A healthy and balanced diet includes all kinds of food: dairy products, fruits and vegetables, meat, sugar, and salt in reasonable amounts.
Consuming more or less than recommended may cause negative consequences for one’s health in the short or long run. Emotions are the same: From birth onward, we need a ‘balanced emotional diet’, consisting of love, support, and the ability to hear and to be heard, as well as all the frustrations, limitations, and sorrows that shape our lives and experiences.
Especially during the first seven years of life, everybody needs to hear positive messages like ‘I love you’, ‘you are the best’, and ‘you can be whoever you want to be. This strengthens our emotional nutrition, as do the clear rules and the understanding that sometimes our plans do not turn out as we wish, which is fine too.
Using terms like self-esteem, bonds, emotional management, and assertive communication, Malaisi explains the importance of emotions in our individual growth and our relationships with family and friends.
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