How To Adequately Deal With Painful Or Unpleasant Emotions?
There are those who assume that the perfect human being is one who is guided primarily by rationality and logic. In fact, there are many philosophers who throughout the centuries have seen emotions as an obstacle that prevents us from living in a totally virtuous way; as if the fact of getting excited and experiencing intense feelings was just a distortion of our ability to understand what surrounds us.
However, today Psychology and behavioral sciences in general have already developed enough to make us understand that emotions are part of what allows us to adapt to the challenges and difficulties of everyday life, and that they normally play in our favor. Now, that doesn’t mean that we can’t learn to take advantage of its beneficial aspects and mitigate its effects when they work against us. Therefore, in this article you will find some Tips to adequately deal with painful emotions when they become too entrenched in your way of thinking or reduce your ability to find solutions to your problems.
Typically, the term “negative emotions” refers to those emotions that produce discomfort in us at the immediate moment in which they emerge in us , regardless of whether in the short, medium or long term they help us adopt an attitude or behavior patterns that work in our favor. That is to say, a negative emotion is one that makes us have a hard time simply by feeling it, such as sadness or disgust.
Although the subjective component of negative emotions is associated with everything that we do not like, the possibility of feeling them is usually advantageous, since it allows us to learn which are the situations to which we should not expose ourselves more or the actions that we should not repeat. in a certain context. That is They are part of innate psychological and biological mechanisms that allow us to correct our behavioral patterns.
Now, in the same way that some natural and normal elements of our body in human beings can give rise to illnesses or unpleasant experiences in some situations, this predisposition to feel unpleasant emotions can also give rise to problems or unnecessarily uncomfortable or unpleasant experiences. painful That is why it is worth learning to detect these situations to better channel our emotions and feelings.
4 keys to dealing with painful emotions well
As we have seen, although in most cases emotions help us, sometimes they can lead us towards problematic situations that we could have avoided, because there is no adaptation mechanism to the environment that allows us to always “get it right.” What can we do to deal with emotions when they make us feel bad in a way that doesn’t help us learn? Let’s see a summary.
1. Get used to associating the emotions you feel with words
It is not about trying to reduce all your emotions to what can be understood verbally, but rather, assuming that your emotional side will always overflow the world of words, try to understand them better through them. Thus You will not fall so often into confusing some emotions with others, you will be better at identifying them, and you will be able to manage them in a more specialized way.
To achieve this there are several effective strategies; One of the most used in psychotherapy consists of filling out an emotions diary, in which you frequently write down how you feel and in what situations those emotions and feelings have arisen.
2. Learn to combat rumination with activities that stimulate you
Rumination is that tendency to turn over and over the same type of thoughts, so that in the end it is the anticipation of those thoughts that attracts them to our consciousness. It is something that usually happens with emotionally painful memories, such as when we remember a time when we made a fool of ourselves in front of someone important, or when we lost a pet.
To combat this vicious cycle dynamic, It is best not to try to block these thoughts, but rather direct our attention towards activities that stimulate us psychologically. In this way our consciousness will be “on track” along a totally different route that will capture our attention for the time necessary to weaken rumination.
3. Structure your activities with a schedule
If in your daily life you expose yourself a lot to those situations in which you don’t know what to do, it is more likely that you will end up attracting those painful emotions that have been affecting you again and again into your consciousness. That’s why, It is advisable to plan in advance how your day will be structured what will be the sequence of activities you will carry out.
4. Apply relaxation techniques
Those unpleasant emotions that are linked to stress and anxiety can be managed through relaxation techniques (such as controlled breathing or Jacobson’s progressive muscle relaxation). Are They will allow you to return to a state of normal brain activity and prevent those situations in which you start to stress about the possibility of having stress.
You may be interested: “Jacobson’s Progressive Relaxation: use, phases and effects”
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