How to deal with negative emotions?

How to deal with negative emotions?

Table of contents

Most of us don’t like to feel uncomfortable. We don’t like to be too hot, cool, cramped, we don’t like to feel tired or hungry. There are many types of discomfort. In this article, we will focus on discomfort related to emotions. I will outline what negative emotion discomfort is, what it results from, what the symptoms of emotion discomfort may be. You will also learn what characteristic beliefs may underlie difficulties in experiencing negative emotions. I will present ways to help you better cope with such feelings. If you feel that you would like to discuss this topic in the context of your life make an appointment online psychotherapy

Disagreement with negative emotions

There is a difference between perceiving unpleasant emotions as unbearable and a constant need to get rid of them, and not resenting unpleasant emotions, but understanding that they are an unavoidable part of life. Emotional resentment can mean an inability to fully experience unpleasant or uncomfortable emotions, often accompanied by a desire to avoid the condition.

The experience of experiencing an emotion itself can associate us with a large intense, strong dose of emotion such as despair after an argument with a loved one or severe anxiety during a public speech. This association with extreme emotions can translate into a complete lack of desire to deal with any negative emotions – including those of lesser intensity, such as nervousness about an upcoming medical examination.

Emotions that are most difficult to deal with

There are different types of negative emotions that are potentially difficult for us to manage. Here are three basic groups:

1. Sadness

Includes disappointment, pain, despair, guilt, shame, depression, grief, etc. These emotions may be accompanied by low physiological arousal, such as low energy, fatigue, heaviness, or elevated physiological arousal, such as intense crying and anxiety; thoughts of hopelessness, meaninglessness, loss, regret and inadequacy; and a desire to hide from reality.

2. Anger

Includes irritation, agitation, frustration, disgust, jealousy, rage, hatred and the like. These emotions are usually accompanied by high physiological arousal, manifested, for example, by tension, increased heart rate, feeling sweaty or hot, thoughts of unfair or inappropriate behavior by others, a sense of being wronged, and often a desire to retaliate.

3. Anxiety

We will associate nervousness, anxiety, fear, panic or terror with this emotion. These feelings are usually accompanied by high physiological arousal: intense heart rate, accelerated breathing, tension, sweating, trembling. Often there are worries about how others will judge us, fear of negative, even catastrophic events, such as job loss or illness.

For some people, the lack of desire to feel can be very broad, as they find all negative emotions disturbing. Others avoid one particular emotion, such as anxiety.

It is worth mentioning that some of us are also afraid to feel positive emotions, such as joy or pleasure. These individuals experience positive emotions as a loss of control. There may also be an exaggerated fear that if we allow ourselves to feel a good positive emotion, something bad will happen in a moment.

Where do negative emotions come from and what are they?

Where do negative emotions come from and what are they?

Our low tolerance for negative emotions is due to a combination of biological and environmental factors. Some of us are born with a certain temperament that predisposes us to be more sensitive to negative emotions, to experience them more easily, and to arouse intensity more quickly and strongly. This may mean that some people experience negative emotions as more painful, and thus have more difficulty coping with the experience.

Our experiences in childhood, adolescence and adult life may have shaped certain ways of dealing with emotions. We may not have been taught how to deal with emotional discomfort. For example, we faced punishment for expressing emotions, such as crying when we felt sad. We may also have observed ineffective ways of dealing with our own emotions in others, when, for example, one parent watched a loved one abuse alcohol.

Eventually, if we used unhelpful ways of dealing with our emotions for years, these methods may have been reinforced and become a habit and a permanent way of temporarily improving our mood.

Symptoms of not coping with emotions

Paradoxically, the more we fear, struggle and try to avoid all manifestations of negative emotions, the more the negative affect increases in strength. Our fear and avoidance of emotions actually magnifies mental suffering and pain. The negative emotion itself creates an uncomfortable experience for us. If we ourselves do not express approval of the emotion, it can intensify in us states of lowered mood, outbursts of anger or paralyzing anxiety. Ultimately, this can lead to an increased risk of emotional disorders such as dysthymia and even depression. Emotional disorders are also conducive to personality disorders.

Disruptive beliefs

Regardless of how the difficulties in dealing with bad emotions arose, it is very important to try to catch the beliefs you have developed about experiencing them. Negative beliefs about the emotions themselves increase the power of the so-called negative affect and contribute to the difficulty of extinguishing them.

Below are some common beliefs that may accompany you:

  • This is unbearable. i / I hate this feeling.
  • I need to stop this feeling. I need to get rid of it.
  • I can’t handle this feeling.
  • I will lose control. / I will go crazy.
  • This feeling will last forever!
  • I shouldn’t feel this way. / It’s stupid and unacceptable.
  • Others take advantage of how I feel about this.
  • I am weak if I feel this way.
  • This is wrong. / This is dangerous.

Avoid, run away – but where to?

A clear sign of not coping with tension is that we take strenuous measures to escape or get rid of uncomfortable emotions, e.g. anger, sadness. We can do this in many different ways, and most of them can lead to a buildup of problems.

Avoidance can take many forms. First, you can avoid any situation, place, person, or activity that may cause distressing emotions. Examples of this might include avoiding studying because you fear failure, avoiding social gatherings for fear of negative judgment from others.

There are also more subtle forms of avoidance. You may observe them when you try to quickly dispel your anxious emotions by excessively seeking reassurance from others. Perhaps you consult others for reassurance: family, friends, doctors or online experts . You may also engage in some repetitive activities that minimize anxiety for a while: over-preparing for projects at work or social gatherings.

Finally, you may try to suppress and dissipate bad emotions. You try to push the stress away from you, finding any mental or physical activity just to distract you from the difficult experience. A common way is to turn to alcohol or drugs, or to overeat. You may also escape into sleep as a way to ward off unpleasant emotions.

Each way of escape works only for a short while. Experiencing immediate relief, calming your emotions, may seem like a good strategy. However, it won’t benefit you in the long run; on the contrary, it can cause other problems. Your emotions become like a beach ball that you try to hold underwater with your hands. You can hold it, try to hide it only for a while, eventually it will pop to the surface anyway.

By constantly using an escape strategy, you will never learn other, more helpful ways to tolerate your emotions. By constantly running away, you never have the opportunity to stay with emotional distress, and thus you don’t give yourself the opportunity to try to challenge the beliefs that cause such a strong aversion to negative emotions.

What are emotions ? Do we need bad emotions ?

What do you think would happen if you didn’t feel sadness ? We usually feel sadness when we lose something important: a person, a job, someone’s attention or affection. If we didn’t feel sadness, it would mean that nothing is important to us; that we don’t appreciate what we have, aren’t interested in anything and aren’t connected to our lives or to other people.

Imagine a life without feelings of anger. We would probably then condone mistreatment of ourselves or condone harming other people. Anger can also spur us to action, increase our motivation.

What are emotions ? Do we need bad emotions ?

How to discharge negative emotions? Learning to accept

The good news is that it doesn’t have to be this way! No matter how your intolerance to suffering came about, what emotions you have trouble with, and how unhelpful your methods of escape are, you can learn to bear your discomfort.

Accepting suffering is not about liking unpleasant emotions, giving up feelings of happiness or wallowing in negativity. It involves changing one’s perception of negative emotions. By reacting in an accepting way to one’s emotions, we often change the effect a condition has on us.

Tolerance of suffering is a useful life skill that anyone can learn. Instead of fearing and fighting uncomfortable emotions and desperately trying to get rid of them, you can begin to learn to experience them and experience states where emotions simply pass.

So, how do you work through negative emotions? The first step to acceptance is to start seeing your feelings and emotional experiences from a different perspective. As we mentioned above, negative emotions such as sadness, anger and fear are a universal part of our lives. These emotions are only common and completely normal, but they also often prove to be important and useful to ourselves.

How to accept negative emotions?

There are no right or wrong ways to develop acceptance of discomfort. The most important thing is to adopt an attitude of watching or observing one’s emotions, taking a third-person perspective on how one feels in the present moment. Observe how the intensity may increase, maintain its course, decrease or change and evolve into another feeling. In doing so, try to use non-judgmental language, for example, replace the thought “I’m absurdly terrified” with “I feel anxiety in a rapid heartbeat”; “I’m acting furious” with “I feel anger in the tightness of my jaw.”

Variability of emotions

When we feel stressed, it may seem to us that the stress will continue indefinitely until we have already begun to lose control completely. However, we know that this is not the case.

Rather, emotions behave like a wave: sometimes they rise and become more intense, but they inevitably reach a certain point, after which they drop off and eventually pass away. Sometimes emotions can rise again, setting off another wave or smaller ripple. The key is that emotions move and change. This happens especially when you don’t fight or try to block them.

Visualize

The use of imagery can often be helpful in developing an observer’s perspective. You can use the metaphor of a wave or a cloud in the sky. You can imagine each cloud as your individual emotion. In this way, you can simply watch your emotions floating, shifting in their own time, eventually disappearing from view.

This approach is often referred to as learning to watch carefully. Mindfulness is the state of being where you are in the present, observing what you happen to be experiencing during a given moment, with an attitude of curiosity and without judging or trying to change your experience.

When you feel that you have fully observed a negative experience, you feel that it has come to its natural end, it is a good idea to gently direct your attention to the present moment. It can be anything sensory, sound, taste, smell, sight or touch sensation. Whatever you choose, try to focus on it to mark that moment in the present.

Opposing action

Another strategy, related to taming negative emotions, is to minimize avoidance behavior. The first step is to work out your goal – that is, what you would like to do, but don’t do because you feel anxiety, for example. Create a ladder, or a list of actions that will bring you closer to a specific goal. Start doing them gradually, starting with easier actions, minimally moving to more and more difficult ones, to which you react more strongly emotionally.

Your steps can include a variety of activities or just one activity. If you’re anxious about just one activity, like going out on the town, each step might involve increasing the amount of time you spend on that activity, or changing who you do it with, where you do it, or when you do it: first you might go out to the stairwell, then out for a walk around the neighborhood, and gradually increasing that exposure in a tame way.

Experiment

The only way to find out what activities can actually make you feel better is to start experimenting with new behaviors. The next time you feel a negative emotion, try approaching it in a different way. Perhaps more carefully, try not to push it into the very corner of unconsciousness. See what actually works? Did it reduce your suffering? Or did it make no difference at all? Did it make you feel worse? Based on your observations, you can judge whether it’s worth using the strategy again, or whether you need to repeat it because you’re still not sure it’s useful. Give yourself some time for new activities, be patient.

Work on changing negative beliefs

An important part of working on tolerance of negative experiences is to try to change negative beliefs about emotions. The more often you give yourself a chance to ruminate, the easier it is to experience new conclusions about emotions.

It is very important for you to remember that:

  • Negative emotions are natural and you don’t have to fear them.
  • Feeling threatened does not have to lead to disaster.
  • Negative feelings pass if you don’t fight or avoid them.

Problem solving

Once you are able to bear unpleasant emotions and are not running away from them, and your anxiety has subsided somewhat, it is worth asking yourself, do the emotions you are experiencing concern a situation that you can actually do something about? In other words, are your emotions about something over which you have some control and can take action?

If the answer is no, then continue with everything we’ve discussed so far to further build your tolerance for discomfort.

However, if you do have influence and are able to act in some way, then once the wave of emotions has subsided, you may find it worthwhile to undertake problem solving regarding the situation that is bothering you. Problem solving is about overcoming a problem in a systematic, gradual and structured way. It means identifying the problem that bothers you, thinking through all the options for a solution, looking at the advantages and disadvantages of the options you prefer, choosing one or more options you want to implement, detailing the steps required to put those options into action, and defining a plan for when you will take each step. It is much easier to put an action plan in place when emotions have subsided. Therefore, this type of thinking is worth undertaking only after your emotions have quieted down.

Summary

Developing the ability to better manage and accept emotions can lead to more than mere tolerance. It will contribute to building well-being, emotional resilience and greater self-acceptance. It’s not about changing your identity, who you are as a person, but about finding the space and strength within yourself to face your feelings.

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I am a certified psychotherapist and CBT supervisor. I use the latest methods of cognitive-behavioral therapy and schema therapy. My specialty? Turning complex theories into practical advice and solutions! As an expert in the field, I not only run a clinical practice, but also train and supervise other psychotherapists. I invite you to read my articles and contact me if you need professional support.

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