We all deal with negative thoughts and feelings. Unfortunately, these painful emotions They always seem to pop up at the most inopportune moments. The real problem is that these unresolved emotional struggles can distract you from the good things in your life.
If you give too much credulity to these thoughts, you will soon notice that your way of thinking is more negative than positive. Breaking the habit of a pessimistic mindset is not easy and requires retraining your brain to let things go. When was the last time you felt stressed?
The average person experiences stress quite often and it can reach explosive levels before you know it. Consequently, when you’re under pressure, your mind tends to ruminate on all the problems from your past that keep coming up. How do you calm the chaos in your mind and get the internal chatter to stop?
4 ways to deal with painful emotions
It would be helpful for you to learn how to deal with these paralyzing emotions. If you want to live a happy and healthy life, you must leave behind the past and stormy emotions.
It doesn’t matter if someone has hurt or abused you; any wound can make you reflect on all the ills of your life. Fortunately, there are four ways you can use to overcome these problems and move on.
1. Learn to be present in the moment
One of the most powerful tools you will learn is how to be in the moment. It’s easy for your mind to wander into the past when things get crazy. Your mind needs justification for what you feel, so it likes to have a pity party and bring out all your painful emotions from the pasteither.
Another commonly occurring problem is people worrying about things that haven’t happened yet. How many times do you sit and worry about something that may or may not happen in the future? If you have an anxiety disorder, you are more likely to worry than someone else.
Experts found that more than 85 percent of the things you worry about will never happen. Think of all that time you waste because you are not present in the moment.
Both your future and your past are robbing you of valuable time in the present. The way to counteract this problem is to focus on the here and now and not give prominence to yesterday or tomorrow. Now, this doesn’t mean you shouldn’t plan, but it does mean you don’t allow what hasn’t happened yet to haunt your mind.
It seems like a simple process, but it is not as easy as it seems. However, there are some tricks that can help you live in the moment. Find an image that brings you peace. Perhaps your place of refuge is a beach surrounded by seagulls and waves crashing on all sides.
When you hold this image, let your mind loosen up. If this trick doesn’t work, try counting. When the anxiety of painful emotions starts to speed up, you need to turn it off. Start by counting from 100 to one. You can even calculate by fives if that makes things more interesting.
The key is to focus on counting; then your mind has no time to ruminate on all those painful things. This strategy helps you clear your mind so you can reconnect with the world around you.
2. Refocus your mind and find peace of mind
If you allow your thoughts to take center stage, you will disconnect from the world around you. How can you focus on your work or your child taking baby steps if your mind is a million miles away? Worse yet, if you feel guilt or shame associated with these emotions, it can put you in a horrible mood.
The more power you give these harmful and painful emotions, the stronger they will become. It would be helpful if you turned off these feelings by reconnecting with the world around you. One way you can reconnect is by volunteering. It’s a challenge to have a pity party for yourself when you see that someone else has things much worse than you.
Another thing you might want to do is put your feet on the ground to ground yourself and pay attention to your surroundings. Focus on the here and now and notice the color of the room, the smell in the air, and the conversations taking place around you. Dialectal behavior therapy teaches you to get out of anxiety by focusing on the atmosphere.
Since your brain can’t focus on two things at once, it’s much more enjoyable to focus on your space than on these emotional challenges. Finally, to reconnect with your surroundings, you must get out in the sun. Even if it’s raining, who says there’s anything wrong with dancing in the rain?
Mother Nature has so many therapeutic properties that many do not use. Do you love the smell of spring rain sending sweet flower nectar through the air? Have you noticed that there are birds building nests as they prepare for a new life?
There is so much beauty and tranquility around you, but if you are caught up in the chatter inside your mind because of your pain, then it will pass you by.
3. Stop being so self-conscious
When you allow these painful emotions to creep in, self-negativity is promoted. Are you a self-conscious person by nature? Do you have a dialogue running through your mind that keeps your esteem low?
Negative and hurtful emotions are often accompanied by harmful thoughts. All these thoughts play like a movie in your mind that keeps going round and round. Unfortunately, these thoughts are very distracting and prevent you from accomplishing what you need to do.
Have you ever tried to talk to someone whose mind was a million miles away? It’s like pulling your teeth to get a response from them. It becomes impossible to talk to you and it is a challenge for you to concentrate when you pay attention to this reel of negativity that is running through your mind.
To increase your esteem, you should do activities that make you feel more confident. Can you bake or cook well? Why not whip up a batch of cookies to take to the office? When people taste the goodness that comes from your hands, their compliments will give you a boost.
It feels good to be congratulated. Now, once you get that fresh feeling in your mind, you need to remember how good it feels when you let go of all negativity and allow yourself to shine.
4. Do not run away from these thoughts: process them
Have you ever met someone who can’t fix a problem? Take, for example, a woman named Ruth. She was engaged to be married to the love of her life, Bob.
Ruth and Bob had a great relationship and he completed it. She was looking forward to spending an eternity with him. One day they were swimming at the local quarry and Bob dove into a section that wasn’t as deep as he thought.
His stomach was ruptured and he had other internal injuries. Bob passed away that day and Ruth was never the same. Although she found love again and got married, not a day went by that she didn’t think of Bob.
The pain in her heart was too much to bear, and even with seven children and a house full of work to do, her mind often replayed the events of that day. Unfortunately, Ruth never accepted the significant loss she suffered in her life and she developed bipolar disorder.
If you had processed the feelings properly and dealt with your pain, your outcome could have been quite different. The fact is that your negative and hurtful emotions will haunt you if you let them. What Ruth had to do was stop brooding over the events that had happened.
She felt remorse because the tragedy left her unable to deal with the situation effectively, so she hid her emotions in the background and never talked about it. How much better she would have felt if she let those emotions out and talked about them! Bottling things up inside can be dangerous, as your mind can only handle so much stress and pain before it shuts down.
You should not run away from your problems and you should learn effective ways to deal with them. Speak openly, cry your lungs out, focus on the situation, but the good news is that you will eventually accept things. It’s okay to hurt and it’s okay to cry, but you can’t let this go on forever.