How to Deal With Negative Emotions in a healthy way. Dealing with negative thoughts and emotions can sometimes be a daily challenge. Do you often let your emotions get the better of you?
Do you succumb to them or wait for them to pass instead of acting them out? What are emotions anyway?
How to Deal With Negative Emotions
Dealing with negative emotions is something that every human deals with. I am talking about painful emotions here, which can seem unbearable even to feel, never mind express them.
Negative emotions are strong, resistant internal physical feelings we have based on current or past events. That is why we resist them.
Managing and controlling your emotions at work, in relationships, and just for yourself are very important because you’ve probably seen the consequences of negative emotions.
What Are Emotions?
First, let’s talk about emotions for a second; what are they? You’ve probably heard emotions and feelings intertwined, haven’t you? Feelings are just feelings/ sensations in and on the body.
If I took a feather and rubbed it against your arm, you would “feel” it and perhaps experience a “light” emotion in your body that is easily passed/processed through you.
Emotions have been described as “energy in motion,” which is how emotional energy should be felt and expressed through you.
But once again, I am talking about the energy you would consider painful and not easy to process, such as grief, despair, and depression. That is usually why we cry when we are experiencing an unpleasant emotion. Crying is caused by feeling, acknowledging, and releasing emotion.
Just as you can become constipated by overeating unnatural junk food, your body can become constipated from too much junk energy. Have you ever spent prolonged periods in “go mode” where you haven’t even taken time for yourself to be? I have.
What happens to me when I keep going without taking some time to process my emotions is that I become sluggish. Followed by irritability, mood swings, and poor quality of sleep.
Once I hit this point, I either keep going and eventually hit “burn out,” or I stop everything and allow my energy to balance itself naturally.
I have an oversized leather chair in my office to express my emotions. It’s my spiritual toilet, if you will.
Negative Emotions Are Emotional Reactions
When someone triggers an emotional reaction in you, “they” inevitably will take the time to examine your belief and allow the emotion to come up.
Generally speaking, when you react emotionally to someone’s behavior towards you, it’s because you believe that they are somehow “devaluing” you and your worth.
All emotion comes from belief.
If someone said something to you that has nothing to do with you and there is no limiting belief attached to yourself (I’m not worthy), there would be no reaction. You would have an observation and not an emotional response.
You react emotionally if you carry a belief that corresponds with someone’s behavior and takes it personally.
Understanding that others’ behavior has nothing to do with you and taking the viewpoint that their behavior has to do with whatever they are dealing with.
If you keep experiencing the same emotion or reaction, you haven’t gotten to the core beliefs that control your emotional response. Limiting beliefs are a “mind virus” that must be removed to live the life you want.
Limiting beliefs like:
- I’m not good enough
- I’m not lovable
- I’m too fat
- I’m not worthy
- No one likes me
List of Negative Emotions
When I write about negative emotion, I am talking about polarity in mechanical terms. Let’s say the highest emotion is love, and the lowest is fear. And then, there are neutral emotions in the middle. The list below is emotions below the neutral point.
Positive emotions attract good things that are wanted, and in most cases, negative emotions attract unwanted things.
It’s been said that mental states bring on emotional states. The mind is the body, and negative emotions arise when tired, overwhelmed, or sick without enough rest and recuperation.
You can read all the positive books and watch empowering videos, but if your body is toxic or you spend a lot of time in a toxic environment, you will suffer from negative emotions.
This is a small list of negative emotions.
- Anger
- Hate
- Disgust
- Worry
- Envy
- Jealousy
- Annoyed
- Sadness
- Anxiety
- Difficult
- Disappointed
- Mortified
- Impatient
- Obnoxious
- Overwhelmed
- Insecure
- Timid
- Shame
Expressing Your Emotions
Expressing emotions is just a matter of feeling them, acknowledging them, and releasing them.
The key is not to attach meaning or dig into them further as they come up and through you because if you do, you will go back down the emotional hole.
Using your mind to assess how these emotions got there in the first place is okay, but I won’t advise you to spend time blaming another person for your feelings.
Please take responsibility for your emotions because I can guarantee you that your persistent thoughts about something (yourself) caused you to have them in the first place.
Transference of Emotions from Another
Do you have a bad day and take it out on another? If you do, then stop this. Taking out your emotions on another doesn’t release them from you.
It does attach you to the other person energetically, and now instead of just you feeling like crap, someone else does too. The World doesn’t need any more pain!
Why Do I feel Chest Pain when Hurt?
I found this article in Scientific American about why we feel chest pain when our feelings are hurt:
When we feel heartache, for example, we are experiencing a blend of emotional stress and the stress-induced sensations in our chest—muscle tightness, increased heart rate, abnormal stomach activity and shortness of breath.
In fact, emotional pain involves the same brain regions as physical pain, suggesting the two are inextricably connected.
But how do emotions trigger physical sensations?
Scientists do not know, but recently pain researchers uncovered a possible pathway from mind to body. According to a 2009 study from the University of Arizona and the University of Maryland, activity in a brain region that regulates emotional reactions called the anterior cingulate cortex helps to explain how an emotional insult can trigger a biological cascade.
During a particularly stressful experience, the anterior cingulate cortex may respond by increasing the activity of the vagus nerve—the nerve that starts in the brain stem and connects to the neck, chest and abdomen.
When the vagus nerve is overstimulated, it can cause pain and nausea.
Empaths – (someone who experiences emotional pain on behalf of another person) often are at the receiving end of the transference of emotional energy.
Empaths are too kind in this regard. They are left stuck with these transferred emotions; unless they can process them, they will feel bad because of someone else. Empathy is not restricted to humans either.
In 2006 a science-published paper revealed that when a mouse observes its cage mate in agony, its sensitivity to physical pain increases. And when it comes into close contact with a friendly, unharmed mouse, its pain sensitivity diminishes.
Take Ownership & Deal With Your Emotions
- Acknowledge the way that you feel.
- Tell others around you that you are emotional, and it has nothing to do with them, and that it would be best to tread lightly around you until they have passed.
- Take time BY YOURSELF to feel, acknowledge and process your emotions.
- Suppose you find that you get “backed up” with emotions regularly. In that case, I recommend that you begin doing some energy work like meditation, yoga, exercise, massage, Reiki, or anything that gets the energy moving in your body.
- Start a journal or a diary to express your feelings safely. As said before, the last thing you want to do is blame another for how you feel. I am not advocating not communicating your needs and desires with another but after passing your emotion.
- Experiencing negative emotions is like being constipated. It’s painful and uncomfortable and needs to be passed to feel good again.
- If you are super sensitive to emotions, you need to strengthen your nervous system with B vitamins and “knock-off” stimulants like caffeine. Lots of rest, too, until you feel better.
- Accept your emotions because they signal to you that your thoughts and body are off-kilter. What do you do when your car’s fuel gauge is empty? You put gas into it. And fill up on rest too! Your emotions gauge what you’ve been energetically putting into your body. If you don’t feel right, examine what you put into your body.
You don’t have to be a slave to your emotions or anyone else’s, for that matter. Learn to own your feelings, or they will undoubtedly own you.
Mindful Acceptance Template: Recognize and allow the emotion. Try to think of a more intense form of your emotion. Example: instead of sad, maybe you are distraught or crushed.
Instead of being mad, you are disgusted or appalled; instead of afraid, you are worried, terrified, or crazed. Then say I am feeling [emotion]; it’s ok, I can allow myself to feel this.
I’m not wrong because I have this feeling and can allow myself to have it. I’m going to make space for it. I do not need to be afraid of it because I’m not going to [do some drastic or destructive action]. I can control myself. So I don’t need to get rid of this feeling.
Watch the Emotion: Let me watch this [emotion] and see what it does. While I’m watching it, I’m going to call it what it is. [name the emotion(s)]. I don’t have to get caught up in it.
Where do I notice the emotion in my body? I notice it in [body part]. I feel [sensation from the impact of the emotion]. But it’s just an emotion, nothing more and nothing less.
I am not my emotions. I watch my emotions. My [emotion] is like an ocean wave. I’m not going to struggle and fight the wave. I’m going to go with it and float with it. I may even ride the wave to shore.
Be present. I will turn my attention back to what I am doing now. First, I will notice what’s going on with all five senses. What can I feel or touch? What do I hear?
What do I see in front of me? What do I smell? What do I taste? or will I turn my attention to my breaths? My breath is my anchor for the present moment. I take note of how I inhale and then how I exhale.
When the emotion comes back When the emotion returns, I say, that’s ok. That’s what emotions do, they come, and they go. I’m going to watch it again. I will let it sit in the room with me. Or I may float up and down with it again like the ocean wave. –Source
Conclusion
Ultimately we all want to feel good and alleviate the stress in our bodies without causing any “collateral damage.” I want to leave you this message from Veronica, as channeled by April Crawford.
The Seed To Understanding and Completion
“Let It Go”
“As one moves through a physical life, encounters with others are inevitable. Often the meetings result in an energy exchange that is not the best.
Interaction is a way of experiencing and growing with energy. If it feels difficult and you feel you have been wronged, it is important to look at it neutrally. Keeping any sort of negativity in your energy only beckons more.
In a difficult exchange be the one to reduce the impact of the negativity by forgiving. Being right is a lonely perspective when the other party is unaware of the depth of the energy.
All of you are here to assist others to grow and become joyous. Hanging onto negativity does not serve that high ambition. Be compassionate.
Be forgiving even if the other party is reluctant. Attach yourself to the joy of being and the idea that any dramatic exchange can and will lead to evolution.
Let go of the need to even the argument. Instead, perceive the exchange as an opportunity for all to grow and prosper. Those who would wish to continue the negativity will ultimately be disappointed when you do not continue the negative line of exchange.
Let it go.
See the value of resolution and walk deliberately towards it. The decision can be the seed of understanding and completion. It may be a lonely path at first, however, your commitment to it will trickle into their realities, eventually.
Release the need to be right. Be yourself. Release energy. The situation will improve by doing so.”
-VERONICA
Try EFT for processing your emotions. Tapping Into Emotional Mastery with Jennifer Partridge i
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