The next time painful or stressful feelings threaten
to overwhelm you, here is what you do: get something to write with. Get
something to write on. Write down a word that describes the emotion you’re
experiencing. It doesn’t have to be comprehensive. Just a word or two will do.
Affect labeling—the act of naming one’s emotional state—helps to
reduce the immediate impact of negative feelings and kickstart the process of
climbing back down from stress. The clarifying effect of putting feelings into
words was observed at least as far back
as the 17thcentury, when the philosopher Baruch Spinoza wrote:
“An emotion, which is a passion, ceases to be
a passion, as soon as we form a clear and distinct idea thereof.”
It’s also the basis of modern psychoanalysis.
Why it works has taken a
lot longer to figure out. There are clues in a small 2007 study of 30
subjects at the University of California, Los Angeles.
Led by psychology professor Matthew Lieberman, the researchers
conducted a series of brain-imaging experiments in which participants were
shown frightening faces and asked to choose a word
that described the emotion on display. Labeling the fear-inducing object
appeared to reduce activity in the amygdala, the part of the brain in which the
fight or flight reflex originates, and increased activity in the right
ventrolateral prefrontal cortex, which is associated with vigilance and
symbolic processing. The brain’s perception of the images shifted from objects
of fear to subjects of scrutiny.
Experientially, the fact that there is a name for what you’re
going through means that other people have experienced it as well, which makes
an overwhelming emotion feel less isolating. Affect labeling is a compressed
version of the three-step process of self-compassion identified by the
psychologist Kristin Neff at the University of Texas at Austin:
1. Admit
that a situation is painful or uncomfortable
2. Recognize
that pain and discomfort are universal elements of the human experience
3. Do
something healthy to alleviate the discomfort like get outside, stretch, or
call a friend
As the executive coach Katia Verresen has said, “There are
no new stressful thoughts.” Recognizing that can be a first step toward
quieting such thoughts down.
article from Quartz
