Your Emotion Brain - The Triple-R Strategy

You possess the common sense to evaluate the stories you tell yourself in a clear, logical way. However, what’s the first thing to vanish when you get overly upset? That’s right, your common sense. The Catch-22 is that it’s hard to reevaluate a toxic story when it's upsetting you and, conversely, it's tough not to be upset when you're telling yourself a toxic story!

Any time you’re feeling (in any way) threatened, you need a simple, step-by-step system that—at a time when everything else is trying to drown out your reason—focuses you on couple of important things. Here’s a brief outline of the very simple, mega-effective Perspective Power^TM approach to diluting toxic emotions.

Critical Point: Overly emotional states are conditions of psychological and physical over arousal…which isn’t as much fun as it sounds! And so, to manage toxic emotions you need a combined psychological and physical approach. The three simple and mega-effective steps are…

Relaxation – Retell – Redirect

Implementing these three, simple steps will either prevent unhelpful emotional reactions in the first place or get rid of them quickly and easily when they do occur.

Relax

The objective of this step is to reduce the “twitchiness” of your Emotion Brain. (The emotional pathways in our brain can be rerouted and, over time, the sensitivity of our emotional triggers reset.) This step will enable you to manage the (heart-pounding, muscle tensing, etc) physical component of an overly emotional state so you have thinking space to dispute the toxic lies you're making up and replace them with more realistic points of view.

Key Point: Regardless of how busy you are, it’s vital you find a ten minute window in your hectic schedule for directed relaxation…Ideally at the same time every day. (Consistency is important with relaxation exercises.)

Here’s one example of a simple relaxation exercise…

Sit comfortably in your chair, rest your hands in your lap and gently push your head skyward. (As if a puppet string, attached to the crown of your head, is being gently pulled taut to keep your back straight.)

Then close your eyes and begin to observe your breathing. Begin breathing more deeply and slowly and, every time you exhale, allow body and mind to relax deeper and deeper. Here’s exactly what I mean…

Relax Your Body…

Your mind takes clues as to your emotional state from your body, that’s why it’s important to relax your body. Unclench your hands, and, every time you exhale, allow the tension in your face, neck and shoulders to flow down your arms and out your fingertips. Feel the backs of your legs relax into the chair and your feet and toes relax against the floor.

Relax Your Mind…

The objectives of this set of Perspective Power^TM strategies are observation without engagement, and a gradual reconfiguring of your Emotion Brain. This example is called “Observe, Label and Release”.

The objective of this strategy is to achieve the state of mind of an uninvolved, non-judgmental observer. During your relaxation exercise, thoughts will pass through your mind. Don’t try to resist them. Instead, observe, label and then release your Thought Bubbles so they can float away, blown skyward by each and every exhalation.

A powerful way to label thoughts is ‘past,’ ‘present’ or ‘future’. For example, you might notice the thought: “I’m too busy to be doing relaxation exercises right now.” That’s a reflection about the present. So, rather than engaging the thought and getting caught up in its implications (I’m going to need to reschedule, etc) label it ‘present’ and release the Thought Bubble.

All thoughts can be labeled either ‘past,’ ‘present’ or ‘future’. There’s something almost magical about this type of meta-thinking (thinking about your own thinking). Labeling your thoughts give you a way of enclosing them in a Thought Bubble so you can blow them away.

In a similar way, you can observe and label your emotions: That's interesting, I’m feeling [insert relevant emotion here]. Emotions are labeled with one word: happy, sad, scared, angry, guilty, disgusted and so on. (Emotion labels that trail on for a sentence are actually thoughts about emotional states.) Then, as you unclench your body, imagine the emotion simply floating away with each and every exhalation.

Start directed relaxation, ten minutes a day. The results from this minuscule time commitment will amaze you. And, not only will you start to feel great, the next time…

Your Blood Begins To Boil…

The next time your blood begins to boil, you’ll be more able to manage the biology of the moment. You’ll be able to observe a psychologically threatening event rather than overreacting to it (as from the perspective of an uninvolved, non-judgmental bystander).

For example, next time you’re feeling angry, simply relax mind and body in exactly the manner you’ve practiced under emotionally-neutral conditions…although you might not want to close your eyes! Right away note your level of physical arousal. Then, if necessary, (in exactly the same way as your relaxation exercise) allow the tension in your face, neck and shoulders to flow down your arms and out your fingertips. Specifically, drop your shoulders, relax your jaw and unclench your fists.

Then (in exactly the same way as your relaxation exercise) observe, label and release your thoughts and feelings.

Crucial Point: Don’t ever trust your feelings to give you a handle on reality. They are a product of your perspective, not reality.

The goal of the “Relax” step is to manage the biology of your emotional overreaction and give your Think Brain a chance to “Retell” the toxic story that’s upsetting you (Let’s learn how to harness the power of your Think Brain for good)…

Retell

Here’s the idea behind this step: When you feel an emotional storm brewing, you need to distinguish fact from fiction (objective truth from the toxic stuff you’re making up) and “Retell” the story that’s overly-upsetting you. This is exquisitely simple when you can recognize the three types of toxic story you tell yourself and apply the Perspective Power^TM “Retell” strategies. For example, “What If” stories. (To learn more about the “What If” stories you tell yourself, click here: …..)

When you start asking a string of “What If” questions and (in your mind) rapidly spiraling towards catastrophe, the “Bedwell’s Bookends” strategy will set you free. Stop asking yourself “What If” questions (making stuff up) and ask these questions instead:

What’s the most awful (100% bad) thing that could happen right now?
What’s the most awesome (100% good) thing that could happen right now?

This establishes the “bookends,” the most awful and awesome outcomes to your predicament. Somewhere between these two ultra-extremes is the most probable outcome. So, having created bookends, you can figure out what’s most likely to happen. Be ruthlessly realistic, think cold hard probabilities and percentages. I don’t mean reach for the calculator but, rather, stop freaking yourself out over one-in-a-million outcomes. See past the dirty mental trick your Emotion Brain is pulling on you.

When you “Retell” your toxic stories you trade out buzzing mental static, overly emotional states and self-defeating behaviors for clarity, healthy legitimate feelings and effective action.

Finally, step 3…

Redirect

Remember, an overly-emotional state results from a combination of psychological and physical over arousal. When your Emotion Brain screams, your blood stream is deluged with stress hormones. “Relaxing” your body and “Retelling” your toxic story doesn’t immediately make these stress hormones disappear. It can take several hours to flush them out of your system.

And so, even after “Relaxing and Retelling,” you’ll still be twitching with energy and overwhelmed with the urge to act. It’s vital you “Redirect” this surge of excess (muscle-shaking, heart-pounding) energy in a productive direction. Towards effectively managing the situation that left you feeling threatened in the first place.

And so, when you’re overly-upset “Relax,” “Retell” and then totally redirect 100% of your frustration towards managing your problem. Reframe the situation as a problem to be solved (not just a stupid annoyance that gets you upset).

Harness your valuable emotional energy and become totally solution orientated. Make it all about solving the problem. “Okay, here’s the situation. How best can we deal with it? Clearly express what your needs are to the person who upset you (or his supervisor) and discuss options for getting them met. Aim to solve the problem in an appropriately assertive fashion, without being overly demanding or disrespectful of other people.

Finally…

By flexing your Perspective Power^TM with the R-R-R strategies (Relax-Retell-Redirect) when you’re feeling psychologically threatened, you’ll be able to adopt a bystander state, disengage from your toxic stories and harness your physical over-arousal in the service of solving your problem.