The art of calming down

For some, it may have been that second month of quarantine while we were stress-washing a freshly delivered jar of peanut butter.

We all have those moments when we come unglued. We’ve probably had a few more of those than usual this past year. This time period has tested us in entirely new ways, and more likely than not, we can all recount a recent example of flipping our lid.

For some, it may have been that second month of quarantine while we were stress-washing a freshly delivered jar of peanut butter. For others, it may have followed a critical comment from our partner or a stubborn fit from our kids. The point is, we all get activated, and we can’t necessarily control the flood of emotion that overcomes us. What we can control is our response to it.

Calming down is an exercise in patience and self-compassion. It is a skill we can hone by understanding what’s going on in our brains when we feel overwhelmed and by taking action to help ourselves get our cerebral cortex and the higher functions of our brain back online. When a person flips their lid, their emotions are firing out of control; they may even feel as if they’re in a state of fight, flight, or freeze. They’ve lost connection to their prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain that typically, in essence, helps them stay attuned, flexible, balanced, and regulated emotionally. When triggered in moments of stress, the emotional centre of the brain, the limbic system, perceives a threat and overrides the prefrontal cortex. When this occurs, people lose the balance and regulation that helps them stay calm, flexible, and attuned.

Think of that split second when you slammed the door on your partner, snapped at your kid, burnt out in a meeting, or panicked at a parade of thoughts marching into your head as you tried to fall asleep. These can all be examples of “flipped lid” moments. Making ourselves aware of what’s going on in our brains can help us hit the brakes and calm down, rather than reacting in ways that hurt us or we later regret.

The best thing to do in these heightened moments of stress is to pause and do something rhythmic and predictable like going for a walk or breathing. When we breathe in, we are going to breathe out. When we put one foot down, we pick up the other.

The breathing practice of 4-7-8 is one very simple exercise we can try. The idea is to breathe in through our nose for four seconds, hold the breath for seven seconds, and breath out through our mouths for eight seconds. Doing this five times in a row helps calm the nervous system.

When we get activated by intense emotions in a given moment, our reactions are sometimes out of sync with what’s actually going on in the present. We react in a big way, but later, when those prefrontal cortex functions are back in place, we regret how we reacted and often hold a more balanced perspective. We may have insight into how we took our partner’s words out of context in an argument. We may realise that our kid was feeling overwhelmed when they acted unreasonably, and our response to them arose from our own feelings of inadequacy or frustration. We may start to see how a persistent feeling of being behind or “not good enough” at work finally got to us. And we may definitely realise how our overactive minds can transform into our biggest critics the minute we have time to sit and think.

In truth, many of our heightened emotional reactions are triggered or intensified by an old feeling or implicit memory and not simply the events we’re facing in the moment. A specific word our partner uses to describe us can tap into an old feeling of insecurity and set off an ocean of self-critism. A certain tone in our child’s whine can trigger memories of painful moments in our own childhood or a feeling we struggle to handle ourselves.