Emotional Blocks and Patterns

You can be a happy, content and confident person who is able to achieve your goals-both personal and professional. But the methods you use to manage your feelings prevent you from fulfilling your desires.

Misconceptions and mismanagement of your emotions is the state of affairs when your feelings dictate your thoughts and actions, causing conflict, depression, anxiety and negativity. When your emotions run the show, you experience problems, hopelessness and difficulty in relationships. Emotions are complex with mental, physical and behavioral components. The basic feelings that drive emotional reactions are fear, anger, sadness and joy. These feelings are affected by your ideas about them and how you respond to these emotions with your behavior, including your ability to manage stress and frustration.

Your ability to manage unpleasant emotions is a necessary skill to achieve success in any aspect of your life and to maintain your emotional and physical health. Do you have difficulty managing your anger? If so, you might become irritated easily, and become known as a 'hot head' because of your tendency to lose your temper. A person who becomes angry easily will often 'act out' toward others with accusations, and blame others for their problems. The tirade may develop into threats and verbal abuse. Angry speech is often the precursor for other forms of violence, such as throwing things, destroying property and assaults. A person who is continually angry may become depressed and experience health problems such as: headaches, muscle, back and joint pain, cancer, lupus, fibromyalgia, arthritis, high blood pressure, heart problems, etc. Despite this level of hostility and negativity, the behavior pattern can be changed by examining your thinking pattern, also known as self-talk.

A continual, silent conversation with yourself is a completely normal phenomenon. Emotional upset is caused by our beliefs and silent self-talk-statements regarding events and situations rather than the actual event and situation. Most people are not aware of the components that make up their dialogue. These components are made up of two basic ideas of either irrational (illogical) or rational (logical) beliefs or self-talk statements. A person may conclude to themselves, "I can't stand this," after an interaction with a disobedient child or a spouse. "Irrational beliefs intensify our emotional state and lead to increased anxiety, anger and depression as well as maladaptive behavior. Our irrational beliefs sap our emotional and physical energy, and hinder us from finding creative solutions to situations.

If you respond to frustrating situations with a rational self-talk statement, the conversation changes to: "I wish this situation did not occur, but I will move on." Or "Just because this person is acting this way does not mean I have to be upset." These examples allow you to remain in control and avoid anger, depression or helplessness. When you examine your thinking patterns for the triggers to your irrational beliefs and statements you are able to maintain emotional stability, calmness and nurture habits of more positive responses. The result is to avoid blaming others and avoid seeking control of the situation and others.

The process of examining your belief statements is not difficult, but it does take practice. The motivation for doing so is a desire to maintain a more calm, positive, pleasant experience and create peace of mind, despite the events going on around you. The benefits will be felt in increased confidence of meeting challenges, and more emotional and physical energy to manage responsibilities in your life.