Heart attack, cancer, restructure, divorce, mental health – one or more of those words would likely take you back to a memory, which might cause your mood to change.
Our brain is wired to retain negative events across our lifetime to keep us alert so that we are prepared should the same situation occur again. These are often referred to as triggers.
You read a word, the amygdala tagged it with an emotion, and then you went to the hippocampus where memories are stored, to think of the person or people associated with that word, meaning you did not connect with the prefrontal cortex where logic sits.
If you did connect with the PFC you would have thought – It's just a word I'm reading, so there is no real danger – however, cortisol from the adrenal glands was released to bring full attention because of the reminder of that risk.
Should you ever be in a situation where you get triggered, you have two options to reduce the effect. The first is to take a big, deep breath and sigh.
When we are triggered, we short breathe, our alveoli collapse, and we do not get sufficient oxygen into our brain for it to work correctly. When we sigh all the alveoli collapse then fully reinflate to purge the brain of cortisol.
When in front of a person, sighing is not an option - it's likely to have the opposite effect of what you want!
The second option is to breathe out fully as slowly as you can. Try it now, breathe out very slowly. Do you feel calmer?
When we breathe in our heart rate increases, when we breathe out our heart rate decreases.
The faster we breathe, the faster our heart beats, the faster our brain thinks. Breathing out first then breathing in and out slowly will control our rate of thoughts and reduce our negative reactions.
It's taken me some practice, and that practice is ongoing. The more we practice, the better we become - just like anything else.
Breathing is the only thing we can do to reduce our thoughts in the immediate situation. Thinking comes after exhaling.
If I can do it, you can too. Just breathe out!
Let's talk!
Just Breathe!