Taking a minute to breathe can prevent emotional explosion
Cynthia began her work day with a contentious discussion involving a contract dispute. It left her feeling sour.
From there she went right into a staff meeting where a number of her employees carped about minor operational issues as if they were monumental. At various junctures, she found herself holding her breath and gritting her teeth.
After a hurried trip to the restroom, she had to meet one-on-one with her assistant, who was falling down on the job and refusing to take responsibility for her miscues. That’s when she lost it.
“Something just snapped in me,” she confessed.
The something in question was what we call “emotional self-regulation.” Place a person under sufficient stress, and the capacity to remain in charge of one’s emotions and resulting behaviors plummets rapidly.
In her “come to Jesus” meeting with her assistant, she managed to begin with a degree of professional composure. However, when the employee began blaming others for her errors, Cynthia’s reptilian brain had endured all it could.
“I went off on her,” she continued. “One minute I was OK, and the next thing I’m acting like a petulant teenager.”
Given her reasonably high degree of emotional intelligence, Cynthia probably could have endured any one of her bad morning’s events in isolation. However, the cumulative impact was what proved her undoing.
We call this phenomenon “spillover.” And it is a primary mechanism for creating emotional hijacking (i.e., losing it). There is solid evidence that when we fail to address our stressful emotions and go from one difficult event to the next without resetting the mind in between, then all hell will usually break loose.
It falls to the rational mind to manage this kind of situation, and the easiest means for accomplishing that is through a “breathing break” method. It’s long been known that we can down-regulate stressful feelings, in particular anger and anxiety, when we breath in a very specific and deliberate manner.
Deep breathing occurs when the belly expands on inhalation and contracts on exhalation, and when one inhales through the nose while exhaling via slightly parted lips. For millennia, knowledgeable humans have used this type of respiration to remain in control of their emotional responses. And it works.
Research shows that a half-minute or more of this kind of breathing slows one’s heart rate, lowers cortisol (a primary stress hormone), reigns in the amygdala (fear center in brain) and calms an agitated mind. It is, then, a self-management tool and one that we can employ in most situations.
Had Cynthia paused between her tenacious encounters to reset her body and mind with breathing breaks, it’s probable her angry eruption would not have occurred. What’s more, had she done deep breathing while interacting with those who were making her morning so unpleasant, she likely would have suffered less emotional distress overall.
When it comes to keeping calm while under duress, “just breathe” is the antidote — simple, portable, immediate.
Otherwise, if you lose your composure in a crisis, you end up becoming one.
Philip Chard is a psychotherapist, author and trainer. Email Chard at outofmymind@philipchard.com or visit philipchard.com.