Emotions are complex subjective cognitive states that govern human behaviour and interactions. In the early stages of our evolution, before we had the vocabulary and apparatus for thought, emotions were all we had – which is why they still feel so raw and hard to process, because they predate thought. Emotions, in a sense, are just thoughts of a different kind. Think of them as proto-thoughts lent corporeality by your body.

Emotions are reactions to events, to stimuli, both internal and external. They were our means of processing what was happening around us before we learned to use thought to define events. If given enough attention, emotions translate into thoughts of a clarity that would most often surprise us.

Strictly speaking, emotions aren’t reducible to thought – but emotions can act as the seedbed out of which thoughts arise. They can act as the scaffolding around thought. For example, fear sets off threat-assessment thoughts; joy fosters openness and frees imagination.

We notice that thoughts, too, can trigger emotions. But more often than not, we begin with an emotion – sometimes faint enough to escape notice – and move on to thoughts that reify it. Emotion first, then thought, then action arising from either is typically how the sequence unfolds.

Nearly all of us have felt overwhelmed by negative emotions at some point in our lives. They are often seen as an unpleasant and undesirable but unavoidable part of life. Anger, apathy, anxiety, bitterness, despair, disillusionment, frustration, fear, the list seems endless. Some are basic emotions, while others are secondary or complex blends of the basic emotions. They arrive uninvited, take over our minds and cause us immense suffering. But these emotions need not ruin our lives if we put in the effort to understand them, make room for them and reframe them. There is no shame in experiencing negative emotions. You cannot be upbeat all the time. The key to our well-being involves paying attention to our negative emotions because they often signal changes that are needed in our immediate surroundings or life in general.

The sensible thing to do is to learn to process negative emotions. It is a skill anyone can master. When we hit rough patches, that skill is going to prove invaluable. Emotions carry messages of significance for our lives. People generally have similar reactions to the same stimuli, though variations arise from individual mental make-up. How we interpret events and the meanings we attach to them have an enormous influence on the emotions that arise in us and their intensity. Most of us, however, fail to take responsibility for the emotions we allow into our lives. If you want to live a life relatively free of negative emotions, you need to become adept at handling them. Because if they get out of control, you can be railroaded into decisions you may come to regret, ending up worse off than before.

Emotions, good or bad, are the end result of the meaning we encounter in our lives. We are all, in one way or another, engaged in the process of either creating meaning, finding it or lending it shape. Every action we take, every thought we think, brings with it information. We process it and extract meaning from it. Meaning is necessary because it is how we navigate our lives, and without meaning, we are lost. Occasionally, however, our efforts result in meanings that we find repulsive or unsavoury, and they trigger emotions in us that are just as distasteful. Understanding the meaning behind our emotions is a crucial step toward mastering them.

With that in mind, let’s explore some strategies and practical steps to help you work through your negative emotions.

1. Acknowledge them. The first step in dealing with emotions is to recognise their presence – to admit that you are experiencing them. You cannot fight them by fighting them. Confront them, bring them out into the open, and pay attention. People often try to ignore or suppress their emotions, giving those emotions power over them. Sometimes this happens because the emotions feel too much to handle. Other times, they simply give in to them. There may be occasions when, overcome by emotion, we choose to give up control and let it all blow over – and that too can be a coping strategy. But more often than not, the fallout is damaging, especially if you fail to regain your footing. People are often led astray because they refuse to acknowledge what they feel.

2. Step back. The next step is to disentangle the emotion from the event or stimuli that triggered it and yourself. Most of us often make this mistake of lumping it all together. The event or stimuli, your reaction, and you are distinct things, each to be dealt with separately. And unless you learn to see them as separate, you will struggle to deal with them. Emotions are very much the canary in the coal mine – they provide crucial information. But don’t confuse yourself with the canary. Negative emotions aren’t you. The canary cannot breathe; you can, and you have the power to set things right. No matter how overwhelming things may seem when you are in their grip, you are not your emotions. Without this distinction, events can quickly spiral out of control. Now this is a fairly complex thing to attempt when you are actually undergoing an emotional upheaval. So train yourself to do it.

3. Be honest about them. You need to see what drives your emotions. They are rooted in causes. Unless you see that connection, you cannot regain your emotional equilibrium. Causes you cannot forget can often be addressed. But what about your immediate sensations? Conflict, unmet needs, and sometimes a lack of clarity. We must try to find the root. It is almost always some sense of helplessness. That helplessness drives negative emotions. Sometimes it involves past events that cannot be changed, like a personal loss or tragedy. But more often, things can be fixed – we just don’t yet know how. Sometimes that helplessness is self-taught, self-inflicted.

People often use negative emotions like a crutch to escape feelings of guilt or accountability. They exaggerate what they experience to feel justified. Consider self-pity: it almost always lies. It says, ‘I am a good person; it is not my fault.’ And we are okay with it because we then don’t have to deal with nuance – we can stay helpless.

Or consider taking offence at the smallest things. This is a primitive defence mechanism, a vestige of early human social development, when aggression was a clear way to assert boundaries. With strangers, this behaviour is often harmless. But why do we use it with the people we share our lives with? Because we haven’t outgrown that circuitry in our brains. It isn’t necessarily a fragile ego. People who behave this way at home often don’t do it at work or with friends. They use it for leverage. Yet that habit addresses nothing – you are merely projecting your insecurities onto others. You want them to respond to it while offering no clarity or help in return.

If your goal is emotional stability, you have to be honest with yourself. Emotions are often used as excuses to avoid complexity. Conflicting thoughts pull you in different directions. You don’t want to deal with it, so you reduce it all to one emotion. The honesty you need may not come naturally. You must cultivate it, make time for it, and practice it. If you cannot attempt it in the moment, do it later. Without honesty, you cannot learn from your experience or transcend your emotions. Some people go through life angry, depressed, or sad – and when others avoid them, they wonder why. Emotional self-regulation is like personal hygiene: you need to tidy up your thinking frequently. Honesty is a powerful tool for this. It brings clarity.

Why does honesty matter when dealing with emotions? Emotions, as we said, are subjective states. They feel real because you lend them reality. Whether to consider them real is a personal choice – ideally, guided by the outcome you want. But mostly, we seek validation. We want evidence that our feelings are justified. The same applies to the emotions of others. Should you hold them as real? That is a decision only you can make.

4. Take action. The next step on the journey is to know what actions to take when you experience these emotions. People are often asked to count from 1 to 10 when they are angry. It works. It shifts your focus, giving you precious moments to regain your composure. But are there better strategies? Certainly.

There are different stages that lead to outbursts of anger or almost any emotion, and you can intervene at any point – the trigger, your perception, your appraisal of the situation, the physical manifestations, and so on. For example, if you know your triggers, you can avoid them. Understanding your emotions helps.

Some people get trapped in their heads, unable to exit their thoughts. If you can translate your emotion into a physical action, you can step out of the torrent of thoughts it triggers. Emotions mainly demand physical action. When humans were evolving, we only had two broad responses to any perceived threat: fight or flight. But we aren’t constrained in that way anymore. Any action that could improve the situation can help you regain control quickly. The actions you take need not even directly influence the situation. It only needs to serve you in some meaningful way.

The strategies discussed above can offer valuable guidance. However, you must not forget that emotions and their expression are a means to communicate. But are they communicating the right things to you personally and to others? When possible, we must supplement them with words, think things through, and verbalise. We may struggle to come up with the exact terms to describe our emotional states. But every such attempt brings more to the surface, helping us identify the drivers. Ask yourself: what do you really want from the situation, and where do you want to go from there? Can you get what you want out of these emotions? Ask yourself, is there a way to use the emotion to your advantage? More often than not, you can harness the energy that has been gathered up into an emotion. Meaning is what will point you the direction.

If you can’t process everything in your head, write things down. Just dump it all onto paper. If that feels cumbersome, dictate your thoughts instead and replay them. The mere habit of putting your thoughts and emotions into words can help make sense of the complexities. Cataloguing your emotions goes a long way in mastering emotional self-regulation.

In the end, negative emotions aren’t enemies to flee from or friends you can blindly trust. They’re signals – messy, powerful, and deeply personal. When we take the time to examine them dispassionately and honestly, we begin to reclaim our inner life. Mastering emotions isn’t about never feeling angry, anxious, or hurt; it’s about recognising these feelings for what they are – information, not identity. With awareness, we regain the freedom to pause, to shift, and to turn emotion into clarity.