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Feeling stressed? Do the physiological sigh. Big breath in, short breath in, big sigh out.
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Feeling anxious? Go for a walk, when you walk your eyes naturally scan from side to side which deactivates your amygdala, and relaxes the body.
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Are you feeling Sad? Acknowledge your feelings, validate yourself and then move your body to release endorphins.
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If you’re feeling impulsive or angry, look out of the window, but don’t look AT anything, dilate your gaze, or zone out, this blunts noradrenaline, so you can think clearly.
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If you have low motivation, focus intently on one sopt on your screen for one minute and ignore everything else pupillary convergence increases focus.
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If you’re feeling insecure, write down your strengths, as the logic systems override the limbic system.
If you’re feeling overwhelmed, here’s some things that help, , journaling, writing down what you’re grateful for, going out in nature, breath work (wim hof), go for a drive or move your body with dance etc. This can help you sooth those emotions and regain balance, so those emotions aren’t filling up the whole screen and you can see around them again, and find ways to help yourself in the moment.
Credit: Anna Akana, Dr Nicole A. Tetreault.
That makes sense. Does that mean that when others are saying “you’re feelings are valid” is kinda their way to reinforce or help with that internal validation?
All emotions are valid. All emotions are ok. All emotions are allowed space, and necessary. All emotions just want to be heard. All emotions are a message / alert from your nervous system. The meaning doesn’t matter in first noticing emotions. You are not your emotions, you are not your thoughts. You are the entity that observes them both.
Your thoughts and emotions are not in any way connected parts of your brain. Any time your thoughts try and tell you they know what your emotions are about, those thoughts are guessing. So acknowledging or validating emotions doesn’t need to be a thinking process. Validating or acknowledging emotions is just the opposite of suppressing or bottling emotions. Emotions don’t need to come outward of your body. (Although completing the stress cycle after feelings large enough to activate your fight or flight, can be useful and that does involve moving your body)
They just want to be noticed. It’s an alarm system, even if it’s not about an alert, that emotional response system still wants to know you heard it. Or it gets louder.
So, if you can, stop and turn your attention inwards and notice how you’re feeling. The more often you do this, the more you start to feel and differentiate your emotions. Because when you’re in the practice of suppressing emotions, which we can be socially taught to do, they can be hard to notice, it just all feels like noise.
Emotions sit in your body. They are a tightening of muscles and structures, etc here and there. That all together form a signal, for each emotion, in the range of emotions.
When noticing how you feel, it can be helpful to scan your body to notice where those emotions sit.
After noticing emotions, thank your emotional system for the message (which will cause an emotional reaction of thanks) to help move past the emotion, and let it dissolve naturally. Completing the cycle.
The more you practise the better you get at it. I am absolutely learning all this stuff myself because I had an inability to connect with my emotions. I notice it can be really hard to remember to do all that stuff, when big feelings hit, it’s so tempting to get caught up in a spiral and just constantly reactivate those emotions. But I suppose practise makes perfect, I’ll get there.
Can be helpful to learn some breathing techniques that send signals to your body (and emotional system) that it’s safe right now, no dinosaurs chasing you, or monsters under the bed, you checked.
That’s a rather good explanation. Thank you. I do agree with the observation part, even though most of the time there isn’t anything noticable to observe for me. I just couldn’t really understand where the validation part plays into this.
Yeah you’re completely right practicing of noticing those has been rather helpful. It has thought me to notice negative thinking patterns which can spiral and eventually lead to negative emotions, which can eventually lead to depression.
Oooh, yeah, rumination is a demon I’m currently trying to exorcise. And absolutely great reminder that those thoughts can trigger those emotions. They do! You get in this fight or flight feed back loop, emotions trigger the thoughts, thoughts trigger the emotions. AND I’ve just recently learned you can just get in the habit of doing it, with absolutely no trigger, you just always go into fight or flight, just for the reason, that you always do. Rumination is mostly habit! Blew my mind learning that. It’s a form of ocd. It certainly takes a high level of nervous system regulation, to battle it.
I have a more scientific or common name for it now. Thank you.
So how do you try to combat or lessen the impact of it?
I’m trialing that, you aren’t your thoughts, (you aren’t your emotions or the meat suit you’re in) you are the entity that observes. So noticing my thoughts. That, plus, rumination being a fight or flight system being activated, that’s trying to save you, I remind it that it isn’t saving me. (But I don’t think that second part is a healthy attempt to dissolve it). I get so fed up with it playing in my head, getting louder and louder, repeating my mistakes, I used to swear at it. But that can become problematic. But it crushes my self worth! And gives me crushing social anxiety. So I need it to stop.
The patient way is calming down your nervous system and doing some nervous system regulation, just stuff that deactivates your fight or flight and tells your nervous system you are safe, crisis averted. Being conscious of things that activate your nervous system, like rushing, not resting, distracting yourself from reality all the time (cough cough, my phone addiction cough cough), making sure your needs are met, etc. Just taking a minute to be, just exist, is actually super powerful in telling your nervous system you’re safe, doing it more often here and there, can be powerful enough to rewire stress levels. That’s meditation / mindfulness, if someone had told me the why, earlier, I’d have taken all of that stuff way more seriously.
So, in short, a little bit of something regulating, depending on my mood and option availability at the time.
I say to myself, I notice I’m doing that thinking thing again. Take some deep breaths, stare at some pretty scenery or the sky, notice how my feet feel touching the earth, remind myself I’m safe, and capable, don’t need to worry about that any more. Stare at something pretty a little more.
Oh yeah, that observation and kinda stepping aside from those thoughts has helped me as well and forced mindfulness meditation type of an activity has been rather beneficial in allowing me to sort of step aside and observe it.
I cant yet trace back to the true origin of why some of those thought patterns happen to completely fix those, but observing, “journaling” and determining whatever those are rooted in actual reality and how detrimental those are to daily functioning is enough to stop those from spiraling out of control and to dissipated those.