Are Your Emotions Working For You Or Against You?

Emotions are multi-faceted. They can connect you to the world in a positive way, but they can also disconnect you from the world around you when they are profoundly negative. People who suffer from Generalized Anxiety Disorder and Depression often become trapped in an endless cycle of worry, fear, helplessness, confusion, guilt, and sadness. These emotions influence your behavior and interactions with people on a daily basis. You don't realize how much your perceptions of the world are influenced by these negative feelings. A small event like missing a bus or having to work late can escalate into a crisis because your emotions are built up inside of you and need to be released. You may feel a sudden rush of anger that causes you to say or do something that you regret, or a wave of sadness can come over for you seemingly for no reason causing you to feel incredible self-pity which leads to ongoing depression. Maybe you have that persistent, nagging anxiety in the back of your mind, the sense of impending doom that no amount of encouragement from people who care about you can fix. People are often not aware of what deep-rooted feelings or issues they may be having that cause them to be negative and unhappy. When you are hurt, you have a tendency to push the emotions down to avoid feeling upset at the time, unwittingly causing those emotions to be bottled up inside of you. Then they emerge when you are not expecting it, causing a lot of problems in your life.

The main thing you need to understand is that when difficult or upsetting things happen, you need to learn how to deal with those emotions right away. Don't run away from facing whatever issue you have to deal with. Your emotions, as they happen, are a signal that you need to react to the situation. You need to read the emotion and react accordingly. If you are feeling sadness, for example, you need to look at the root cause of that emotion not the situation you might be in at that moment. All main emotions (like sadness) have secondary emotions (such as guilt) that are usually causing them. Try to understand what secondary emotions might be coming into play at any time you might be feeling upset or anxious. You are never feeling an emotion 'for no reason'. There is usually a trigger that you experienced that set off a secondary emotion, which then builds up with all of the other feelings you have been suppressing, and this causes an emotional reaction that seems out of sync with what you are experiencing.

The key here is to be aware of those deep-seeded underlying secondary emotions that are causing whatever negative feelings you are having, and deal with those feelings first. Once you pay attention to those feelings, you can turn them around and begin to improve your overall outlook. Knowing what causes your negative feelings can work a great deal towards ending the cycle of Generalized Anxiety Disorder.