How to Deal With Negative Emotions

Negative emotions are uncomfortable and disturbing emotional responses. Examples of negative emotions are sadness, fear, anger, or jealousy. These feelings are not only uncomfortable; They also make it difficult to function in your normal day-to-day life and affect your ability to achieve goals.

It is important to note that no emotion, including a negative one, is inherently bad. It’s perfectly normal to feel these things in certain contexts or situations. These emotions become problematic when they are persistent and interfere with your ability to live your life.

Types of Negative Emotions 

There are a number of different feelings that are often referred to as negative emotions. While these feelings are usually a normal response to certain experiences or events, they tend to be distressing and uncomfortable. Some common types of negative emotions are:

• Anger
• Anxiety or fear
• Apathy
• Contempt, hate, or disgust
• Jealousy
• Insecurity
• Regret or guilt
• Sadness, grief, or loneliness
• Shame

Causes of Negative Emotions

Negative emotions can come from a variety of sources. Sometimes they are the result of certain experiences or events. For example, you may be angry that your favorite team didn’t win a game, or you may be angry that your partner was late a scheduled date. Negative emotions can also arise from:

Relationship conflicts 

Problems arising from interpersonal relationships are a common cause of negative emotions. Such challenges can arise in relationships with friends, family, coworkers, or romantic partners. 

Unmet Needs 

When your needs are unmet, whether physical, emotional, social, psychological, or spiritual, it’s normal to feel sadness, anger, loneliness, envy, and other distressing emotions.

Poor coping skills 

Daily stress can lead to a variety of upsetting feelings if you don’t have the coping skills to deal with it. Poor coping skills often result in making the problem worse or introducing new problems into the situation.

How to Deal With Negative Emotions

Fortunately, there are more productive ways to deal with difficult emotions. These strategies can help you cope while improving your ability to regulate your emotions.

Understand Your Emotions

Look within yourself and identify the situations that create stress and negative emotions in your life. Observing the source of the emotion and your reaction can provide valuable information. Negative emotions can stem from a triggering event, such as an overwhelming workload. Your thoughts on an event also matter.

How you interpret what happened can affect how you experience the event and whether it causes you stress.

Change What You Can 

Once you better understand your emotions and what causes them, you can take steps to address the problem. When you minimize or eliminate some of your stress triggers, you may experience negative emotions less often.

Some ways you can achieve this includes reducing work stress, often by delegating tasks, setting boundaries, and seeking support. Learn assertive communication practices to manage conflict in relationships. Change negative thought patterns through a process known as cognitive restructuring.

Find a Way Out

Making changes in your life can reduce negative emotions, but they won’t eliminate stress triggers. As you make changes in your life to create less frustration, you also need to find healthy outlets for handling those emotions. Regular exercise can provide an emotional boost and an outlet for negative emotions. Meditation can help you find an inner space to work with so your emotions don’t feel overwhelming. Finding opportunities to have fun and bring more laughter into your life can also change your perspective and reduce stress.

Remember that everyone’s needs and abilities are different. Often the key is to try a few other methods to see what works for you and your situation. Once you find the right techniques for you, you’ll feel less overwhelmed when negative emotions surface.

Accept Your Emotions

Learning to accept negative emotions is also an effective way to deal with these difficult feelings. Acceptance means acknowledging that we are feeling anxious, angry, sad, or frustrated and exist without insisting.

Once you accept your emotions, stop minimizing or suppressing them. Instead, you acknowledge that they exist, but acknowledge that these feelings are temporary and cannot hurt you.

Source: verywellmind.com