Is Poor Emotional Health Affecting Your Behavior

When your emotional health is lacking or lagging, it can begin to influence your behavior negatively. If you are unsure if your behavior is being influenced by a negative attitude or an inability to regulate your emotions, here are some things you can watch out for.

How Your Emotions Affect Your Behavior

Lack of Understanding for Other People’s Emotions

When you are not in touch with your own emotions, it makes it difficult for you to really get how others are feeling, either. If you notice that your behaviors seem to provoke negative reactions from others consistently, the problem may not be them. And if you are always asking what is wrong with others, then you are not picking up on the cues that should lead you to grasp their emotions.

Isolation

One way your poor emotional health can influence how you behave is when you choose to separate yourself from others rather than try to understand or deal with their feelings or to hide your own emotions from them. Isolation is a common symptom of emotional distress.

When you feel bad about yourself and are struggling emotionally, you may think that you do not deserve to be loved, and therefore no one wants to be with you. Other reasons you may withdraw from loved ones include regret, shame, embarrassment, insecurity, or being overwhelmed by your own emotional needs.

Blaming

When you lack emotional awareness and regulation, a typical behavior is to blame others for your own problems or situation. Those with poor psychological health struggle with personal awareness and may not see how their own choices or emotions are influencing the adverse outcomes in their lives. If you find yourself consistently blaming other people for the ills in your life, then it may be time to focus more on boosting your emotional well-being.

Arguing

Anger is an emotion that is often used to cover up other feelings. If you find yourself lashing out in anger, arguing, or otherwise feeling mad a lot, then your emotional stability and health are lacking. Emotional health means being able to process and deal with your emotions effectively, not allowing them to control your actions.

Anger is a good coverup for other negative feelings that you may not want to examine too carefully, including disappointment, fear, shame, and self-loathing. Ask yourself what you are really angry about? And does this person you are arguing with play a role in that anger?

Losing Important Relationships

Emotional health is crucial for maintaining healthy relationships. If you find that you have difficulty keeping friends or partners in your life, then your emotional health could use some attention. Emotional health means that you understand how others feel and can respond in appropriate ways, and when you can’t do these things, people will leave.

Other Behavioral Outcomes

In addition to those listed, other ways that your poor emotional health could be affecting your behavior include:

• Lacking respect or desire to listen to other people’s ideas or perspectives
• Living in denial about the circumstances or state of your life
• Being overly critical of other people regularly
• You try to intimidate or threaten other people to get what you want
• You harm yourself by cutting, starving, or binging
• You cannot handle when other people are emotionally upset
• You have a substance abuse problem or feel the need to use substances to escape your emotions

Final Thoughts

These are just a few of the ways that your emotions can influence your decisions and behaviors. Any time you find yourself acting in a certain way and then later regretting it, there is a high probability that you allowed your emotions to make that decision for you, and you are lacking in emotional health. Paying attention to these types of red flags is essential for monitoring your emotional health and cultivating your personal well-being.