Life is fluid and is always changing. This can often cause us to feel lost, desolate, and hopeless – as if our life will always be this way. Emotional Forecasting is an unhealthy technique in which we often engage without realizing it. It consists of us experiencing profound emotions and thinking that this is how we will always feel, or that the situation will always be this way. For example, say you experience a life-shattering breakup. You are blindsided, and you feel as if your life will never recover. Your perception of your life’s circumstances, and the numbness you feel, has you paralyzed from noticing anything other than your thoughts of despair. Since that despair is so intense, it feels as if it will never end.

As you continue to focus on your immediate situation, it grows exponentially, and you may often engage in behaviors that are unhealthy. You may find yourself trying to numb the pain through alcohol, self-medication, sex, or other activities in which you would not usually engage. Your thoughts drive the sadness, and your behaviors solidify that what you are experiencing will be your long-term future.

You must catch yourself before you sink into this profound despair. Yes, it is natural and healthy to experience grief. Still, when it is all-consuming, you then start to lose sight of reality, and it becomes your lifestyle. For example, it’s natural to feel scared when someone jumps out from behind a bush. Still, if you were to experience that fear and feel it at the same intensity for the next hour, it wouldn’t make sense. So, then why do you continue to project your current emotional state into the future just like that fear?

One of the best ways to counter the feelings of Emotional Forecasting is to remember an event when you experienced these same types of emotions and how they lessened over time. When you write down these past events, remind yourself of how you initially felt, and the time it took to feel the emotions lift, then you can tell yourself that it has happened in the past, and you will get through it again. Your personal history, or past, is excellent data to use to counter emotions that drown you. When you use this data, it then starts to weaken the defeating thoughts and helps you remember that there can be a healthy end to this current situation.

Once you pinpoint a time in your past when you felt this emotion, then it’s necessary to forecast your future in the way you want it to be. Since you defeated these same feelings in it in the past, you then know you will overcome it again. It’s important to use phrases like, “I’ve experienced this in the past, it was hard, but I was able to overcome it.” “This will not defeat me.” “I will love again.” I will have a partner again.” The more you remind yourself of how you’ve conquered an event in the past, the more quickly moving beyond the current trauma will be.

You have not danced your last dance. You have not smiled your last smile, or laughed your deepest belly laugh. Your life will one day, very soon, be bright again.

www.JamesMillerLIFEOLOGY.com.