“Yeah, good mate”
Really?
Cos, if you told me how you really feel, some pretty incredible things would happen.
When you ‘label’ your emotions, the activity in your amygdala will diminish while the activity in your prefrontal cortex will increase.
AKA: the panic part of your brain goes quiet, and the thinking part comes alive.
AKA: you quickly feel much more stable.
“How does that work?”
This is a process called ‘affect labeling’. In very simple terms, it just means describing how you’re really feeling to reduce internal stress.
Here’s the science:
Matthew Lieberman, UCLA associate professor of psychology and founder of social cognitive neuroscience, found that simply attaching a word to a feeling like “angry,” “scared,” “overwhelmed” produces a measurable decrease in amygdala activity.
Also:
An fMRI study confirmed that affect labelling (putting feelings into words) diminished the response of the amygdala and other limbic regions to negative emotional experiences, while simultaneously increasing activity in the prefrontal cortex, the brain’s rational centre. (Lieberman, Psychological Science, 2007)
Here in Australia, particularly for guys (blokes), the tendency is to suppress emotions, push through, play our cards close to our chests.
And I don’t think Australians are alone.
If you do this too, it’s not helpful.
It keeps cortisol levels high and the stress alarm running in the background for longer.
So when you’re feeling stressful emotions, don’t keep them a secret. They’ll hang around for longer.
Skeptical?
Does it sound too simple to be real?
OK. Well, here’s something interesting …
Affect labeling works even if you don’t believe it does.
An article in PubMed shows that a group of people who were told that naming their feelings would make things worse still showed reduced amygdala activity when they did it!
So, the conclusion is, if you want to rapidly decrease the impact of negative, stressful emotions, label them. Call them out and watch your stress plummet.
Interesting, hey?
Who knew that something so simple could make such a difference?
I write these messages s that people will read them and say “Ya know what? I might try that”
If you think this has merit (it does), tell a friend (the best way to learn is to teach), and ask them to do it, too. Together, you’ll hold each other to account and share the outcomes your experience. That’s a powerful way to implement new things.
LearnWell — Post 8 of 11