Emotions are in the body

Emotions are in the body.

An emotional spiral is more an automatic physical response to stress than a mental one. It’s an uncalibrated hormone and nervous system overreaction to perceived threats.

In a perfect world, infants would experience regular, intense, and repetitive stressors while being taught self-calming techniques. Exposure to hunger, hot and cold exposure, sunlight, swimming, strange textures, loud noises, bright colors, surprises, flexibility stretching, etc. will spark a cortisol spike, which, when followed by being soothed by the mother, teaches them to prevent emotional spirals.

The child thus trained will learn both mentally and physically how to “relax and let go” of the discomfort and release the built-up stress naturally. This training of the nervous and hormonal systems results in greater stress tolerance and emotional control in adulthood. He will be more emotionally robust.

This training should never stop. Even as adults, we can benefit from intentionally allowing discomfort, threat, risk, and even pain to spike our nervous system and cortosol levels and then mindfully bring ourselves back to a normal state.

Anyone who has lifted heavy knows that feeling after putting down a big weight and feeling tight. The faster we can restore normal muscle tension, breathing, and heart rate, the faster our recovery is and the more fit we are.

We can also practice 0–100-0 drills to train our emotional regulation. Go from calm to angry to calm as fast as we can. If you are doing it right, we will feel an adrenal spike, cortisol, and nervous arousal. Don’t do this more than five times a week, or you will overstress your system.

Once you learn how to control the physical manifestations of anxiety, stress, fear, and anger, you can also control the emotions behind them. That’s the order of training that works.

If you can breathe calmly and maintain a normal heart rate under intense stress, you have your emotions under control.