Managing Your Negative Emotions

Negative emotions are a vital part of the human experience. Nobody in the world feels good all the time.

In our culture, we welcome certain negative emotions. Grief is one example of that. For instance, we don't want to feel good and happy immediately after someone we love passes away. We understand that grief is an integral part of the healing process when experiencing that kind of loss, so we willingly embrace bad feelings such as sadness or despair during that period.

However, we don't often welcome other negative emotions that are part of our daily experience. For example, we typically don't like feeling bored, angry, lonely, insecure, disappointed, or envious.

When we feel negative emotions, there are a few different ways that we can respond. But, when we don't deal with them in a healthy, productive way, we find ourselves living with results that cause problems in our lives. Those negative responses would be to resist, react to, or avoid the feelings we don't like.

Resisting

As you might imagine, when we resist our negative emotions, they become much more intense. Resistance provides no relief at all. When you shut the door to any emotion, it's like trying to hold a large rubber ball under the water. It takes a lot of strength to keep that ball under the surface of the pool, but eventually, your power runs out, and as you let go, the ball comes shooting out of the water with enormous force.  

Your uncomfortable feelings are like that plastic ball – trying to hold them under the surface by resisting them does not cause the emotion to float away. All that happens is that more tension is created - which then has the potential of ending forcefully or explosively.

Reacting

It might feel like we are releasing tension when we react in a physical way to our negative emotions. However, when we yell at our kids, scream at our husbands, or cry out of frustration from getting a flat tire, we are not really feeling the emotion. 

At those times, we are not actually processing the emotions or feeling them at all. In fact, reacting is just another way to avoid our feelings altogether. And many times, if our actions are aimed at people in our lives, there is the additional downside of eroding the relationships we have with them.

Avoiding

The third way that we might respond to our negative emotions is by trying to avoid them altogether. To do that, we often partake in a type of culturally acceptable activity that makes us feel better in the moment and gives us a short-term relief from feeling uncomfortable. 

Some of the most common activities that we chose are overeating, overdrinking, doing drugs, overspending, overworking, gambling, surfing the internet, watching porn, playing video games, and spending long hours on social media.

When we partake in any of these activities while trying to make ourselves feel better, we are attempting to dull, or buffer, the negative emotions we are experiencing so that they feel more tolerable to us. 

Of course, the downside to this behavior is that when we do any of these buffering activities in excess, each can have significant adverse effects on our lives.  

For example, in the case of overeating, the result would be gaining weight and physical discomfort. Overspending and gambling will most likely lead to financial distress. And studies are showing that spending hours on social media not only prevents us from using our time productively, it also damages our self-esteem when we are constantly comparing ourselves to other peoples' "perfect" lives.

Processing

The best way to handle our feelings is not to be afraid of them and to learn how to process them in a way that serves us and doesn't have any downside.

A feeling is simply the response we have when we think a thought. Many times, we can feel it as a vibration somewhere in our bodies, but sometimes it just lives in our minds.  

And even though we might want to react in a certain way to our negative feelings, it is essential to remember that we don't have to. We can simply 

feel and process our emotions without taking any action at all.

As a matter of fact, feeling an emotion can look like sitting in a chair, taking a deep breath, and focusing on the sensations in your mind and body. Just let yourself be aware of what you are experiencing as you concentrate on the feeling you are having.

It can be kind of like wearing a ring on a finger that you usually don't. At first, you are conscious of the different sensations on that finger. It might even be a little distracting or uncomfortable. But after a while, you are no longer aware of the ring. Even though the feeling seemed annoying in the beginning, you noticed it, accepted it, and eventually forgot all about it.  

The same thing happens when we purposely focus and let ourselves feel the heaviness of a negative emotion. Eventually, the feeling moves on, and we no longer experience the mental and physical vibrations of it. 

Depending on what thoughts are causing the negative feeling, it could pass in a few moments, or it might last days or even weeks. But when we allow ourselves to feel difficult emotions, and not avoid, resist, or react to them, I guarantee they will eventually move on.  

That is when we gain confidence in the fact that we can handle any feeling that comes up for us. And when becoming more productive, that is an important part of the process. When we can feel our emotions in a way that serves us, getting our time and space organized becomes practically effortless!