Essential steps for dealing with intense and difficult emotions – working with your nervous system and your body’s needs

Emotions are messengers – giving us information about our internal and external environments.  We are meant to get the message and then release it. When we don’t listen, or get the message, it’s job is not done, and it will intensify (via sensations and discomfort) – until it gets our attention.  The better we are at noticing the early signs of emotion, the quicker we are to respond and maintain comfort and equilibrium.

The following steps can help you engage with intense or uncomfortable emotions with more ease and resilience.

1.  DISCONNECT FROM THE STORY
As soon as you notice the intense or difficult emotion, disconnect from the story.   Intense and difficult emotions register in the same area of the brain that physical pain does – because it actually creates physical pain in the body.  To keep thinking painful thoughts is like continuing to cut yourself with a knife.

Thinking painful thoughts causes intense discomfort in our bodies, and when we continue to ruminate, it is like throwing petrol on a fire.  We make the discomfort in our bodies worse.

Another nasty side effect of ruminating is that we strengthen neuropathways in our brains that continue to process our experience the same way.  The stronger the neuropathway, the harder it is to have a different experience.

2.  DIRECT and NOTICE

Direct your attention onto your body, and notice how it responds to your thoughts.  Do not go back to the story – become an observer and notice the sensations, energy, discomfort, pain…

Emotions express themselves through the body via a language of sensation.  Be curious about the qualities of the uncomfortable sensation and remember to be the observer.  Does it have a temperature?  What size is it?  Does it have a movement?  Throbbing, stabbing, pressure…?  Is there a colour?  Does it have edges?  On a scale of 1-10 where 10 is extremely uncomfortable, how uncomfortable is it?

3.  CREATE SPACE

Imagine creating space in your body for the sensations, energy, discomfort, or pain to be there and express themselves without judgment.  Most importantly – DO NOT RESIST.  Our natural response is to move away from pain, so this takes a little bit of discipline to let it be there without ignoring, suppressing, pushing it away, making it wrong, or wanting it to change – these are all forms of resistance.

Ironically – or so it might seem, when we create space without judgment or resistance, the intensity of the sensation, energy, discomfort or pain diminishes.  Once they have been accepted and ‘heard,’ their job as messengers is over.

4.  REDIRECT ATTENTION for RELIEF

Do not be a superhero or martyr and stay with the discomfort too long – this has the effect of re-traumatising your nervous system.  Tiny little ‘doses’ is way more effective. Staying with the discomfort for just a few seconds can often be enough to make a difference.

Sometimes the discomfort is too intense for our fragile nervous systems (they are way more fragile than we realise – think timid wild animal – that is exactly what our nervous systems are like).  We need to give our bodies temporary relief by producing pleasant, comforting sensations.  This is NOT avoidance – we are simply giving the body some relief, to let the energies settle and re-calibrate.

You can provide comfort and relief to your body by re-directing your awareness to something in your external environment.  Choose something that is pleasing – it could be the colour of a book cover.  If you can look at nature, perhaps through a window, this is even better.   Put your full attention for a minute or two on what makes it pleasing.

You may notice yourself yawning, or taking a deep breath, or gurgling in your stomach (maybe passing wind!), burping, or feeling the need to move or stretch.  These are signs that the energy is moving.  Allow your body to respond in whatever way it wants.  You also might get teary – be careful not to fight the tears, but also not to go into sobbing.

5.  CHECK IN WITH YOUR BODY

Check in with your body and notice how it responds to the pleasant thoughts.  If possible, don’t go back to the place where you experienced the uncomfortable sensations just yet, and definitely do not go back to the story (yet).  Take the time to experience how your body responds to pleasant thoughts.

6.  REVISIT

Revisit the place in your body where you had experienced the discomfort and notice what has changed.  You may notice:

• It feels less intense:  follow the steps again from step 3 and allow more energy to express and release
• A new sensation of discomfort arises in a different place:  follow the steps again from step 3 and allow more energy to express and release
• It is gone:  you can leave it there or you can revisit the story and notice the shift – you should feel less or even  no charge around the story.  When this happens, you are now resourced and able to respond to the situation with greater clarity, compassion, and creativity.

7. REST and DRINK WATER

Moving heavy energy through our bodies is tiring.  Take time to rest if that is what your body needs.  Toxins are also released as we move energy in the body, so drinking extra water help to flush them out.  It will help you feel better, sooner.

When you make this process a habit, you will recognise the early signs of uncomfortable emotions, and work with them before they become unbearable.

Here are the steps again in summary:

1. Disconnect from the story
2. Direct your attention to your body, and notice how it responds
3. Create space for discomfort
4. Redirect your attention to something pleasing to provide temporary relief
5. Check in with your body – how does it respond to the relief
6. Revisit the place of discomfort
7. Rest and drink extra water

Remember, when we listen to the whispers of our bodies, we don’t have to hear them scream.

1.    Anxiety and stress are a biological response to threat in our environment

A threat in the environment can be real or perceived, and it can come from our internal environment (such as our thoughts, beliefs, internal dialog, etc.) or our external (physical) environment.  Our threat response network doesn’t know the difference between a stressful thought (eg. “OMG this is a disaster”) and a physical danger.  In both cases adrenaline and cortisol are released in the body to give us the energy, strength, speed, etc. to escape / survive.  It is meant to be short bursts of maybe 30 seconds.  When the ‘danger’ has passed, the body needs to discharge the residual survival energy and return to ‘rest and digest.’

2.     Residual survival energy created by this biological response must be discharged

When the survival energy is not discharged, it accumulates, and we become more unsettled and reactive.  Even when our external environment seems non-threatening, we may still feel jumpy.  Often the intensity of our responses don’t match the level of perceived threat – i.e. we ‘over-react.’  We feel the discomfort of anxiety, so we think anxious thoughts, and this perpetuates a ‘vicious cycle.’

We try mindfulness practices, meditation, and sometime go to therapy.  This often yields very little benefit despite our herculean efforts, as long as the residual survival energy continues to cycle in our bodies, unabated.

In his groundbreaking book, Waking the Tiger, Peter Levine explains that the lower brain has not received the ‘all clear’ signal from the body, and continues to release adrenalin and cortisol.

3.     Masking the discomfort of anxiety and stress does not make it go away

In another groundbreaking book, The Body Keeps the Score, author Bessel van der Kolk explains that the communication between body and brain is 80% afferent – meaning ‘from the bottom up’ – from the body to the brain.  Think super highway from body to brain.  And when we are trying to calm the anxious feelings in the body via dialog, we are working with a measly 20% of the communication pathway.  Think deer track from brain to body.

Medication can give us relief and can help stabilize us.  It stops the feelings of anxiety, stress and discomfort, but also stops the feelings of joy and aliveness.   They are all still there, and more are being created moment-to-moment, but we just can’t feel them.  They keep accumulating.  As they build and get more intense, often more medication is required.  If the medication is suddenly stopped, all the sensations rush forward to be felt.  Without the necessary skills and support, it can be overwhelming.  (If you are on this type of medication, always consult your doctor if you wish to reduce the dose).

4.     Prolonged anxiety and stress cause illness and disease

Imagine driving your car with the accelerator pedal to the floor over a bumpy dirt road, non-stop – eventually something breaks down.  This is what happens to our bodies.  Since prolonged anxiety and stress continue to signal danger, the body is constantly prepared for survival – usually fight or flight, and sometimes freeze.  It reasons that there is no need to digest food, or fight infections, so the threat response network shuts these systems down.  It also knows that the higher, thinking brain is too slow to respond to danger, so it gets flooded with adrenaline and cortisol.  The result is a foggy brain.  Over time, we can develop digestive or immune problems.  Our brains have also changed with chronic anxiety and stress and their functioning has been compromised also.

5.     The good news – our bodies know how to discharge residual survival energy if we let them

Did you ever feel shaky after a scary event?  That is your body doing its job – discharging the residual survival energy to restore equilibrium.  We can learn how to support our bodies to release this energy (also caused by anxiety and stress) and prevent the accumulation of it in the future.

It is best to do this initially with a person trained to keep the process of release contained and slow enough so that you don’t feel overwhelmed.  Imagine you are a soft drink bottle that has been shaken up.  Opening the lid completely will cause an eruption, but unscrewing the lid slightly to let the hiss out, and then closing it again gradually releases the energy or pressure in a slow and controlled way.  The fizzy drink inside settles a little, and after a few releases, the pressure has dissipated.    Cathartic release may feel good in the moment, but it traumatises and overwhelms an already over-loaded nervous system.

We are blessed with bodies that are amazingly adaptive and forgiving, and have an innate capacity to move towards well-being.  Our brains continue to grow and adapt, and when we stop the constant release of adrenaline and cortisol, and allow the survival energies to discharge naturally, our brains start to grow new dendrites and synapses.  New pathways are formed, and our brains can be the extraordinary organism that they are!

Think about the criteria you use you when you choose to trust someone?  Perhaps you want to believe them.  Maybe what they are saying makes sense.  Or perhaps you have no reason not to trust them.  Maybe your trust is in a third person – a friend who has referred someone to you.  Or maybe you trust an authority – a person, organization, or institution on the basis that they have certain expertise, or who claim to be acting on behalf of your best interest.  As long as we are making our trust choices based on these considerations, we might just as well roll the dice.

This is partly because we are trusting the wrong person.  We have learned that trust is “having a firm belief in the reliability, truth or ability of others.”  But since trust is a choice, and it is you that is making the choice, maybe the question should be – how much trust do you have in yourself when making the decision to trust others?

Trust is an inside job

While it is important to use our intellect to determine such things as whether what another person is saying makes sense, our intellectual thinking brain was never meant to function on its own, because it can get confused, be fooled, or even manipulated.  It needs to work together with our body intelligence.

When our nervous systems are regulated, or in balance*, our body intelligence always knows the truth, and cannot be deceived.  Our body’s job is to keep us alive, and our nervous systems are sensitive enough to detect danger – such as when another person is being incongruent (which is a mismatch of one’s outer expression with their inner thoughts and feelings).  Horses, for example become agitated and move away from us when we act or speak in a way that does not match what we are really thinking or feeling.   They are noticing our physiology and detecting perhaps a shift in our breathing or heartbeat, or a contraction in our solar plexus.  They are not using their thinking brain, but rather their bodies – via their nervous systems to sense danger.  Being mammals, we too have this ability to use our body intelligence to sense how safe we are around others. We might notice a tightness in the gut, or a feeling of queasiness, or like ‘hairs are standing on the back of our necks.’  In general if we have a sense of discomfort, tension, agitation, or feeling like moving away from someone, these are all signs not to be ignored.  Never say yes when your body says no.

We don’t have to worry about the motives and actions of others, and can live more fully and confidently in the world when we trust ourselves and respond according to our body-mind intelligence.  In this way we experience more peace and comfort in our bodies and make better choices.

* If we have unresolved trauma – where the body doesn’t know that danger has passed, or we learned not to trust the world when we were young because people we trusted hurt us, our bodies are often dysregulated.  They are on high alert and register everything as unsafe.  Balance needs to be restored so the nervous system can effectively perform one of its main functions – to discern safe from unsafe.

Last night I was watching a suspense movie with a typical good guy – bad guy plot.  When the good guy was in danger of being found and killed, I noticed my heart racing and I was barely breathing.  As soon as I realised this, I got up and walked away (moving helps the discharge of energy coursing through my body).  I made myself a hot drink (comforting), and read a few pages in a feel-good book (shifting my focus).  I disconnected from the story and did not stick around to see the ending.  My body and my nervous system are more important to me than getting caught up in a drama story.

Mirror neurons may cause us to experience what others are experiencing – just by observing

You’re walking through a park when out of nowhere, the man in front of you gets smacked by an errant Frisbee. Automatically, you recoil in sympathy. Or you’re watching a race, and you feel your own heart racing with excitement as the runners vie to cross the finish line first. Or you see a woman sniff some unfamiliar food and wrinkle her nose in disgust. Suddenly, your own stomach turns at the thought of the meal.

Many researchers believe that a discovery called mirror neurons might provide a neuroscience-based answer to those questions.  Basically a mirror neuron is a neuron that fires both when one acts and when one observes the same action performed by the other.  In other words, the neuron mirrors the behavior of the other, as though the observer was actually having the experience.

As relational beings we require mirror neurons

While the function of the mirror system is a subject of much speculation, many researchers suggest that mirror neurons may be important for understanding the actions of other people, and for learning new skills by imitation.  Some researchers also speculate that mirror systems may simulate observed actions, while others relate mirror neurons to language abilities.  Mirror neuron systems in the human brain may help us understand the actions and intentions of other people.  In addition, mirror neurons may be the basis of the human capacity for emotions such as empathy.

Negative affects of mirror neurons

I have not come across any study or suggestion that when our mirror neurons fire in response to observing a stressful / life threatening situation, our own autonomic nervous system is preparing us for survival.  Stress chemicals such as adrenalin and cortisol are released in the brain, suppressing cognitive, digestive, and immune functioning.  Energy is redirected to the heart and areas of the body preparing it to take action.  When that action is never executed – such as when we sit through a movie, the survival energy may not get discharged.

For people who are experiencing stress and anxiety, this adds to the load that their bodies are already coping with.

When we are attuned to our body’s moment-to-moment responses (to our external and internal environments), and we take appropriate action to settle our nervous systems, we can restore balance and ultimately improve our very health and well-being.