Negative Emotions and What to Do With Them

Amy Taylor July 21, 2014

Painful as they are, negative emotions convey meaningful insights too.

Imagine this – your partner is late for the nth time. It’s examination week but your child hasn’t put her phone down to read her books. Your co-worker used your computer and didn’t bother to shut it down. Your spouse just came home drunk – again.

If you’re like most people, you would choose to suffer from physical stress than mental stress. Unlike physical fatigue, mental stress cannot be easily eliminated by a few hours of rest. Sometimes, the pain it brings lingers. Negative emotions like anger and anxiety are often too hard to bear. But even though negative emotions feel unpleasant, they occur for a reason. You experience them not because you are bound to suffer, but because you can learn something quite meaningful from them.

Experiencing negative emotions is normal, and is part of our being humans. The problem is not about experiencing them, but not being able to cope with them. Anger or anxiety, for instance, is just our brain’s initial response against situations it perceives to be a threat. But when we are able to deal with the situation correctly, we come to realise that it’s not that bad and our emotions subside. Ultimately, we feel calmer.

When it comes to dealing with negative emotions, our goal is not to prevent or suppress them. Our goal is to digest and metabolise them the way we would with food. Get what we want and then let it go. Keeping those negative emotions is like keeping a time bomb. As the clock ticks, so does the risk of the explosion. On the other hand, suppressing those emotions only intensify them, and we end up stuck and unable to recover.

So if it’s not keeping or suppressing, what is the best way to address negative emotions?

The answer is so simple: FACE IT.

Facing those emotions includes understanding what is causing you to feel the way you do, and managing your response in a way that is right, just and respectful of others. Sounds a lot? Let’s break it down into these simple steps:

Let yourself feel the emotions.

No one is immune from experiencing sadness, anger, loneliness and the like. Again, that’s part of human nature. It is absolutely normal and necessary to feel these unpleasant emotions. Be worried if you don’t feel them (only happiness) – there must be something wrong. So don’t feel bad, or guilty, if you experience unpleasant emotions. Just because you feel angry towards your spouse or child doesn’t mean you are a bad person. Remember – you cannot control what you think. BUT, you are in full responsibility of what you do. And to avoid doing things you will regret in the end, proceed to the next step.

Breathe deep.

You will be surprised of how a simple breathing exercise can do great wonders in keeping you calm amidst stressful situations. So before you say something (or do something), take a deep breath first. Breathing eases tension in your body by boosting blood flow. By breathing deep, you are sending your body a message that you are breathing like a very relaxed person. And when your body gets that message, it does really get relaxed. Not only does muscle tension gets reduced, your blood vessels also dilate, your heart rate slows down, and your stress levels go down.

Perceive the situation from a third person’s perspective.

Whenever you are experiencing hard-to-bear emotions like anger or fear, try to look at yourself like a different person. Be like a lizard on the ceiling, watching your body as it reacts. When you are able to separate yourself from your feelings, you are more able to disrupt the thoughts that worsen your negative emotions.

Challenge the thoughts that fuel your negative emotions.

Part of regulating your emotions is understanding where they are coming from. You may not even be aware that these thoughts are operating beneath the conscious level. The only way is to investigate them.

Experiencing negative emotions is normal and we should not try to prevent or suppress them. The best thing we can do is to face them by acknowledging that they exist, easing the tension through deep breathing, perceiving the situation from a third person’s point of view, and challenging the thoughts that fuel our emotions.