When You’re on the Verge of Exhaustion, Avoid This!
Everyone knows phases in their life when they don't feel completely at ease. This may often be due to external circumstances that you cannot influence. But you can decide for yourself how to deal with it. Emotional processes play a big role in this, and one is often not aware of these, which makes sense, when you think about it. If one ignores one's own emotional states too much, sooner or later this can result in a kind of emotional exhaustion. To prevent this, you should try to recognize where and how you’re not doing yourself any favors by dealing with reality. Since this is not always so easy to recognize, in this article we present six behaviors that you should avoid as much as possible.
1. Constant brooding
The emphasis here is constantly on thought itself. Of course, now and then in your life you need to go inside yourself and weigh important decisions. But such processes should take up only limited space. Whoever ponders the same problems over and over again will not necessarily arrive at better decisions, but robs themselves of a lot of energy and in this way impairs well-being. It’s especially ruminating on things that have long since passed and whose outcome can no longer be influenced that offers virtually no advantages. Of course, a certain amount of self-reflection is part of healthy action. But this process should also be completed within a manageable framework, otherwise you’ll use up your energy and focus to turn those things that are pending in the future into reality. To constantly deal with negative memories only increases the stress level in one's life in an unhealthy way, and such brooding is also associated with serious consequences. For example, it increases the likelihood of anxiety, depression, or even post-traumatic stress disorder. An effective way to stop brooding is to consciously direct one's thoughts toward the future and those aspects of life that one can influence now and in the future,
2. Suppressing emotions
Emotions such as sadness and dejection are generally considered negative emotions. Your environment may exert pressure to prevent you from showing them. However, this prevents you from coming to terms with them and moving back to a balanced state. Studies show that it is absolutely meaningful and even a relief to live out existing emotions, while pushing them away will end up having the opposite effect. When pushed under, emotions strike unconsciously with much greater intensity. It is therefore enormously important to learn how to live out your emotions effectively and in this way find a healthy way of dealing with them, so that you can come to terms with them as quickly as possible and do your own health a great favor.
3. Assuming the role of victim
Whether the outcome of a situation is negative for oneself does not depend solely on the objective result. Your self-image is responsible for a large part of evaluating a situation. Those who tend to see themselves as victims of certain decisions or conditions, actually contribute to how negative it is. This is anything but healthy. But how do you recognize you’re playing the victim role?
Thinking nothing will ever improve, no matter how hard you try
Blaming other people or circumstances
Bad things happen and will happen again and again
It should be obvious that these three basic beliefs are anything but beneficial. They will cause emotional exhaustion in quite a short time, since the essential thinking is that thing will never change for the better anyway. Last but not least, they lead to not taking responsibility for one's fate as well as not going in search of efficient solutions to one's problems. A good help in such cases is to seek advice from outside, which helps to broaden one's perspective and to learn that it is possible to remember something about the status quo.
4. Focusing on aspects you can't change
If you spend a lot of energy trying to control or dominate things that are outside your sphere of influence, you will quickly become exhausted because your actions are not producing the desired results. One should be clear about the fact that most things that happen to you are not controllable by you. It is understandable to want to have everything under control so that nothing negative happens to you. But this attitude is unrealistic. You’ll remain vigilant for possible catastrophes, things you can’t influence anyway. The best examples of this are strokes of fate in the form of illness or accidents, at least for those that you really can’t control. There is nothing wrong with eating right and investing in your health. This notwithstanding, strokes of fate can still occur, but should not be dealt with until they have actually occurred. The best strategy for dealing with these common emotional stressors is to be realistic about which aspects of your life you can control and which you can’t, and then deal only with “the controllables.”
5. False positivity
In fact, there can be too much of a good thing, namely if you believe that you must always be in a good mood and satisfied. This is not a realistic and certainly not a beneficial attitude. If you force yourself to smile all the time and to take things positively, you are robbing your own emotional household. Pretending to be in a good mood when you don't feel like it might help you get over the situation at a job interview or a family party for a short time. However, this is not a permanently useful strategy for everyday life. Those who tend to constantly hide or even deny their true emotions cause themselves great stress that could be avoided. Everyone experiences phases of anger, jealousy or sadness. Allowing oneself to experience these is much healthier than not doing so.
6. Not being able to say no
Surely everyone knows situations in which you feel so much social pressure that you think you can't refuse tasks or favors that are made of you. Whether this is at work or in private life, learn to say no and reject requests whenever these exceed your energy budget, otherwise you’ll enter an emotional downward spiral, and sooner rather than later. Each person has only limited time and energy. In this respect it is only natural that you can’t meet every expectation that the environment demands. Therefore, it is important to evaluate in a realistic way how much you can take on. Moreover, no one is helped when you take on tasks that you then fail to complete on time or in an appropriate manner. For many, saying no still feels like a negatively valued statement. In fact, both sides are helped when you refuse what you can't really manage. The person asking the question turns to someone who will actually accomplish the task and you save yourself from having to act beyond your available energy and time budget.
Today’s Conclusion
Not everyone suffers from all these emotionally negative actions and ways of thinking, but most will be familiar with them, at one time or another. Think about which of these apply to you and then tackle them with the suggested solutions. Since one very often has a kind of blind spot for one's own weaknesses, it’s a good idea to ask those closest to you about this topic and even seek professional advice. That's it for today.