Keeping Up with Emotional Changes

We all know that the only constant in life is change. But what about emotional change? How does that differ from moving to a new state or getting a new job? Or does it? Emotional change is constantly morphing as well, but it seems to be more in reaction to the change you are going through and how it twists and turns your emotions.

When a drastic change occurs in your life, you can’t help but have an emotional reaction to it. Sometimes you may surprise yourself in that you react so differently to a situation than you might have expected. Perhaps your spouse has asked for a divorce, or the doctor has just given you the news that you have a serious illness.

Emotional Whiplash

It is life events like these that create what has been called “emotional whiplash.” Our lives can be changed in an instant in reaction to this kind of news. When our lives are suddenly turned completely upside down, learning how to keep up with the new emotional development that can occur can change the course of how we handle similar changes — and our lives and emotions in the future.

There seem to be certain stages that people go through when they experience emotional whiplash. Each one is a step we must take in order to adjust to our emotional changes.

Uninformed Optimism

Let’s say you react positively to whatever change has taken in your life. As you proceed, you start to enjoy a little bit of well-being, but at the expense of other enjoyable things I your life. Soon you realize in that in pursuing this new positive phase of your life, you have neglected other parts. This may have had its own negative results in your life. Learning to balance the new without upsetting the positive old is a step in the development of emotional change

Unexpected Pessimism

Once you feel that you have ample control over the optimistic feelings in your life, the bad parts start to build up. You probably experienced some wonderful changes when you initially started accepting and implementing these initial emotional adjustments — reaping a large benefit from them. As they continued, however, the positive impacts started to feel less and less wonderful, while at the same time, your negative emotion seemed to be growing

The Danger Zone

This is when the overwhelming influx of bad things overcomes the optimistic experiences you were having. This is a danger zone because people tend to give up on improving their emotional changes because nothing seems worth it anymore. That is not the case. You just need to focus on today and not worry about what is coming down the road tomorrow. Work on what you can change, today.

Turning The Corner

The real transition in keeping up with emotional changes comes when you begin to understand the balance of positives and negatives your life. If you write them down, you will notice that the positive changes will amount to a lot more than the negative ones.