Dealing With Negative Feelings
Whatever you are not changing, you are choosing.
Throughout the day, we experience many situations where we react on an emotional basis. When we encounter situations we consider bad, we tend to mismanage our lives, and we often don’t consciously realize our behavior.
When we’re soaked up in negative emotions, we tend to say things we don’t mean, act unwisely, and make poor decisions.
Emotionally intelligent people know specific ways to handle emotional charges healthily. They know that every time they feel angry, hopeless, jealous, or regretful is a possibility to transform their lives.
Understanding emotions.
Every mental activity results in a specific physical sensation. This is what we call an emotion. Emotions are combinations of both mental experiences and physical impacts. This composite expresses the entirety of your health at a given moment.
The endocrine system produces hormones in response to your experiences. The more radical your experiences are, the more intense your body will react through releasing certain hormones. This results in strong emotions of deep sadness, vigorous hate, or profound happiness and bliss.
Even if some people you know seem to be happy all the time, they aren’t. From a physiological point of view, it is impossible to feel blissfully happy all the time, nor is it natural at all to feel overly emotional by default. That’s because happiness — as well as pleasure, joy, anger, stress — are, after all, emotions. The released hormones dissolve in the body over time and return to their normal level.
To put it bluntly, emotions are just temporary hormone mixes flushed within our body triggered by certain life experiences. Zen Buddhists remind us that humans are content, calm, and centered in the natural state of being.
That’s why each emotion is special, valid, and deserves full acknowledgment. That’s why becoming aware of this psychological mechanism of our bodies is so crucial.
Once you’re emotionally charged and aware of it, you can respond instead of reacting, which are two different things: Reacting is an automatic behavior. It’s exactly when we let our emotions dictate our actions. Responding is being mindful of our words and actions while moving forward.
Three supportive ways to handle emotions.
We are, after all, emotional beings, and we have to accept this reality.
A boost of pleasure emotions or stress emotions always has a certain trigger of mental activity and/or physical influences. That’s why emotions are excellent teachers in life. They help us understand what our life is about, what we want to see in our lives, and what we don’t enjoy.
It all boils down to some specific patterns emotionally intelligent people are aware of and stick to in their daily lives. Here are three of them:
They don’t act influential when they’re emotionally charged.
Our emotions heavily influence how we decide, speak, and act.
Probably you already had moments where you said something to a person you didn’t mean that way. You were just pushed by your anger and said it just to hurt that person.
You probably made promises to people on a day you felt awesome. But then, a few days later, you don’t feel in good shape to keep them.
Maybe a friend asked you out, and you agreed to meet. But then, a few days later, you’re not in the right mood to meet, and so you cancel it.
Maybe you have a bad day, and all the work you put into your project seems to be pointless after all, and you think about quitting.
The rule behind these scenarios we all know is easy:
Never reply when you are angry. Never make a promise when you are happy. Never make a decision when you are sad.
It may feel unnatural at first, but this rule helps us to become more aware when we try to see things objectively. By this rule, we avoid hurting others, making stupid decisions, or acting counterproductively.
They use their emotions as teachers.
A common but highly counterproductive way to deal with emotions is to ignore them. It seems to be the fastest way to get rid of them in the short term. But it won’t help you one bit to ignore your emotions, especially when they are recurring.
It’s not about just getting over your emotions. It’s about listening carefully to what they are trying to tell you about your experience.
A negative emotion reveals an unhealed part of yourself.
The things that bother you the most aren’t there randomly. They are your own mind that tries to identify what in your life can and must be transformed, changed, and fixed.
Emotions always have a reason and are created by your thoughts. Negative emotions can be traced back to specific thoughts that occupy your mind.
Once you identify why something is triggering you so much, you can understand it, release it, and form a positive life change out of it. Remember:
Whatever you are not changing, you are choosing.
Anger can help you to see your priorities more clearly. It tries to move you into action.
If you are jealous of someone, it helps you to understand what you truly want in your life. Even though you don’t want exactly what they plan, the anger you experience is about the fact that they are allowing themselves to pursue something while you are not.
Embarrassment is a feeling when we know that we didn't behave in a way we’re proud of. It can be a sign that we didn’t accept ourselves completely for who we are or not having the full confidence that we’re doing the best we can with what we have.
Regret shows us what we absolutely need to create. We tend to regret what we did not do more than to regret what we did. It is a sign that we need to live up to our expectations more importantly.
Every emotion has a deeper cause that wants to be acknowledged and understood. Facing and resolving them will always contribute to your evolution.
They always choose growth over ease.
After a tough working day, we can watch Netflix or work on our heart projects. Ticking another to-do on our lists and working for ourselves will result in similar amounts of dopamine as watching Netflix. Still, the decision is ours.
It’s easier to watch a TV series than to work on our project.
It’s easier to order our favorite fast food than to cook a fresh dinner.
It’s easier not to pay attention to the people around us than to positively impact them and treat them well.
It’s easy to grumble about everything that bugs us instead of profoundly taking care of ourselves.
So often, the short-term dopamine is too seductive to ignore. Nevertheless, only little growth lies in the road that was conceivably easy to trot.
Whether you excessively watch Netflix or use the time to make progress in your craft — the action you choose to take will lead to a completely different impact on your life mission and your freedom.
Whether you eat fast food or prepare your healthy dish — it will have a completely different impact on your health and physical well-being in the long-term.
Whether or not you pay genuine attention to the people around you and listen carefully to what they say and mean — it will have an immense impact on the quality of your relationships and the love and care you receive in your life.
Always choose growth over ease.
It doesn’t mean you shouldn’t eat, breathe, relax from time to time. It also shouldn’t mean you must sacrifice a beautiful today for a beautiful tomorrow.
It simply means you must take responsibility for your actions.
Each decision to do or not do something will inevitably stack to a certain outcome. It is the micro shifts you do day by day that will pay out — or trouble you — in the end.
Remember: Your body responds to your experiences by releasing certain hormones. Let positive emotions be the reward of supportive and powerful actions dedicated towards your growth in the long run.
In a nutshell
Emotionally intelligent people know specific ways to handle emotional charges healthily. It all boils down to some specific patterns emotionally intelligent people are aware of and stick to in their daily lives:
- Don’t act influential when you are sucked into emotions: Never reply when you are angry. Never make a promise when you are happy. Never make a decision when you are sad.
- Use your emotions as teachers, since they reveal unhealed parts of yourself: Once you identify why something is triggering you so much, you can understand it and release it and form a positive life change out of it. Remember: What you aren’t changing, you are choosing.
- Always choose growth over ease. It is the micro shifts you do day by day that will pay out — or trouble you — in the end. Your body responds to your experiences by releasing certain hormones. Let positive emotions be the reward of supportive and powerful actions dedicated towards your growth in the long run.
In short: Redo what makes you happy and resolve what doesn’t.
Written by
I write about Personal Growth, Mindset, Happiness • Let’s keep in touch on social media — michaelrauscher.com • Be my email friend michaelrauscher.substack.com
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