6 Things to Do When You Get Bad News
The first several minutes after you hear bad news can whirl you around like a tornado. Your mind spins and you can barely even catch a breath. If someone is speaking the news to you, your pounding heart may begin to drown them out. It’s just too much.
There are good ways to handle bad news, and I will share these tips with you in this article. Try them and see if you don’t recover more quickly from bad news.
1. Steady your breathing and don’t allow yourself to panic.
When you get bad news, it sucks the life right out of you. Don’t panic. Instead, pause and take a few deep breaths. Center yourself. Take a walk as this can help ground you and calm you down. This will give you clarity and the energy to keep moving forward.
2. Don’t avoid the negative emotions you feel, but don’t let them overwhelm you.
Attempting to avoid negative feelings may cause more harm than good. Allow yourself to feel the negative emotions as a natural reaction. Emotions are not your enemy. Let yourself react in whatever way it will, as far as emotions go.
Healthy versus unhealthy emotional reactions include:
· Healthy: My heart is heavy, and I feel sad.
· Unhealthy: My life as I know it is over. We’re doomed.
· Healthy: I’m angry about this news.
· Unhealthy: Screw life, let’s just give up.
3. Concentrate on your physical well-being.
Keeping your calm and maintaining your perspective depends largely on your physical well-being. Try to be as kind as possible to yourself when experiencing bad news. Get sufficient exercise and sleep and avoid taking drugs or drinking alcohol in excess.
4. Reach out to others for reassurance and advice.
When you feel overwhelmed, vulnerable and threatened, it’s natural to reach out to someone in your social network for reassurance, advice or a fresh perspective. Be sure to choose a person who will listen to your feelings and know positive ways to respond. You don’t want to choose someone who will make you feel worse.
Being with other people will allow you to more easily work through your feelings and thoughts, to regain a calm perspective. You can also enjoy engaging in painting, writing or spending quality time out in the natural world.
5. Put everything in perspective.
If you tend to hold onto negative feelings for too long, reach inside and attempt to put the situation into proper perspective. Accept good aspects as well as bad ones, in the situation.
Write down things you feel grateful for and remind yourself about the things that are most important to you. This helps you to realize that it’s not really the end of the world just because you’ve received bad news.
6. Develop an action plan.
Draw up a plan of how to get your life back on track if the bad news has affected parts of your personal life. Set a deadline when you want to be fully back on track, and no longer dwelling on bad news.
Only use practical plans in moving forward. This creates new opportunities to discover fresh ideas based on those plans. You’ll appreciate the planning when you’re back on track mentally and physically.
Conclusion
The framework created by these positive reactions to bad news will help you to triage whatever the rest of this year and beyond will bring. No one is perfect in their responses to bad news but striving to confront the negative feelings and ideas that directly bother you is much better than allowing them to fester.
Ask for help whenever you need it from a trusted person, to help yourself in healing sooner and not later. Contact us here at Core3, we'd be happy to support you. Schedule a complimentary consultation today!