Corrections_Today_Winter_2024-2025_Vol.86_No.4

COMMITTEES

Emotional wellness Walking in a state of gratefulness By Deb Sahd T he health of our emotions is impacted by every aspect of our lives. The ACA wellness

committee is guided by SAMHSA’s eight dimensions of wellness which are social, occupational, financial, environmental, spiritual, intellec tual, physical, and emotional. These areas are interconnected and build upon each other. A PDF of the eight dimensions can be found here: https://store.samosa.gov/sites/de fault/files/sma16-4953.pdf There are always opportunities to experience trauma or challeng ing times in various forms within our careers, families and personal lives. A career aligned with crimi nal justice has its expected ups and downs and much like physical fitness, developing a “strong core” or emotional wellbeing will go far in the area of resiliency. Dr. Edith Eva Eger, author of “ The Gift ” is an Aus chwitz survivor who later acquired a psychiatric degree and whose life’s work is to challenge the bias think ing of white supremest by offering individual counseling without judgement of the person. Her experi ence is remarkable and outcomes impressive. She shares that trauma is personal and there is no compa rable measurement with others. She offered the story of woman who was

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Words: Your lifeline

assaulted and felt her trauma was less than that of Dr. Eger, who coun seled that she knew who her enemy was, and the young woman did not, adding to the traumatic experience. Consider that there may be heightened stressors from recent health related concerns to humani tarian crises seen through social media and television which would be considered secondary traumas. Mirror neurons allow us to experi ence or feel what we see; so, it’s critical to be aware of how our emo tions may be impacted and to create a practice or toolkit to support our emotional wellbeing.

The old adage of “words will never hurt me” is not an experiential truth as internal conversations are key to healthy emotional wellbeing. It is estimated that we experience over 70,000 thoughts a day with 90 percent of those thoughts being the same thoughts as the previous day regardless of accuracy, accord ing to the work of Dr . Joe Dispenza / Unlimited www.drjoedispenza. com. Thoughts must be changed to experience different outcomes. So, how we think is critical to how we live, much like the protection of

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