Strategies to Cool Your Hot Emotions

Strategies to Cool Your Hot Emotions: Using Mind and Body

First, let me note that one of the best sets of mind-body approaches to cooling down hot emotional reactions can be found in the various emotion regulation skills and practices in Dialectical Behavior Therapy (created by Marsha M. Lineman, a practicing Buddhist).  These skills may be better suited for informed therapist than the lay public; however, the skills have been proven to be effective so all parties may benefit from practicing them. A less complex list includes many of the suggestions noted below.

1. Drink lots of cold, pure water.
2. Splash very cold water on your wrists and face (dive response).
3. Move your body – sit if standing, and stand if sitting; walk if still, and be still if moving. Moving your body changes your internal physiology thus perhaps changing your emotional reactivity.
4. Practice slow, deep abdominal breathing to calm down.
5. Cry if it helps, especially if you are about to activate an aggressive action urge.
6. Since emotional reactions happen quickly, learn how to use interoception as a way to become aware of inner body sensations that lead to related emotional behaviors.
7. Practice befriending your emotional reactions by being curious about them and caring for them gently as if a newborn baby.
8. Practice compassion and self-compassion when interpersonal conflicts lead you to emotional dysregulation.
9. Do your best to STOP, pause for a moment to see if that helps.
10. Practice RAIN skills- recognize, analyze, investigate, and realize it is not you just emotions. Thoughts and emotions may/may not be about reality. Since these steps are highly cognitive, they may bring control back into your executive brain and away from your limbic system.
11. Practice being your own best friend. What would you suggest your best friend should do in such a situation. Again, thinking may restore frontal executive brain control.
12. Know your limbic brain system, which overreacts almost all of the time. The best way to do this is to become more mindful about your emotional reactions. Study them!
13. Do more meditation, yoga, and exercise! If you practice 20 minutes or more a day, you may not need the other skills above.

For more details refer to Lineman, M. M. (1993). Cognitive-Behavioral Treatment of Borderline Personality Disorder. New York: Guilford Press.  See also Nelson, K. October News. Retrieved 10-27-16.  Smiechowski, J. A Quick Way to Cool Heated Emotions. Easy Health Options. Retrieved 10-26-16.

By Anthony R. Quintiliani, PhD., LADC

From the Eleanor R. Liebman Center for Secular Meditation in Monkton, Vermont

Author of Mindful Happiness  

New Edition of Mindful Happiness in Production…Coming soon!