The Psychology Of Protecting Your Peace: 10 Habits That Create Emotional Balance
T.Den_Team / Shutterstock Even if dealing with hardship and “toughing out” discomfort can occasionally build resilience and character, experts like counselor Robin D. Stone argue that it’s essential to find a balance between this kind of “strength” and protecting your peace. Protecting your well-being, whether in relationships or in the face of adversity, is a state of being that influences protective habits like seeking out space or pausing before responding.
The psychology of protecting your peace might be complex and nuanced, but it’s small habits that create emotional balance. When you create space for solitude and social connection, rest and productivity, and empathy with self-preservation, you craft a more balanced, joyful, and intentional life.
Here are 10 habits that create emotional balance
1. Pausing before responding
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When you pause before responding or reacting to someone or something, you give your brain a chance to process what just happened. Whether it’s an exciting announcement or an argument with a friend, the most emotionally intelligent and self-assured people leverage silence to their advantage.
They don’t sabotage relationships with immediate anger, and they’re careful about how they express themselves. It’s how they protect their peace — they’re intentional, before they’re loud and expressive.
2. Balancing solitude with social connections
While too much solitude and isolation can often cause a myriad of consequences, according to a Scientific Reports study, balancing it with social connections is the perfect recipe to protect your peace. Of course, you should seek out community and social connections, but that doesn’t mean that alone time and appreciating your own company is a bad thing.
Even amid a culture of thriving loneliness today, alone time isn’t always so bad. It’s the time you spend getting to know yourself, reflecting on life, regulating emotions, and feeding into personal hobbies that add value and joy to your life. To protect your peace, you have to learn to be comfortable with yourself.
3. Giving people grace
Whether it’s letting go of past grudges, offering people the benefit of the doubt, or accepting that we don’t know what’s going on in the personal lives of a negative stranger we meet during the day, giving people grace is the key to creating emotional balance and protecting your peace. Stop taking that barista’s negative attitude personally. Don’t let your boss's anger throw off your entire mood for the day.
Even if it’s not always comfortable or easy to forgive people, and even to forgive ourselves, it’s the key to nurturing emotional balance and well-being. In small, intentional ways, you can start to let go and forgive people, even if they don’t deserve it, for your own power and well-being.
4. Setting boundaries without justifying them
In a healthy relationship, people will accept and flourish around healthy boundaries, offering small “bids of trust” by asking questions and respecting a person’s wishes. However, when someone feels entitled to your space or superior in a social situation, they may disrespect your boundaries to make themselves feel more important and secure.
Of course, boundaries aren’t to police other people’s behaviors. They’re meant to remind you what kind of behavior you’re willing to tolerate. So, of course, you have to be clear and open about your expectations, but that doesn’t mean you have to justify them to others. If someone loves and respects you, you’ll feel the difference in how they interact with your boundaries.
5. Creating space
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Whether it’s taking space from a partner to regulate and reflect after an argument, creating distance with toxic people, or separating yourself from drama in a conversation, having the self-awareness to create space is incredibly important and healthy.
Distance without guilt. That’s the psychology of protecting your peace. Sometimes, you have to be willing to put your own well-being above showing up for everyone else, if you want to nurture a healthy lifestyle and better relationships.
6. Not taking things personally
When we have more self-assurance and self-acceptance, we not only cultivate healthier relationships with ourselves, but we craft a more regulated nervous system and better control over how we’re treated by others. According to marriage and family therapist John Amodeo, people who refuse to take things personally, from other people’s negativity to their opinions, are less triggered in their daily lives.
Accepting that someone’s bad mood isn’t a reflection of something we did wrong and making space for self-regulation amid complex emotions are key to protecting your peace. It’s not always easy and takes a balance of care and intentionality, but it’s an important skill for fostering better mental health and relationships.
7. Not feeling a pressure to over-explain yourself
While seeking out belonging and reassurance are natural human behaviors, crafting your entire routine or sense of self-worth around external validation can be quickly draining. When nobody is around to reassure you, or you find yourself leaning on inauthentic behaviors to feel accepted, you’re throwing off your own emotional balance and peace.
Not everyone needs to understand or even like you. Emotional balance comes from nurturing positive connections, of course, but also enjoying your own company and accepting yourself for who you are, without external validation or reassurance.
8. Letting go
Many cling to unhealthy things, habits, and relationships out of comfort or fear, but the psychology of protecting your peace actually stems from letting go.
People who create emotional balance and ease in their lives may actually leverage uncomfortable, hard habits to do so. From letting go of toxic relationships to resolving resentment and old grudges to letting go of self-doubt and limiting beliefs, they’re intentional about keeping only pillars of value around. Even if it’s letting go of a constant sense of urgency and obligation in their routines, they’re self-aware enough to notice when things are draining them, and regulated enough to lean on new habits and routines to let them go.
9. Acknowledging emotions as they arise
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True emotional awareness and balance come from being able to recognize and verbalize your own emotions. Whether it’s a self-soothing practice when you’re feeling overwhelmed or a face of vulnerability in a relationship, noticing how you feel, instead of suppressing and avoiding, can add a great deal of value and intentionality to your life.
As a study published in Europe’s Journal of Psychology explains, self-awareness isn’t just about noticing feelings and emotions as they arise, but also accepting them on an internal level and acting on them with intentional habits.
Even if that’s noticing how you feel when certain people are around or acknowledging patterns of feeling in certain situations, this is the kind of self-awareness that’s common amongst people who can truly protect their own peace.
10. Crafting intentional self-talk
Rather than letting negative thought spirals and condemning self-talk get the best of them, people who truly protect their peace and craft emotional balance in their lives craft intentional self-talk. Their inner monologues and thoughts are a safe, secure place for them to live, rather than a hostile environment that they always run from with distractions and busyness.
Not only does this boost their relationships, mood, and self-esteem, but it can also promote better brain functions and processes, as a study published in the Scientific Reports journal explains.
Zayda Slabbekoorn is a senior editorial strategist with a bachelor’s degree in social relations & policy and gender studies who focuses on psychology, relationships, self-help, and human interest stories.
