Karin Wildheart

It’s happened more times than I can count: some trigger (such as an unkind or confrontational retort) instantly causes my stomach to drop. Suddenly, my whole body is awash in intense emotion. Uh-oh. How to move forward?

I know what not to do. Don’t drown it in alcohol or take pills; that’s how addictions start. Don’t try to push it away, because it can’t just disappear on its own if you stuff it down. I’ve seen those long lists of “self-care” activities like “take a bubble bath,” but those hold zero appeal right now. I need something that will start helping instantly and without massive effort.

For years, I tried all kinds of different strategies before I finally found one that works. So, what seemed like it would help, but ultimately let me down?

What Seemed Like It Would Work

Self-compassion seemed an obvious approach.

But I recently learned that thoughts like, “it’s okay, it’s okay, you’re okay,” and “this will be over soon, you can do it, just hang on,” can make things worse. They’re considered avoidance behavior and reiterate to the subconscious that the situation or circumstance is problematic, and anxiety is a thing to be feared and endured, not accepted or embraced.

I tried changing my physicality when feeling stuck.

For instance, by assuming a yoga pose, taking a walk, or exercising when feeling overwhelmed by my emotions. But the pain followed me anywhere I went. Sometimes exercise seemed to make it worse — I did not need another reason for my heart to pound.

Another ubiquitous piece of advice: name the emotions.

Using language can activate a different part of the brain and help a person stay in control. This tip is a mixed bag: while better than avoiding self-reflection, labeling emotions can create a story that may not be helpful.

In her interview on NPR’s Invisibilia podcast (episode: Emotions), psychology professor Lisa Feldman Barrett posits that emotions are nameless, wordless, bodily sensations that are not standard or universal across cultures.

She claims that anger and fear, for instance, are not hard-wired into humanity but culturally constructed concepts that don’t exist in every society. The raw materials of bodily sensation are simple: pleasant, unpleasant, aroused, and calm. Whatever emotion we perceive ourselves to be having is a combination of feelings and interpreted context. Some ways we build cultural context around emotion: when you reacted this way as a child, what did adults around you say you were feeling? When someone acts like this on TV, what do the characters call the emotion?

Naming emotions can be useful as a means of knowing yourself better and sharing your inner world with others. I’m still a fan of those colorful “emotion wheels.” But in a painful moment, it hasn’t seemed to help a bit. Thinking of the words, “angry,” “upset,” “sad,” “afraid,” etc. with reference to myself tends to bring up a host of negative associations that create new difficulties and more angst about my life in general.

Frankly, it does not matter what you are feeling when it comes to getting through an intense storm of emotion, as I’ve learned. There’s no shame or problem in not knowing what it is.

The most promising advice by far.

It was “sitting with” emotions or “feeling your feelings.” I have long believed feelings need to be felt to go away. The only way out is through. Any emotion a person refuses to engage (by ignoring it, stuffing it down, or distracting oneself) sticks around subconsciously and can be re-awakened at any moment.

There’s even a book called Feelings Buried Alive Never Die. (I haven’t read it. The title seems to give it all away, you know?)

Disappointingly, even this advice didn’t seem to work for me. I don’t tend to let myself avoid emotions. If anything, I have been too willing to feel pain or sit in sorrow and not try to escape it. I thought I was “feeling my feelings” constantly, so why weren’t they getting less intense?

What Worked

This realization changed everything for me: what I had been referring to as “feeling” was thinking-based. I was stoking emotional fires with painful thoughts, experiencing a lot of pain as a result, and calling that feeling.

Astounding: the thought, “I feel frustrated,” is, well, a thought! (Not a feeling). Engaging with that concept is thinking! (Not feeling). Thinking about my frustration and the reasons for it is not feeling it.

Once I changed my definition of feeling from mentally engaging with a concept (like sadness, fear, or anger) to experiencing the sensations in my body, “feeling my feelings” worked and worked well. Feeling things, to the (short, recent) extent that I’ve been able to do it, has been nothing short of life-changing.

Let’s get practical. We left off at, “my whole body is awash in intense emotion. How to move forward?”

Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor has the answer. In Oprah’s compilation book The Wisdom of Sundays, she says a person has a choice “of either being angry or of paying attention to what it feels like in your body when you are angry.”

She says, “It takes ninety seconds from the moment you feel that trigger happen, and you feel yourself starting to get angry, for the chemicals to flush through your body and then flush completely out of you… start timing it.”

She claims that by the time you reach ninety seconds, you’ll realize, “I just dodged that one.”

Bolte Taylor doesn’t say this outright, but per my previous reading and experience, it is my understanding that after the ninety seconds are up, it’s gone for good! An extremely similar feeling can come back at any time, but what you have felt is resolved, no longer with you. She does explain that people can stay angry for years, but that’s by re-engaging the original thought that was angering, again and again — years’ worth of ninety-second loops.

I haven’t been doing this for long, but since I’ve begun, I have far fewer incidents of overload, and I navigate those I have left with more hope and find more closure. I wish the same for you.

Photo by Josephina Kolpachnikof on Unsplash