Is Emotional Monitoring Making You Anxious? Here’s How to Tell

Emotional monitoring refers to the observation and analysis of how we are feeling. It helps one tune into his inner experiences to understand the process being undergone. Balanced, this leads to great awareness of the self and emotional intelligence. If it goes out of control, analyzing our emotions more, it gets toxic.  This type of over-monitoring can then create anxiety, doubts about oneself, or even harm relationships. In this article, we discuss when emotional monitoring becomes detrimental and how to achieve a healthy balance. 

What is Emotional Monitoring? 

Emotional monitoring basically means giving attention or monitoring our feelings and reactions. It would be noticing when we feel happy, sad, angry, or nervous and trying to understand why. For instance, if you feel nervous before a big meeting, it is because you care about doing well and making a good impression. Generally, that’s a good practice since this enables us to address situations thoughtfully.  For instance, if you know that a certain subject matter puts you in a rage, you can still come out calm and prevent impulsive reactions. 

Signs of Toxic Emotional Monitoring 

While self-awareness is healthy, it can become harmful when it turns into over-analysis. Here are some signs showing that emotional monitoring has become toxic: 

1. Obsessive Overthinking 

You become an overthinker. Overthinking means that you just keep reeling scenarios or conversations over in your mind, looking for that one place where you made a mistake. For instance, if you fought with your best friend, you might go over every single word of the conversation in your head, wondering what you said wrong. Such overanalysis can cause you undue stress and guilt. 

2. Fear of Negative Emotions 

Many have learned to fear negative emotions. If we monitor our feelings too closely, it may be the case that whenever we feel sad, angry, or upset, we begin to panic because “we’re supposed to be feeling okay.” It’s a fear that can prevent people from moving through their emotions naturally; in other words, it restricts the flow of life.

3. Overemphasizing Others’ Feelings 

Toxic emotional monitoring begins not with how we perceive ourselves but reaches into how we focus on others’ emotions as well. For example, if you are intimately related, you could constantly catch whether your partner is in a good mood or upset, and you get worried if he or she appears the latter. Without a doubt, it’s normal to care for people around you, but checking all the time on their emotional state may drain you out and make you feel responsible for their good time. 

Why Do Emotional Checks Become Toxic? 

Several reasons make emotional monitoring toxic. 

1. Social Media Pressure: Social media has a tendency to make life look perfect as if everybody is always happy. There is that kind of pressure that will expect one to be positive and avoid showing his or her natural negative feelings as a failure. 
2. Perfectionism: Toxic emotional monitoring will be a struggle for those who strive for perfection. They feel that they should be able to control their emotions perfectly and hence find themselves constantly self-checking and stressed because they never seem to fit the bill. 
3. Past Experiences and Trauma: Among people who have trauma or experienced difficult times, a hyper-awareness habit can be adopted as part of the defence mechanism. At one point, it can become a survival tool for monitoring emotions. Once that is no longer needed, it becomes draining and dysfunctional. 

Effects of Toxic Emotional Surveillance 

Hyper-emotional monitoring involves several adverse effects: 

• Increased Anxiousness: You will be anxious and agitated if you constantly overanalyze each feeling. 
• Emotional Exhaustion: It is exhausting in the mind to constantly ask and analyze your feelings. 
• Overstretched Relationships: In case you focus more on either others’ or your own emotions, there could be a lot of confusion and strains. 

How to Avoid This Pitfall of Toxic Emotional Monitoring

If you find yourself stuck in a toxic mode of emotional monitoring, here is how you get out of  this loop: 

1. Accept your feelings without judgment: Accept your emotions the way they are. End the labelling of your feelings as either “good” or  “bad.” Try to view them as signals from your body. When you feel stressed, for instance, it’s a sign that something in your environment needs your attention. You recognize the feeling but don’t judge yourself for having it. 
2. Time Limits for Self-Reflection End: Good to be introspective, but for just a few minutes. Instead of analyzing an issue for half the night, dedicate 10-15 minutes to it and then leave it alone. This saves one from falling into the rut of overthinking. 
3. Practice Mindfulness: This could help you break the habit of overly monitoring your emotions. For instance,  simple mindfulness exercises like deep breathing or grounding techniques might allow you to watch your emotions as they arise without having the urge to interpret them further.
4. Seek Support if Needed: If you can witness toxic emotional monitoring going on, consider talking to a mental health professional. There are remedies through treatments like Cognitive Behavioral Therapy that can be able to help a person recognize unhelpful thought patterns and develop more useful ways of coping with his or her emotions. 

Conclusion 

Emotional monitoring is a pretty powerful tool for self-awareness and personal development, but it has to be used judiciously. One can run the risk of drowning in a sea of anxiety and questioning one’s judgment if one becomes too obsessive about analyzing every feeling in the hope that at least something will surface. After all, having a whole gamut of emotions is normal, and we do not necessarily have to analyze every feeling. This therefore calls for a balance-healthy balance-to let go of our emotions without letting them trap us.