Negative feelings: where do they come from and should you do something about them?

You have positive and negative feelings. Negative feelings include feelings such as fear, disgust, sadness, irritation, anger, depravity and feeling terrorized. You would say you want to avoid these kinds of feelings.

Looking up negative feelings

Interestingly, though, people consciously seek out these kinds of feelings when they go to watch a horror movie like Saw. Why would you do that? And what does this say about how bad negative feelings are? Why do extreme athletes engage in mortal combat just to perform a certain stunt? Why do so many people play Shooters or other violent games? What is good about negative feelings?

The interesting thing is that in horror movies, negative feelings and positive feelings can arise simultaneously due to certain emotional events in the movie. So feelings are not an either-or condition, but you can have multiple types of feelings at the same time.

Depending on your preference for horror movies, you may actually feel very good when the movie ends. In that case, relief ensures that the negative feeling of the horror movie is not so bad[1].

Fortunately, we can also distinguish reality from film, which is why some people can still very much enjoy a lurid horror movie.

Do negative feelings mean you have poor well-being?

The example of horror movies shows that negative feelings are not always an isolated thing. You can experience them and also experience positive feelings at the same time. This is important to realize, because negative feelings do not necessarily mean that your life is not good.

As long as you have enough positive feelings to counter it[2].

If your well-being is compromised, it’s often due to negative feelings such as anxiety, depression, and (emotional) pain[3].

Effects of negative feelings

Negative feelings can have all kinds of consequences. In fact, some people cannot find a good way to deal with those negative feelings, and their strategies for dealing with them ultimately do not help them.

For example, many people try to eat away their negative feelings. In people with bulimia, this can trigger a binge-eating episode[4]. Whether or not you vomit after eating, neither option is good for your body.

Other people may “shop away” their negative feelings. In that case, you have a somewhat materialistic mindset, and when you’re struggling with negative feelings—especially ones related to yourself—buying certain items can make your ego feel good again[5]. This, in turn, can lead to financial problems, which isn’t helpful for your materialistic tendencies, and then the cycle can repeat itself.

Boys can also experience aggression as a result of negative feelings. Aggression is, of course, not a solution, but it can be cathartic because it allows you to release an unpleasant feeling from your body. However, if you don’t do this in a controlled manner—such as through kickboxing—but simply on the street, then that’s not a helpful way to deal with negative feelings either[6].

Hypnosis against going well on negative feelings

There is a disorder in which people actually thrive on negative feelings: histrionic personality disorder. These are people who feel they need drama in their lives. This is because their self-confidence depends on other people and those people’s reactions to them, rather than on how they view themselves.

One reason for this may be that parents could not take good care of them, so they thought they had to manipulate their parents to get care. After all, an angry parent is better than a parent who completely ignores you. Then a pattern emerges to somehow emotionally influence people just to get attention in their lives.

Beliefs people with this disorder may have are:

"I'm not good enough to take on life on my own."

"I need to be loved by everyone."

People who suffer from this disorder often also struggle with borderline personality disorder, narcissism, and dependency.

Researchers indicate that hypnosis can be used to help people who suffer from this[7]. Because in the end, all that drama is not nice to have either, even if you feel like you need it. In the long run, you are not left with family and friends who want to hang out with you. In the long run, no one makes sense to always have drama with a certain person.

Hypnosis to resolve negative feelings

Whether you need it because of negative feelings to trigger negative feelings in others or resolve it in other awkward ways, such as eating, shopping or even scratching yourself, hypnosis can help you resolve those negative feelings and deal with them in a different way.

You may suffer from negative feelings due to a variety of problems in your life, but hypnosis can always help.

One problem some women suffer from is premenstrual dysphoric disorder. If you suffer from this, you often also suffer a lot of negative feelings. This is somewhat different from PMS.

Research shows that hypnotherapy helps reduce the impact of all these negative feelings. In the therapy used in the study, these women were helped to develop flexibility in their thinking, change their perspective on the problem, strengthen their sense of self, cope with pain (including emotional pain), and receive suggestions for living life to the fullest, just like other people[8].

Strengthen flexibility of mind

One way to increase mental flexibility is through exercises that demonstrate how you can change your thoughts. Rethinking or visualizing thoughts—and then acting on that visualization—can go a long way toward showing that when a certain thought arises, you don’t necessarily have to accept it as true.

Changing view of the problem

Beliefs about how the world works and how you belong and can function in it can create negative feelings if, for example, you feel that something you want to do is something you cannot do.

Changing those beliefs will then help you change your perspective on the problem that’s making you feel bad, and that will resolve those negative feelings.

At the HIN, you learn regression in the initial training, which is an important technique to help change one's outlook on a problem. In regression, you go back to a time in your life when a belief arose that is now causing negative feelings.

Next, you will reinterpret this moment. The hypnotherapist then helps you with that (how to do that as a hypnotherapist you learn at the HIN). That new interpretation causes your beliefs about how the world works and how you belong and can function in it to change and that then also changes your view of the problem. As a result, the problem no longer causes negative feelings.

Strengthening your ego

Strengthening your ego can also be seen as strengthening your self-confidence. You’re often encouraged to repeat certain suggestions, such as:

"I can do anything."

"I'm good enough."

"A thought is just a thought."

"I am worthy of love."

These are just examples. Depending on what you are getting negative feelings from, you can get other suggestions to strengthen your ego. You can also get them in a you form instead of the I form.

Suggestions for optimal living

As for suggestions for optimal living, that can be done in several ways. For example, with a progression, you can visualize a kind of future image and then also visualize how you take the steps to reach that point. This is a technique that is taught in further training of the HIN. This is a more advanced technique.

In addition, you can also get post-hypnotic suggestions, such as how good you feel after hypnotherapy or how easily things come off to you and the like. This can also help you subconsciously focus more on what is going well, which will also help you suffer less from negative feelings.

Negative feelings are often a reaction to a thought or event. That reaction often comes from unconscious beliefs, which is why hypnosis can be so helpful in addressing negative feelings. In fact, hypnotherapy allows you to change unconscious beliefs.

Would you like to learn more about hypnosis? Then join us for a free online masterclass on hypnosis.

You can also come to a seminar or enroll in one of Hypnosis Institute Netherlands' courses .

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