Why you need to protect yourself?
The emotions of the people that we come across in our everyday life, affect us in many ways. If these are positive emotions we feel inspired and motivated. However, not all emotions are positive. Many of the emotions that people experience are negative, unpleasant and distressing, and therefore, can impact us in a disturbing, agitating and a bad way. Getting involved with other people’s negative and unhappy emotions can affect our mood, state of mind and behavior, and lead to undesirable reactions.
How and When Emotional Involvement Affects Us?
The bad mood and state of mind of our boss can affect the quality of our work, our focus, and our feelings. Angry and stressed people unconsciously, transfer their anger and stress to other people in their close vicinity. This anger and stress can affect us adversely, if we are not careful enough. Just think, how many times emotional involvement with people’s sad stories and problems have caused you to feel bad and depressed? How many times have you felt stressed and unhappy in the proximity of stressed and unhappy people? Other people’s emotions and unhappy feelings affect our feelings, state of mind and behavior. They affect how we react and how we behave.
You Can Avoid Negative, Disruptive Emotional Involvement!
You can set yourself free from negative emotional involvement. This, of course, requires some inner work and effort on your part. However, any effort and time you spend on this project is time well-spent. We are referring to positive emotional detachment, which leads to inner calmness, inner peace and happiness. The emotional detachment we are referring to has nothing to do with keeping away from other people, avoiding people or not expressing feelings. It’s about building a protective emotional barrier against stressful, manipulative and unhappy people. It’s also about learning to avoid getting involved with your own negative emotions and refusing to let them occupy your mind and attention.. When you can learn to keep an emotional distance from your negative emotions, problems and unhappy memories, you start enjoying inner peace and happiness. Following even just part of the advice and exercises would increase your ability to stay calm, and protect yourself from stressful people, stressful thoughts, emotional manipulation and unhappiness.
Tips to Protect Yourself from Negative Emotional Involvement:
Here are a few tips to help you avoid getting involved and affected by stressful and negative emotions:
1. Stressful People and Stressful Situations
If you can, always stay away from stressful people and stressful situations. This might not always be possible, but when possible do so. Stress is contagious and its affects are not healthy. Staying away from it is a wise decision.
2. Reduce the Time Listening and Watching the News
There is no reason why you should listen to every new bulletin on the radio or TV, or keep reading the News on the Internet or Social Media. A great part of the News is negative, and it serves no purpose getting your emotions aroused and getting into unnecessary stress. Listening to the News or watching them, are not going to change them, or change the world. So why let them affect how you feel?
3. You Are Responsible for Your Thoughts and Feelings
Always remind yourself that you are the one who chooses your thoughts and feelings. Always remind yourself that you are the one responsible for shaping your state of mind, not the outside world.
4. Avoid Getting Emotionally Involved with Other People’s Stories
There are people who enjoy sharing and speaking about their problems with anybody who cares to listen. This is most exhausting and tiring. If you can help them, do so with action, but just listening and allowing their negative emotions take hold of your mind and affect your state of mind is unnecessary and unhealthy. When people share their problems, worries and stress you don’t have to stay and listen. Find an excuse to leave. You don’t help them when you stay and listen.
5. Leave What You Are Doing and Return to It Later
When something is bothering you, and you cannot find a solution, leave it, do something else, and afterwards return to it. This would clear your mind, calm it down, and then the solution would appear.
6. Don’t Take Things Personally
Don’t take things personally. That’s tough, but that’s one of the most potent ways to protect yourself from anger, rash reactions, and getting hurt. Developing a certain degree of emotional detachment can take you a long way here.
7. Let Go
Let the past belong to the past. You cannot change it. It’s waste of time mulling and dwelling on past mistakes, bad decisions and unhappy events. Let them go and stopping allowing them to shape your life and state of mind.
8. Positive Self Talk
Always prefer positive self talk over negative self talk. Self talk is something most people do. Repeating the same thoughts over again, makes them stronger. This gives them the power to shape your life. This means that you need to be careful with what you repeat in your mind, and prefer positive thoughts rather than negative thoughts.
9. Avoid Arguments
Avoid getting into any kind of argument. It leads nowhere, except to anger, broken relations and unhappiness.
10. Avoid Unhealthy Emotional Attachment
Be careful not to attach yourself emotionally to anything that causes you suffering and unhappiness. This can include people, ideas, habits and activities. Sometimes, emotional attachment can be toxic and unhealthy.
11. Occupy Your Attention with Something Else
When you feel that negative thinking, worries and doubts begin to fill your mind, try occupying yourself in activities that take your attention somewhere else.
12. Watch Your Thoughts Dispassionately
When you feel that you are emotionally over affected by the environment or by people, try to watch dispassionately your feelings and the thoughts that pass your mind, without getting involved with them. Try not to follow them or allow and occupy your attention with them. This act would reduce their power over you. Some examples are, walking, working out, or going to a movie or show. These are just a few examples of ways to help you protect yourself from negative emotional involvement.
