Facilitating Emotional Well-being as a Separate Discipline: Definitions and Boundaries
Abstract
Given the impact of emotional well-being on all facets of life and the downward trajectory of emotional health in recent years, researchers have been encouraged to explore emotional well-being as an independent discipline. This article contributes to this exploration by introducing a new gestalt of wholeness that includes a system of emotional well-being. Additionally, this article offers definitions and boundaries that help clarify this emerging discipline. Finally, the principal benchmark of emotional well-being, its main drivers, key indicators, and primary feelings are named.
Keywords
Wholeness, Emotional well-being, Core well-being, Wellness
Updated September 29, 2024
Table of Contents Show
Introduction
The Center for Emotional Well-being's charter is to nurture the emergence of the discipline of emotional well-being (EWB) through research. In recent years, there have been calls to explore EWB separately from other disciplines, such as psychology or mental health. This article introduces the research-backed Emotional Intelligence 3.0 White-Bryan Gestalt of Human Wholeness (GHW) in response to these calls. Emotional Intelligence 3.0 (EI3.0) is a vast body of work that includes assessments, models, a development path, and development guides focused on making the whole world whole. While the elements of EI3.0 are explained in later Journal of Emotional Well-being articles, the focus of this article is to introduce the gestalt and formative definitions that have emerged from research studies aimed at exploring a new model of EWB.
As GHW was brought to life through various research studies, I had little clue about the endgame. All I knew was that I was curious and I was stalking something. It felt important to keep following the data trail. In retrospect, I was engaging in mixed-methods research, using an assessment I created as the instrument of exploration. This instrument, the Emotional State Indicator (ESI), was supposed to be part of a new approach to emotional intelligence.
In 2022, after several years of studying and rethinking personal development to discover its secrets, I debuted a new system of emotional maturity named Emotional Intelligence 3.0® (EI3.0®) (Bryan 2022). The crown jewel of EI3.0 is the ESI survey instrument. However, findings from studies conducted on the ESI kept telling a story about something other than emotional intelligence. I felt compelled to see where the ESI was leading me. Through the studies, I stumbled upon a framework of EWB and wholeness. While I did not intend to answer the call to advance the field of EWB, that is what occurred. Isn’t that how many breakthroughs occur—unintentionally?
The ESI has been a significant catalyst for identifying the central elements of EWB and core well-being and how to measure these concepts. The data collected from the various studies pinpointed the most influential indicators of low EWB, allowed boundaries to emerge, and clarified GHW’s primary objective of wholeness through EWB. It also revealed the primary benchmark of EWB: the balance of a person’s emotional operating system, called emotional balance.
The research results also clarified anger, resistance, and defensive communication as the three patterns of emotional imbalance that most contribute to poor EWB. When activated, anger, resistance, and defensive communication can result in destructive conflict and self-sabotaging behavior, contributing to negative feelings and poor quality of life. The ESI studies that contributed to the identification of these facets of GHW will be summarized in later articles.
Facilitating Emergence
Establishing initial boundaries around EWB by defining what it is and is not is an essential first step in facilitating its emergence. These initial boundaries are mapped in GHW, which conceptualizes the path to human wholeness through EWB and core well-being. It includes a System of Emotional Well-being (SEW) and a Core Well-being Model (CWM), nurturing the separation of EWB from other disciplines by treating it as one. It makes EWB a stand-alone concept while identifying its connection to overall well-being and physical and mental well-being.
GHW also includes a system of organizational well-being called the System of High Performance (SHiP). Because human wholeness is about optimal performance in our personal and professional lives, creating a model of wellness for organizations felt necessary to complete the wholeness picture. SHiP will be discussed in a later journal article.
The Call to Clarify EWB
EWB, a concept deeply rooted in psychology for over 150 years, has a rich and intriguing history. Its origins can be traced back to the “basic emotion” approach in psychology, often attributed to Charles Darwin (Gendron and Barrett 2009). Today, there is a growing consensus that EWB warrants exploration as a distinct discipline (Feller et al. 2018; “Emotional Well-Being: Emerging Insights and Questions for Future Research” 2018).
Specifically, two powerful calls were made in 2018 to advance the field (Feller et al. 2018; “Emotional Well-Being: Emerging Insights and Questions for Future Research” 2018). First, Feller et al. (2018) proposed a national EWB initiative. The six initiative components included a structured and consistent measurement of EWB and identification of its drivers. Next, to better understand the existing research on EWB’s impact on health and its public implications, in 2018, the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health and the Office of Behavioral and Social Sciences Research joined forces with other National Institutes of Health (NIH) institutes to sponsor a roundtable discussion (“Emotional Well-Being: Emerging Insights and Questions for Future Research” 2018). This NIH effort aimed to propel research forward, concentrating on the challenges of developing, testing, and applying intervention strategies to enhance EWB.
These calls were partially attributable to the growing awareness of the impact of EWB on general overall health. Specifically, longitudinal studies have shown that high EWB is related to improved general health, enhanced disease-specific outcomes, decreased disability rates, and reduced mortality rates (Feller et al. 2018; “Emotional Well-Being: Emerging Insights and Questions for Future Research” 2018). Additionally, high EWB positively impacts behavior at any age (“Emotional Well-Being: Emerging Insights and Questions for Future Research” 2018). In short, EWB’s significance cannot be overstated.
While these invitations to advance EWB came in 2018, exploring EWB’s impact was not new. In 1998, two decades before these calls were made, Stewart-Brown wrote:
Solutions to apparently intractable public health problems like inequalities in health and unhealthy lifestyles may therefore lie in research into emotional wellbeing. A broad range of studies is needed to test the hypothesis that emotional distress creates susceptibility to physical illness and a further range is to research interventions which can prevent emotional distress and promote mental and social health (Stewart-Brown, 1998, 1609).
As research documents, in the intervening 20 years, a lack of integration and harmonization continued. Specifically, in 2022, Koslouski et al. (2022) analyzed reviews of measures of EWB. They “found that there was no consistent definition of EWB, identified measures varied widely and reviews were published in a range of disciplines. Psychometric evidence varied as did authors’ purposes for conducting the reviews” (Koslouski et al. 2022, 1). They concluded that “these reviews suggest that literature on EWB measurement is disjointed and diffuse. Conceptual integration and harmonisation of measures is needed to advance knowledge of EWB and its measurement” (Koslouski et al. 2022, 1).
Why Answer the Call
The latest statistics on the continued decline in emotional health are even more compelling than the 2018 call to advance EWB. The “State of the Heart 2024 Global Report” (Six Seconds, 2024), considered the world’s largest study of emotional intelligence, shared these key findings:
The world has entered an “emotional recession” - characterized by low well-being and high burnout. Well-being scores declined for the past four years, dropping 5.3%.
Global emotional intelligence scores have declined for four consecutive years. From 2019 to 2023, global average emotional intelligence scores declined 5.54%; scores on every individual competency also dropped.
Gen Z faces a mental and emotional health crisis fueled by loneliness and social isolation.
From 2021 to 2023, burnout increased in 65% of workplace sectors in the study (3).
This emotional recession can be partially linked to the ongoing mystery surrounding EWB. If we don’t know how to develop EWB, much less define it, it will likely continue declining.
While the current state may feel disheartening, fuzziness and mysteries abound in any emerging discipline. The fuzziness can be attributable to the growing pains of inconsistent terminology, unclear boundaries, a lack of standardized measurement, disjunctive models, or none at all. The mystery can be attributable to a lack of exploration and research on the topic. EWB, as an emerging discipline, is no different.
It’s not all doom and gloom in the EWB field, though, as some progress has been made in unifying it. For instance, Park et al. (2023) conceptualized a working definition and framework, contributing to a more cohesive and informative body of work. Despite this progress, advances in a unified approach, measurements, and identification of drivers remain disjointed. The GHW is an important step in building the path to a world of wholeness.
Defining EWB and Core Well-being
Part of the challenge in clarifying EWB is that current definitions are multi-dimensional, general, and can be perceived as nebulous. Iovino, Koslouski, and Chafouleas (2021) posited that
it is generally agreed that EWB is comprised of multiple dimensions that reflect how an individual feels in the moment, generally, and about life. Our life events and experiences (e.g., language, art/music, noises, and faces) can be placed along an emotion continuum from positive to negative affective quality. This continuum in which a stimulus is felt as pleasing or displeasing is referred to as emotional valence (1).
This description of EWB offers a starting point, and a narrower scope is required to advance the discipline.
Compounding the challenge of creating a clear, universal definition is that many definitions of EWB crossover into overall well-being because of generic references to positive feelings. Typically, well-being is defined as a blend of feeling positive and functioning effectively; it encompasses experiencing positive feelings like happiness and contentment, along with personal growth, some autonomy in life, a sense of purpose, and nurturing positive relationships (Ruggeri et al. 2020, 1). Some definitions say it represents a sustainable state that enables individuals or communities to prosper and flourish.
The World Health Organization’s definition of well-being follows this generic approach:
Well-being is a positive state experienced by individuals and societies. Similar to health, it is a resource for daily life and is determined by social, economic and environmental conditions. Well-being encompasses quality of life, as well as the ability of people and societies to contribute to the world in accordance with a sense of meaning and purpose (“Health Promotion Glossary of Terms” 2021, 10).
Developing proficiency in emotional health to achieve optimum health involves understanding EWB on both macro and micro levels. While EWB is an independent system with various structures, it is part of the more extensive system of core well-being and human wholeness (with its own structures). Thus, to create clarity, GHW incorporates two levels of individual well-being required for wholeness (EWB and core well-being) and defines them more precisely by naming the cause and result. To reiterate, in GHW, EWB is the gateway to wholeness. It must be achieved first for wholeness to follow.
In GHW, EWB is a continuous sense of happiness and satisfaction caused by a balanced emotional operating system formed by positive self-perceptions of worth and authority. It is a place of emotional balance that results in a person navigating the complexities of life by connecting and collaborating via engagement. A person feels emotionally safe because their emotional love and belonging needs were met in childhood (or they have processed and integrated the experiences that created the emotional imbalance). Their emotional safety is not easily threatened.
Low EWB is a regular or intermittent sense of unhappiness and dissatisfaction caused by an imbalanced emotional operating system formed by distorted perceptions of self-worth and self-authority. It is a place of emotional imbalance that results in a person navigating the complexities of life by connecting and collaborating via entanglement. Here, a person doesn’t feel emotionally safe. Because of that, they are sensitive to threats to inclusion.
Core well-being is broader than EWB. It is a continuous sense of wholeness caused by accepting and integrating emotional, physical, and mental design (fate) to achieve unity with the system and fulfill one’s destiny by self-actualizing. It is a place of system balance, a more expansive type than emotional balance, that results in a joyful and fulfilling existence. It is where the extraordinary happens as a person becomes the best version of themselves. A mind, body, and heart approach are required.
While the terms used to identify the elements of GHW are explored in later journal articles, many of them are included in the EI3.0 Glossary, which can be downloaded at the end of this article.
The Predominant Feelings of Well-being
While most people want happiness, it is not the predominant feeling of core well-being where wholeness is achieved. That is joy. Dr. Pearl Grimes explains the difference:
Joy is an internal barometer of well-being and wellness. However, we must make the distinction between joy and happiness. David Brooks, esteemed New York Times writer and columnist, recently shared his perspectives on the differences between joy and happiness: “Happiness involves a victory for self. Joy involves the transcendence of self. Happiness comes from accomplishments. True joy is the present that life gives you as you give away your gifts” (Brooks 2019) (Grimes 2020, 35).
Happiness is a positive and pleasant feeling caused by satisfaction with your life. It results from personal achievement. Joy resides out in the field beyond happiness and satisfaction, making it the peak experience of core well-being. Unlike happiness, joy is not a feeling but a state of being that permeates every aspect of life. It is caused by fulfillment from using your gifts and talents in the tapestry of life in the way only you can to make the world better. It results in an extraordinary life.
The journey to core well-being and wholeness requires the development of EWB. It is where happiness and satisfaction emerge, providing the foundation for the joy that accompanies core well-being.
Well-being Versus Wellness
The final boundary to be addressed is that well-being is not the same as wellness. While wellness and well-being are often used interchangeably, their nuanced differences make them distinct terms. Well-being is the quality of the state a person is in regarding mental, physical, or emotional systems, or all three. Wellness is the approach one takes to achieve that state. For example, a food plan of eating healthy and visiting your medical doctor annually is a wellness strategy that contributes to physical well-being. Also, regular visits to a licensed psychologist, psychiatrist, counselor, or social worker are wellness strategies that contribute to mental well-being.
This distinction is imperative, as emotional wellness strategies are the key to reversing the trends identified in the “State of the Heart 2024 Global Report” (Six Seconds, 2024). However, because EWB is still unfolding as a discipline, wellness strategies have been part of the mystery. GHW changes that as it includes a development path that incorporates emotional wellness strategies in the form of EI3.0 Guides. These guides include experiential activities designed to develop engagement, leading to emotional balance. They will be discussed in a later journal article.
Conclusion
This article advances EWB as a distinct discipline by introducing a new gestalt of wholeness that defines EWB at the high and low ends. This conceptual whole is also used to establish initial boundaries by identifying the connection between EWB and core well-being and clarifying how well-being differs from wellness. There is still much work to be done to democratize and normalize EWB. We will continue to share our groundbreaking research on EWB as it becomes available.
Downloads
Download a PDF of this article.
Download terms used in EI3.0 (revised 033025).
Download The White-Bryan Gestalt of Human Wholeness.
References
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