Almost everyone occasionally conceals their emotions.

Imagine your partner divulging information at a family event that you had asked them to keep quiet about. Even though you’re upset and ashamed, you put on a happy face until you get home and can have a private conversation. You don’t want to dispute and escalate the situation in front of your extended family.

Recognizing our thoughts and emotions as well as the impact they have on our bodies, conduct, and interpersonal connections is crucial.

Causes

Numerous different things might give rise to negative emotions. Sometimes they are the outcome of particular encounters or occasions. You might be upset that your spouse was running late for a scheduled date or unhappy that your favorite team lost a match, for example.

Negative feelings may also result from

• Conflict in relationships: Interpersonal relationship issues are a common source of unfavorable feelings. Relationships with friends, family, coworkers or romantic partners may face such difficulties.

• Unmet needs: It’s normal to feel sad, angry, lonely, envious, and other distressing feelings when your needs, whether they be physical, emotional, social, psychological, or spiritual, are not being met.

• Poor coping skills: If you lack the coping mechanisms to deal with daily stress, it can cause a wide range of distressing emotions. Poor coping strategies frequently cause the issue to worsen or give rise to other problems.

Tips to Cope with Bad or Negative Emotions

Listed below are the tips to tackle bad emotions.

1. Knowing when to disengage

Not every emotional event merits our undivided attention and careful thought. Try to withdraw from your frustration when something is annoying you but the issue is temporary and beyond your control. For instance, it’s generally better to swallow your annoyance and just attempt to ignore the issue when someone is playing loud music on your metro commute home. However, trying to ignore your annoyance when it is something that can be changed and is unlikely to go away soon is probably ineffective at best and destructive at worst.

2. Access to mental health care

The dearth of mental health options available to low-income people may also play a role in the relationship between disengagement and mental health issues, at least in part. Many American families find the cost of receiving mental health treatment to be unaffordable, and many low-income people’s mental health requirements go mostly unmet.

3. Inside and outside of the therapist’s office, there is a stigma

Financial difficulties are not the only obstacles to receiving mental health treatment. According to a recent analysis by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, low-income areas are more likely to experience mental health stigma, which is one of the most powerful barriers to obtaining and benefiting from mental health care.

Even worse, evidence suggests that those with lower incomes experience higher levels of stigma from healthcare professionals.

Even young people from low-income families who have access to mental health services may not feel motivated to use them, and they may have a harder time connecting with a mental health professional.

4. Practicing Mindfulness

Being mindful means accepting your thoughts and feelings as they come up, even if you decide not to express them right away. For instance, you can accept that you are genuinely angry or disturbed but purposefully choose to wait a time before attempting to explain why. Instead of interfering with the ‘rise and fall pattern of emotions, you can avoid suppressing them by sitting with the feeling, acknowledging the physiological sensations in your body, and paying attention to the thoughts that come to mind.

5. Expressing your feelings to a trusted person

Your life experience includes your emotions. If you want to express yourself more clearly, try employing “I” statements. You might also practice expressing your emotions as they come up by maintaining a notebook. Even while talking to someone may be able to validate your suffering, journaling can still support you in working through challenging feelings.

Reaching out

Managing our daily emotional peaks and maintaining our general mental health need active engagement with our emotions. But it’s crucial to know when and how to express these feelings. It’s probably important to invest the time in learning how to strike this balance, especially if you come from a low-income family.

You may find it difficult to break the practice of disguising your feelings on your own if it has been ingrained over time.

Talking to a therapist like Dr. Any Time can help you learn to improve emotional expression.

Your therapist can assist you in recognizing potential causes for emotional restraint, such as trust problems and fears of rejection, and start treating these difficulties.