How to free yourself from ‘negative’ emotions in 90 seconds

You wake up in the morning and straight away, your mind goes into overdrive: ‘I can’t believe what she said to me!, ‘she must think I am a really bad mum’, ‘how dare she criticise me;, ‘I should be a better mum’ and on it goes.

​You feel angry at this woman who said something to you and the more you replay what she said in your mind, the angrier you get. The anger gets reignited every time you think about it and when one of your children ask you for something, you snap at them. This, you are sure, confirms that you are a bad mum. And then the loop grows even bigger.
 

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I get it. Feeling emotions is scary. They don’t feel good. They are so uncomfortable and they seem to be in control of you rather than you in control of them!  In the last 10 years of seeing therapy clients, I have seen this time and again. People worry about these ‘negative’ emotions and they don’t know what to do to stop them.
 
 Most of my clients want these emotions to go away. To be fair, before I trained as a therapist, I was exactly the same. I didn’t want to feel these uncomfortable and I was too busy to feel them. I did my best to avoid them, usually by burying myself in work. For my clients, it can be avoiding them by drinking a glass of wine… or 2 or 3, eating a whole pack of biscuits, watching parenting videos to be a better mum etc etc.
 
 So I set about understanding what was going on and training as therapist along with seeing thousands of clients helped me to see emotions differently. Emotions are not negative. They serve a purpose and, if you really listen, you will hear what they are trying to communicate to you so you can do something about it.
 
I developed a way to help clients take control of their emotions and it starts with understanding that emotions are simply chemical reactions in the body that will dissolve after about 90 seconds, as neuroscientist Dr Jill Bolte Taylor’s research showed.
 
If after 90 seconds, they persist, they are sustained by your thinking. In other words, what you feel after the first 90 seconds is a new loop that is activated by your thoughts.
 
The challenge with letting this continue is that your mind will keep you trapped into this emotional spiral loop after loop after loop and will continue to impair your decision-making, like snapping at your kids when they have done nothing wrong, but you are consumed by your thoughts about what that woman said and you explode.
 
So how to stop this emotional spiral? Over the years, I have taught my clients to become detectives and gather the clues to their emotions. If you are willing to spend time observing what is going on in the body, you, like my clients, will get a handle on this.
 
As with everything, the first step is awareness. It requires you to identify the emotion you are feeling. Contrary to what people think, there is no universal blueprint for emotions. No particular feeling or sensation is associated with a given emotion. It varies from person to person and is context specific. It means that you need to spend time examining what you are feeling specifically. If, for example, you are feeling angry, what are the specific physical sensations you are experiencing and where in the body? Perhaps you feel a tightness in the chest, a sensation of heat over your body or in your face. Perhaps you feel something else altogether. The point is that only you can identify those sensations because only you inhabit your body.
 
For sure, if you have been avoiding feeling your emotions, that can feel a bit scary. However, emotions are not dangerous. There are ways to do this like meditation. If that doesn’t jibe with you though. You can also simply sit somewhere quiet and just tune into the body for a minute or 90 seconds, mentally scanning the body and identifying what you feel where. Like everything else, it requires practice. The more you get in touch with your body, the easier it will be to recognise what you feel and to actually feel it without fearing it. It is just practice and adopting the attitude of a detective can really take the sting out of this. The more you do this, the better you will get at identifying what you are feeling and recognising it is just a cycle in progress.
 
As you sit there identifying what sensations you feel in your body, pay attention to the thoughts that accompany those sensations and become aware of the mental triggers.
 
Next, name it to tame it. Basically, label that emotion. That particular combination of sensations you are experiencing will be, for you, an emotion. Learn to recognise the combination and to name it. That said, bear in mind that particular sensations can be associated with different emotions. For example, a sensation of heat can be associated with anger, embarrassment, frustration or anxiety, to name a few. Remember too that sensations and emotions are context-specific. The rapid breathing, quickening pulse and heartbeat can occur in situations of anxiety or during exercise or during sex. Yet, you would not label them all anxiety. Or if you do, you may want to rethink that sexual encounter!
 
This is why you need to practice recognising the combinations of sensations you experience so you can identify the context in which they occur and what might trigger them.
 
Naming an emotion is important, but it can be hard, as you can feel multiple emotions simultaneously. So recognising what you actually feel and in which context requires you to practice. Like everything, it will get easier.
 
Next, try sitting with these sensations, knowing that they will dissolve. For example, stare at a clock or a painting or a tree swaying in the breeze for 90 seconds, focusing your attention on the clock and notice how, after that time, the sensations have subsided or perhaps dissolved. If you are willing to sit with them and not resist them, these sensations will dissolve. If you resist them and wish them away, they will persist or even intensify.
 
The more you learn to just observe these sensations, labelling them and letting them be, the better you will get at letting the emotions flush out of your system. Simply knowing they will dissolve and treating the emotions with the attitude of a detective can be very helpful here.   
 
Do have a go at practising this and let me know how you get on. I’d love to know.