A Tip for Dealing with Big Emotions - Consciously Creating with the 90 Second Rule

There are times for all of us when we become overwhelmed with emotion.  Something happens and suddenly we are overcome by anger, sadness, grief, fear, hurt or whatever emotion the incident unleashed.  

In counseling this is referred to as being "triggered".  It refers to something in a person's environment that causes them to react in a highly emotionalized way.  When triggered, the person is highly emotionalized because they are responding to a trauma from the past (that the present event has "triggered"). Typically this results in the emotional reaction seeming greater than the present event may warrant, and many times the person having the emotional reaction is not conscious of what is being triggered, or why they are having such an intense reaction.   It can take a lot of personal work to understand these reactions and learn to prevent them.

Physically, when the body finds itself in a "threatening" situation, it releases cortisol.  The sympathetic nervous system is triggered, whether the situation be real danger or an emotional memory, and it releases stress hormones to prepare us to deal with the threat.  The stress hormones take 90 SECONDS to move through our system.  Thoughts can trigger the release of stress hormones.  (You can watch the entire TED Talk by Jill Bolte Taylor, the brain researcher that studied her own stroke as it happened and wrote the book My Stroke of Insight, that explains more about the brain and the "90 Second Rule", here.)

So how can the 90 Second Rule help you?  When you find yourself triggered and highly emotionalized, stop and breathe and know that the body's chemical reaction takes a minute and a half to pass.  After that, you get to choose your experience.  Since thoughts can trigger this physical reaction, you can stay in the thinking that triggers it, or you can choose to change your thoughts.  You can choose to focus on the ideal outcome.  You can choose to visualize what you would like to experience.  You can choose to consciously create happy, joyful, loving, trusting, positive, optimistic, confident and successful.  You can consciously create your life.