In an era where face masks, bath bombs, and everything showers are the blueprint for wellness, it seems like every self-care day has to be perfectly thought out and Instagramable. But what happens when the feelings that bring you down require solutions that aren’t so pretty?

Truthfully, there are many human emotions that can be quite ugly. No one ever likes to experience feelings like jealousy or anger, but we do and that’s completely okay. However, it's important not to let these emotions fester into something unmanageable.

Sometimes, our ugly problems require ugly solutions. Whether that be screaming into your pillow or pruning your body in a shower cry, even your most embarrassing moments can be vital to your emotional wellbeing. You just have to allow yourself to experience them.

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What Even Is Emotional Hygiene?

In the same way our skin needs face wash and serums after a long day, our emotional wellbeings also require regular upkeep. Whether you feel surrounded by negative emotions constantly or just once in a while, finding habits and outlets to express yourself can help you regulate your feelings.

The term “emotional hygiene" is just another way of saying that we should be mindful of our emotions and find healthy ways to process them. In other words, we should be acknowledging our emotional wounds just as we would a physical scrape or cut. While this can be awkward and even painful at times, practicing emotional hygiene will serve you better in the long run.

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The Plastic Pretty Self-Care Routine

As of right now, self-care culture on the internet is all about aesthetics, and the idea that looking good means feeling good. In many cases, practices like drinking herbal tea or 10-step skincare routines can truly be helpful! However, these idealized forms of self-care can quickly become performative.

It’s important to remember that your life is for you only, and that you don’t need to look perfect for an audience despite what you see online. Every person goes through vulnerable and emotional patches in their lives, but they may not always be documented.

Take my story for example. In past summers, I’ve found myself scheduling my days around “perfect” routines that took the form of morning workouts and protein shakes to overnight curls and under-eye masks. I convinced myself that if I didn’t stick to these premeditated plans exactly, I was betraying my self-care journey.

Hitting the snooze button or forgetting to take off my makeup in exhaustion made me feel like I wasn’t doing everything in my power to ensure my happiness. But the truth is, neither our schedules nor our intuitions can predict our feelings.

Over time, I realized that even on days where I didn’t follow my schedule exactly, I felt okay, if not better. I was free from the mental constraints I’d built up in my head and the invisible audience I felt like was judging my life. Simply doing what felt right for me at a given moment was exactly what I needed, even if it came at the cost of mascara-stained pillows and puffy red eyes.

Emotional wellness doesn’t always show up as linear growth. It’s completely normal to have ups and downs in your day to day life. All that means is that you are experiencing normal challenges, and coming back from them. Not only is this cycle okay, but also completely necessary.

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The "Unpretty" Outlets

Finding ways to express your emotions can help you circumvent the self-destructive behaviors they cause. Feelings like anger, jealousy, fear, or grief never make you unworthy of care. At the same time, releasing these feelings may not always look picture-perfect.

Here are a few helpful and slightly messy ways you can practice emotional hygiene:

Journaling: You don’t always need straight lines and pastel highlighters to write the perfect journal entry. In fact, some of the most productive journaling sessions can result in tear-stained, scribbled pages. Don’t worry about perfection, and just focus on letting your emotions spill out. Your raw and painful thoughts can be served better on paper than in your head.

Crying: Whether that be wails or soft sobs, crying isn’t at all a sign of weakness. It’s your body’s instinctive way of letting your emotions out. A good long cry can help you relieve stress, and even give you clarity after some time.

Conversations: Not all of your emotions have to be dealt with by yourself. Opening up to a friend or trusted adult about what you're feeling can take some of the weight off your shoulders. By looking at your problems through the eyes of another person, you may even find relief or a solution.

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The Dangers Of Bottling It All Up

As teens, we often feel obligated to show the world that we are okay. As we learn how to grapple with new emotions, we may feel like there is nowhere to go. However, pushing these feelings down is no better than letting them bring you down.

Your emotions never truly dissolve. They are bound to surface at one point or another.

For this reason, it’s important to recognize your emotional backlog and find methods of emotional hygiene that work for you. Using the methods listed above or creating your own can help you process your emotional wounds as they come, as opposed to letting them amalgamate into a full breakdown.

The more we normalize these “not so pretty” parts of self-care, the more we create space for honest and authentic healing. While it may not be fun to acknowledge the fact that you’re feeling sad or frustrated, it's better to deal with them than letting them go unchecked. So yes, you should light a scented candle and take long bubble baths.

But you should also let yourself ugly cry in the shower and scream into your mattress. Whatever you do, just let your emotions run wild. Because these "unpretty" moments are not just a part of self-care: they are self-care.