How to Deal With Negative Emotions and Stop Bad Reactions

All we need to do is tip the balance and build our buffer to negate the side of the brain that calls out our negative emotions.

How often do I feel sorry after lashing out or saying words that hurt when I am angry, and while today, I don't do badly as before, I still have negative emotions and wonder how I can stop the bad reactions before they happen.

Usually, negative emotions and bad reactions are triggered. Today, I found myself watching a video shared on Twitter that says to combat bad reactions. We need to do intense prolonged physical discomfort.

Let us look deeper into what it means and what you can do to help you when you experience negative emotions.

We live in a world that has been traumatized by the pandemic, and I know everyone must have felt at one time confused, and while we are slowly moving back to normalcy, a lot of us could be experiencing PTSD or post-traumatic stress disorder.

Should we stop our negative emotions or bad reactions?

To be even thinking about having these feelings in itself is a negative emotion, I am not a psychologist and it is best to seek professional help when what is happening in your life is already overwhelming you.

Negative emotions are feelings such as anger or sadness that are normal. However, it usually causes us to be sad and miserable. These emotions make you dislike yourself and others and reduce your confidence, self-esteem, and general life satisfaction.

Let not negative emotions question your existence, and while these feelings are normal, we still have a choice on how to express these negative emotions.

We think of how we can stop our bad reactions when we are about to explode, and that is where, according to Adam Lane Smith, who is a psychologist now an attachment specialist, we get it all wrong.

While we can change our bad habits, we can only change them before we reach the tipping point where we are about to explode, when our emotions are too high, and our right brain is in total control.

It doesn't work that way.

In the video, he said we have bad reactions when our right brain takes control over our left brain.

Our right brain is what scientists say is all about, imagination, holistic thinking, intuition, arts, rhythm, nonverbal cues, feelings visualization and daydreaming

And our left brain is all about: logic, sequencing, linear thinking, mathematics, facts, and thinking in words — Excerpt, Healtline.com

Bad reactions happen when our right brain is thinking, and the only way to combat this scenario is to apply balance, meaning not to let your right brain overwhelm the left brain.

Tipping the scale

When one 24/7 operates with the right brain, already with a high level of anxiety, it will take very little for that person to go over the top, lose their cool and let their bad reaction take over the situation.

The question to ask yourself is your anxiety level, and you can write the things that you are anxious about, starting with the little things, do everything appear to be beyond your control and if they are out of control, why do you have the need to be in control?

When you are highly emotional, the scale has tipped in favor of your right brain, and it could be that when situations happen, it will always be your right brain that will tell you to throw logic and be emotional.

The only way to help you is to increase your buffer. Let's say if you are already 70–80% on the side of your right brain, you have to start building your left brain again to maintain a more balanced right-left brain relationship.

You can become increasingly irrational and the left side of the brain diminishes as the right side of the brain freaks out and says:

How do I maximize my pleasure and minimize my pain for the next five seconds and if you’re stuck in that all day every day and your stress level is high everything is going to set you off. — Adam Lane Smith

How can you possibly stop negative emotions and those bad reactions

Adam Lane Smith said to relax in advance through intense prolonged physical discomfort.

What it does is retrain our brains like it was ten to twelve thousand years ago, when our ancestors only had to worry about one thing, and that is survival.

Most of their thinking revolves around fight or flight response. They don' have the luxury of having emotional spikes, nor are they stressed all the time.

Ways to help you overcome your bad reactions

• Exercise
• Yoga
• Meditation

Like any muscle, we have to counter the muscle that has become strong over time which makes us feel or act when we are stressed, for it is more than the right brain, so to make the weaker muscle strong, we need to build it up.

And all the things we already know help do help, and these are exercise, light or rigorous, yoga, and meditation because all these activities revolve around retraining your mind. It strengthens your resolve to use your left brain, too, when a stressful situation arises.

And it has to be physical, and I get it because even meditation calls for some physical activity, and when we are doing these activities, our goal isn't set by our feeling but by logic.

For example, when we exercise, our goal is to lose weight or be fit and healthy. When we meditate, we want to get better at it because all of these help us relax, and this is what we need when our bad reactions wish to reign over us. We need to activate our relaxed buffer to counteract the building emotions we are feeling.

That is how you stop your bad reactions.

You are starting to build your buffer from a very anxious person to a more well-balanced person by turning to exercise and meditation.

At 7 out of 10 anxiety that’s a recipe for destroying your relationships over nothing, it’s a recipe for overthinking everything that’s a recipe for freaking out every time something little happens in your life and people get tired of it and you ruin your own life — Adam Lane Smith

Conclusion

Like many of you, I still get negative emotions, and I only have to remind myself to choose to do the right thing constantly.

Life is not easy, something I learned through the years, but it isn't out to get us, but everything happens for self-discovery.

We can always look forward and not backward, we can choose to change for the better, and it doesn't have to be an all-out change. We can start with small steps and small goals,

We don't have to do both exercise and meditation, and if we choose to exercise, we don't have to go to the gym.

We can even start with those resistance bands, as Adam said that sells for less than 10 dollars, a small device to get you starting in building your buffer,

because that is how you fix your bad reactions in advance that’s how you stop those bad reactions and stop ruining your life.

Disclaimer: I'm not a doctor or psychologist. This article is just my opinion. It is always better to seek the advice of your own Medical Provider and/or Mental Health Provider.

As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.