How To Cope With Negative Emotions

There are many negative emotions, but they can broadly be defined as emotions that bring down your mood and make life uncomfortable or even distressing.

While negative emotions usually act as an alarm of sorts, they can also be burdensome. In other words, they act as an indicator that something is wrong, but awareness about this wrongness can feel uncomfortable.

It’s important to maintain control over negative emotions and not let them control you. Coping with negative emotions can help make them more manageable and decrease their power over you.

If you struggle with negative emotions, you might benefit from learning coping skills for dealing with them.

Ways to cope with negative emotions

Here are some techniques for dealing with negative emotions.

1. Journal

Journaling is an excellent way to put thoughts into perspective. When emotions are stuck in your mind, they can wreak havoc. They can become burdensome and difficult to control.

With journaling, you can put thoughts and emotions on paper, giving yourself an avenue to release them. By writing them down, you can make sense of what you’re feeling.

You can do whatever type of journaling you want. If you prefer a more organized form of journaling, you can follow a certain pattern and break down your negative emotions systematically.

You can also just brain dump. With this journaling technique, you basically just write out whatever you’re feeling or thinking without any sort of method or order. Don’t worry about whether what you’re writing follows a certain pattern. Just write.

Both techniques can be helpful for dealing with negative emotions. The first is best for organizing and making sense of then. The second (brain dumping) is best for releasing them.

2. Let them be

Not every negative emotion needs to be given time and effort. You don’t have to resist and control every negative emotion.

Sometimes, letting emotions be and leaving them with no reaction is a helpful way to cope with and process them. Be a passive observer of your emotions once in a while.

Let them be without doing anything about them. Think of your mind like a leaf blowing in the wind. Wherever the wind blows the leaf goes. Similarly, whatever your mind feels, just go with it. Observe.

3. Schedule time for them

Negative emotions can be like an entitled pet. But you can’t just ignore a pet, you need to dedicate time to it.

Negative emotions should get their own time of day; time when you sit with, acknowledge and process them.

Dedicating some time for your negative emotions is an excellent way to release some of the discomfort they can cause.

It doesn’t have to be too much time. Just 15 or 20 minutes a day should be enough. Sit with them, listen to them, think about them and communicate with yourself to understand them.

This is the time when your logical brain can have a conversation with your emotional one.

4. Calmly release them

Don’t make a habit of bottling up or subduing negative emotions. This risks making them stronger.

Think of emotions as being stuck in your mind and they need a way out. They can still resurface, but they should be given an avenue to exit. Calmly releasing emotions helps get them out of your mind.

Express them in a calm manner. Pick a place to be alone and calmly let out what you’re feeling. If you need to, cry. Calmly let out anger, sadness, fear, guilt or whatever else.

Make sure you do this calmly. Avoid being overcome and overwhelmed by emotions to the point where you purposefully stress yourself out. Gently release the emotions so they have a safe way out.

5. Change your thinking

Your mentality can cause you to feel negative emotions in response to life events. It can also explain why you feel them to the degree that you do.

Many people feel negative emotions, even if they have a resilient mentality. Your mentality isn’t wrong if you simply feel negative emotions, but it could be playing a role in making them more extreme and difficult to deal with.

For example, you may have a victim mentality – you constantly believe that you’re the victim. This may not apply to you but it’s just an example.

If someone constantly views themselves as a powerless victim, they’re more likely to experience negative emotions as a result of hardships. Coping with negative emotions and being resilient to difficulties can also become more challenging.

To cope with negative emotions, try pinpointing what (if any) mentalities you have that may cause you to feel negative emotions. For example, if you feel excessive shame, this may be due to your lack of self-esteem.

Investigate what thought patterns you have that could lead you to feel certain ways. Address these and challenge them. Work on changing your mindset.

Chances are there are some ways you think that are making you feel the way you do. Face these head on and address them.

6. Live despite them

Negative emotions may not always be in your control. Sometimes, you might feel them with little to no ability to do much about it. This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try to do anything at all, it just means that sometimes they may be stubborn.

When you’re going through a rough patch emotionally and nothing seems to help, try just living with it. Try not to let it control you.

Say to yourself, “What would I do if I were feeling good right now?” And do that. Don’t just lay down and sulk, live your life as best you can.

Might it be hard when you feel horrible? Probably, but you can at least try to achieve something resembling normal.

Ultimately, the point here isn’t to give up on any other technique to heal. This is just a clever way to move on to the best of your ability. This technique, like the others on this list, should be used together for a more holistic approach to coping.

7. Build good habits

Good habits can be effective at quelling negative emotions. But make sure that they are healthy distractions. Never distract yourself with something that may do you harm (which defeats the purpose). Instead, use healthy habits that can actually benefit you.

This is a great way to get your mind off of negative emotions and direct your energy to something useful.

Examples of good habits are having an exercise routine, reading, writing, knitting, walking, eating right, learning a skill, and similar. Take on something that can benefit your health, your mind, your career, or all of these.

8. Understand your emotions

What do you feel? Name the emotion(s). What does it mean to feel this emotion to you? Why do you feel this emotion? Why does it matter? Does it truly matter that much? Probably not.

These are important questions to ask yourself. They help you get to the root of your emotions. Once you understand them, you have the tools to overcome them and decrease their power over you.

Break down what you feel and why you feel it. Understand why it matters to you and understand that it probably doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of things. Stuff happens, that’s just life.

Journal what you know about your emotions. Make sense of your emotions so you don’t blindly accept them. Use your understanding to control your emotions.

9. Be patient

Overcoming negative emotions is a journey more than a simple accomplishment. There may be ups and downs and that’s okay. Not only should you accept this, you should expect it.

While on your journey to overcome negative emotions, it’s paramount that you remain patient with yourself. If you have a bad day or many bad days, you need to keep going. You need to remind yourself that you can get through it.

Don’t give up. Understand that it may take a while. Be patient and accepting with yourself while you go through the process.

10. Be stronger than negative emotions

Remember, your emotions are yours. You don’t belong to them, they belong to you. It’s not that you need to control every little thing that you feel – you may not always have that control. But you need to be stronger than what you feel.

Don’t let your emotions control you or (worse yet) push you to take impulsive action. You need to stay in the metaphorical driver’s seat. While the negative emotions may be annoying, you need to constantly remind yourself that you are stronger than them.

It starts with making the conscious choice to be stronger than your emotions. Use your willpower and stay disciplined. Be emotionally tough. If you’re not emotionally tough, build toughness.

11. Be adaptive

Negative emotions can be complex and, again, it’s a journey. This journey may need to involve multiple techniques that constantly change and adapt to your situation. You may need to incorporate more than one technique at a time.

Overall, your approach to coping with negative emotions should be adaptive – changing depending on necessity and circumstance.

If one strategy fails leave it and move to another. If that one fails too, change it again. If you want to, go back to an old strategy that worked before and see if it works again. Use more than one strategy if you need to. Adaptability makes your strategy stronger and increases your chances of success.