Negative emotions can be triggered by thoughts, people, events, or physical sensations. Running into an old friend who no longer keeps in touch, having an unsatisfactory medical appointment, or watching others go on a hike you can’t join may bring negative feelings. Internal triggers, like fearful thoughts or fatigue, can also spark sadness, fear, or anger—sometimes without you realizing it.

Negative emotions can worsen pain by amplifying discomfort, increasing muscle tension, and discouraging helpful actions like exercise while encouraging harmful ones like drinking.

What are Negative Emotional Triggers?

Emotions can be triggered by thoughts, events, people, or objects in the outside environment, or by events or sensations inside your body. You may find that spending time with a certain person triggers negative emotions. A weekly meeting with your boss may trigger negative feelings. If you can no longer play tennis due to pain, watching a friend play a match may trigger feelings of sadness. Emotions can also be generated internally. A scary thought (“I’ll never recover”) can trigger negative emotions or diminish an existing positive emotion. Such thoughts may be so automatic that you may not even be fully aware of them. Have you ever felt sad for no apparent reason? Finally, sometimes a physical sensation, like fatigue, can trigger a sad, frightened, or angry feeling.

Negative emotions can make pain harder to manage. They can amplify pain signals, reduce motivation to engage in helpful activities (such as exercise), increase behaviors that worsen pain (such as drinking), and heighten muscle tension.

Monitor Negative Triggers Activity

Before you can get control of your emotions, it helps to identify the situations, people, experiences, or thoughts that make you feel bad. You can start by completing this self-monitoring exercise to identify negative emotional triggers.

When you notice a negative emotion (e.g., sadness, fear, anxiety, depression, loneliness), record the emotion and possible triggers on the form. After you have monitored for 2 days, try to identify situations that seem to be regularly linked to negative emotions.

If you can’t figure out the cause of a particular feeling, that is okay. This monitoring activity will give you a chance to practice noticing feelings and thinking about their cause. You will get better with practice.

Keep track on a piece of paper or your phone. Take note of:

  • The emotion
  • How upsetting it is
  • The possible trigger
  • How likely it is that you may face this trigger again

After completing your two-day monitoring exercise, return to Feeling Better  and select “Manage Negative Emotional Triggers” to continue.

Practice Relaxation, Manage Negativity, and Increase Positivity

Learning activities

Manage Emotions Through Relaxation

Meditation and relaxation can be valuable tools to gain better control over emotions. Learn to accept your emotions, soothe yourself, and quiet down.

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Identify Negative Emotional Triggers

Negative emotions can make it harder to manage your pain. Learn to to identify the situations, people, experiences, or thoughts that make you feel bad.

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Manage Negative Emotional Triggers

In this activity, you will select three negative emotional triggers. Then you will learn coping strategies and create plans to manage these triggers.

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Identify Positive Emotional Triggers

Having a better emotional life includes not only reducing and managing negative triggers and emotions, but also building positive experiences and emotions. This activity will help you to identify the activities, events, and experiences that lead to positive emotions

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Build Positive Emotional Experiences

Positive emotional experiences can help make managing pain easier and more effective.  After creating a list of your own positive emotional triggers, this activity will help you plan ways to incorporate them into daily life.

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