What Bothers You

          Before reading further, try doing a self-awareness check and attempt to find out how you are actually feeling right now. Are you anxious about something? Has some recent news made you unhappy? Are you facing a current issue that is irritating you? Or do you think that everything seems great at the moment?

          It helps to pause and get a hold of your emotions and thoughts from time to time. Many fail to do this and they only realize too late that they are actually under severe stress.  Like being able to listen to your body and identify potential symptoms of the beginnings of a physical illness, emotional self-awareness is one of the keys to a sound mind.

          All living creatures possess an inherent programming to survive. And this awareness of the things happening around people consciously or unconsciously allows them to automatically identify potential threats to their survival and well-being. This threat analysis is what keeps people from placing themselves in dangerous situations.

          When something bothers you it only means that your mind has perceived a potential threat to your safety, your security or your self-esteem or that there is an ongoing diminution of the same in an area of your life. Your mind has either detected a threat to your survival or a loss in an area that affects your well-being.

          But sometimes what bothers you are thoughts that may have no actual basis in reality. Or that whatever you are pondering at the moment may not even be worth thinking about. Some of these fears and anxieties might be unrealistic and irrational. Overthinking is the common term used nowadays by most to describe a situation where one tends to imagine what may go wrong with each decision that you consider making. Or you are constantly thinking about events that have happened in the past, things that you regret and what you can no longer change.

          When you feel emotional discomfort, ask yourself first what it is that you are actually feeling. Label the emotion whether it is irritation, regret, guilt, worry or something else. After you have done this, try to pinpoint the thought, memory or issue that is triggering this emotion. And when you have clearly identified the thought ask yourself, should this bother you? To help you do this, think of those close to you and imagine if they were facing the same issue and having the same thoughts. Use them as your baseline of comparison and ask, would this same issue bother them? If not, then it should not bother you too.