Negative emotions are a commonplace occurrence in day-to-day life. But when anxiety, depression, anger, or guilt, go beyond temporary emotions, it may be time to reach out for help. For those in the West Side Cleveland area, schedule a consultation with us today.
So what ingredients are involved in coping with negative emotions? According to a recent article in Psychology Today:
Neurotic conditions are states of psychological distress and mental ill-health that involve heightened levels of negative emotion (i.e., states of emotional pain that include depression and anxiety primarily; and secondarily hate/anger and guilt/shame), and problems with coping, relationships, and identity. I sometimes refer to these conditions as “negative affect syndromes,” and they are the primary thing that drive people into psychotherapy. The neurotic conditions correspond to the following mental health conditions in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual: adjustment disorders, generalized anxiety, social anxiety, and major depressive episodes of mild to moderate severity. They are also closely related to long-term relationship problems, low self-esteem, and problems associated with personality disorders, such as avoidant, dependent and borderline tendencies. And much substance misuse stems from people self-medicating to escape negative feelings.
There are three primary ingredients to neurotic conditions. The first is a “neurotic temperament.” This refers to the basic set point of the negative emotion system. That is, how sensitive it is, how strongly it reacts to negative events, and how long it takes after a stressor to return to baseline. People high in trait neuroticism are more easily stressed, feel negative feelings more strongly than average, and take longer time to cool down.
The second primary ingredient are stressors themselves. That is, real life problems in living that threaten core psycho-social needs. Major needs include the need for relational value (being known and valued by important others), needs for achievement, needs for resources to obtain wants and desires (i.e., money), needs for play, growth and exploration, and needs for safety (i.e., violated when folks are traumatized).
The third reason is the most important, as it is the one that leads to poor coping and feeds neurotic conditions over the long term. And it is the one that is often hardest for people to recognize. That is, when people come into therapy, they are generally aware of the first two elements. They know stuff is stressing them out, and they know they feel like crap. But they are not nearly as cognizant of this “third force” in driving their distress. But the good news is that it is the one element that people have the most direct control over, if they are taught about it and learn to do it differently. What is it? The fundamental root of neurotic conditions is negative reactions to negative feelings. In a manner that parallels the old saying that it is not the crime, but the cover-up that burns you, it is this secondary negative reaction to the primary negative feeling states that screws people over, and creates vicious neurotic cycles that result in negative affect syndromes.
To read the complete article, click here.