Reflect on Simple Solutions

Anger, stress, and other negative emotions often occur as a response to unfavorable situations. While they may seem impulsive to the individuals experiencing them, these feelings unfold and grow in stages. If you catch them at an early point, you can prevent these emotions from dominating your thoughts. Doing so provides relief from anger and stress, replacing them with peaceful and positive feelings. This simple solution to negative emotions is a product of mental health skill building, which anyone can practice for stronger emotional stability.

Suspending Anger

Catching anger at an early stage entails paying careful attention to your reactions. This practice is the start of self-awareness and emotional intelligence. When you notice anger—or even irritation—arise, stay mindful of it. You can help these feelings pass with a few strategies.

Try changing your breathing pattern, which can interrupt anger’s development. Also, do something fun and silly—like singing, laughing, or dancing—to distract yourself from negative emotions until they pass. Finally, picture shooting negative thoughts with a mental gun, or putting them in a bubble and releasing it.

Letting Negative Emotions Go

In addition to your immediate responses, you can develop a habitual mindset to release negative feelings. Look at your responses as a lesson and choose to change your perspective. Although you cannot control events and other people, you can control how you respond to them.

If your anger or hurt comes from people or incidents in your past, deal with those causes. Treatments like cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) can help you acknowledge these painful memories, find lessons in them, and move forward. Their negative influence need not weigh you down any longer. It also helps to spend time every day doing healthy hobbies you enjoy, as they provide an emotional outlet and boost resilience.

Choose to be Calm

When you practice releasing your negative thoughts, you can choose to be calm. You can exert greater control over your emotional reactions than before your practice, and you can recognize when anger and stress motivate those reactions.

For instance, if my daughter comes home slamming doors and ignoring my kind gestures, I tell myself her reactions arise from her, not me. Don’t take anything personally. Practice compassion or walk away from the situation. Once my initial reactions settle, I ask her what makes her feel this way and help her identify her feelings, providing a listening ear and loving support.

You must listen to yourself when you are angry. Ask yourself why you feel that way and answer honestly. Understanding the cause(s) of your anger is a major step forward in self-awareness. Resilient mental health skills can help you overcome anger as well as stress and loneliness.

Check Your Stress

Speaking of stress, consider your degree of it now. Do you have any major stressors in your life? Losing a job, pregnancy, deadlines to complete a project, multitasking, destructive work environment—all can create the feeling of a mental burden.

A reaction to difficult or pressing circumstances, stress has undesirable effects on the body. Yet, as you did with anger, you can decide to change your perspective on stress. Try looking at it as a challenge, an opportunity for personal growth. Also, brainstorm solutions that can reduce or relieve stress—where does it spring from? How do I most effectively and directly address the cause? What is stopping me from addressing it? What are some other healthy ways I can relieve this stress?

Learn About Mental Health Skill Building in Fredericksburg, VA

Our negative emotions can seem invulnerable and even unstoppable. But acknowledging their presence and establishing simple solutions can calm our minds. Practice these, and other mental health skill building exercises, at Therapeutic Alliance in Fredericksburg, VA. Our services have supported people throughout Virginia, and we hope to help many more through both in-person and virtual outpatient counseling. For more details, call us at (833) 319-0526 or visit our website today.