helpful to breathe when you’re not stressed at all, not just when you’re in extreme stress. For me, this helps my body really feel what it's like to be calm, and differentiate from what it feels like to be stressed. In a way, it teaches my nervous system a new default. I've also built a few deep breaths into my morning and night routines as a way to pad the day with a little extra self care.
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