HOW TO DEAL WITH NEGATIVE EMOTIONS-Causes of Negative Emotions
Negative emotions are emotions of anger, strife, hatred, fear, and so on. They are all products of negative thoughts. The elimination of negative emotions is a very important step to living a healthy and happy life.
Negative emotions are not part of our life, that is, it is not a natural character. There is nobody born with fear or hate or anger. We learned those negative emotions and most times from childhood.
What has been learned can certainly be unlearned?
Have you ever have a negative attitude toward somebody and then have your attitude completely reversed when you got new information about that person.
Negative emotions are usually based on a false premise about people or anything. Negative emotions are still eating deep in people because they have kept on feeding it and keeping it alive.
If you keep dwelling on the negative emotions they will continue to grow and then you start to think it is your nature to act in a certain way.
Of course, circumstances and people may not always be favourable so the issue is not getting angry but rather staying angry and developing a character from the anger.
That is why you see people who are always angry, that is their default setting, they only smile once a while when circumstances make them too. That is wrong it is not your nature it was learned.
You came to this world with a heart like an empty slate ready to write on.
You will understand how to deal with negative emotions by knowing the true cause and source of negative emotions.
1.QUIT JUSTIFYING
Justification is showing that an act is reasonable and right. Have you seen people who derive joy in explaining why they are angry and unhappy? They always have reasons for their anger. The truth is you will always find reasons to be angry.
They tell themselves and whoever cares to listen to how badly they were treated, how bad is the situation they are going true, thereby trying to justify the reason for their anger.
Some keep rehearsing their encounter with people in their minds just to find good reasons why they are supposed to be unhappy. They feel entitled to their anger as if there is a reward awaiting them.
But don’t forget that the experience is still there because you have refused to let it go. Negative emotions do no good to anybody.
While not learn to excuse people’s offences instead of pondering on them. The moment you decide to excuse people’s offenses, negative emotions will start to lose their power source; which is your mind. You keep yourselves calm and positive you will not even notice when the negative emotions will leave.
If you desire to keep your peace and happiness you need to learn to not be upset or worry about something you cannot do anything about.
If there is no solution, there is no problem.
Leave the circumstances of the past alone, you can’t change, don’t allow it to spoil the present and the future.
2. EMOTIONAL ATTACHMENT
This occurs when you take something personally or become attached emotionally to a person or a thing.
You usually find this in people who usually take an unhappy circumstance or event as an attack on their person or to something they believe in.
When I was younger and was in an argument with a classmate in secondary school. As the argument was being more intense a guy took it personally and slapped the other person arguing against his point. Can you imagine that the argument was just the normal Lionel Messi and Christiano Ronaldo arguments?
he took it personally and then saw reasons why he should slap his friend.
You become emotionally involved in a situation and identify so strongly with it that it affects your emotions and your reason negatively.
Some people can’t even handle competition because of the bad habit of attaching emotions to every event. They turn their competitors into enemies.
Learn to detach emotionally from events and circumstances and even people.
3. THE OPINIONS OF OTHERS
This is when you become unduly concerned with the way people are treating you. You see people get angry just because they feel they are not getting enough respect from people.
This is very common among Africans. They so much desire respect from people and then feel insulted and angry when they don’t get it. Sometimes they will want to strike back.
If people are rude or indifferent to you, and you decide to tag their behaviour as an attack on your personality or character. This interpretation of their attitude or behaviour can make you angry or depressed.
Everybody is striving for a certain level of self-esteem and respect. But by the time your self-esteem is not as high as it wants to be, you will end up being sensitive to the actions and reactions of other people toward you. You start to take everything personally, exactly as if what they said or did was consciously and deliberately directed at you.
However, this is not always the case. The reality is that most people are preoccupied with themselves and their problems. The person who cuts you off in traffic is so involved with his thoughts, he is not even aware of your existence. It would be silly to become angry or upset over his thoughtless action.
Learn to not doing or refraining from doing something because you are afraid of what people will think about you. The truth is nobody is thinking about you.
So don’t even live as if you need people’s approval.
4. BLAME
This is the major cause of negative emotions.
To become angry, a person must be able to blame someone for something that has happened or not happened that they don’t like or approve of.
Many people are so preoccupied with blaming others for their problems that they lose contact with reality. They see the entire world through a lens of blame and its sister emotion, guilt.
Whenever things go bad the first thing to know is who is to blame. They spend their time and emotions apportioning blame. And after they find the offender what do they do? They find a comfortable and justifiable ground to be angry.
You can easily find this in a relationship, where instead of both parties to agree to the fact that they have grown up in a state where they cannot be together, they rather look for who did what is right and wrong, start to blame each other and eventually end the relationship with anger and hatred.
In conclusion: Do whatever you can to avoid negative emotions. They can steal your joy and happiness in life. Forgive and excuse the past and build a good future with the present.
It is a pretty life.
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