Release Negative Emotions

Research shows that people who have lingering negative emotions that carry over from day to day, particularly because of stressful situations, are more likely to experience chronic health conditions up to 10 years later.

So, what does this mean?

It’s ok to get stressed. It's even ok to feel angry, sad, frustrated or negatively about the stressful situation. HOWEVER allowing negative emotions to fester inside you over time is like poison. We must release negativity emotion to prevent negative health consequences.

Expressive writing is a powerful tool to do just that.

Matthew Lieberman and his colleagues at UCLA conducted a study that showed that when people were deathly afraid of spiders and expressed those fears through expressive writing, they were physically able to move closer to the spider than those who merely looked at it.

Putting fears into language appeared to confer some protective benefit.

Lieberman broadly refers to this process as affect labelling—putting negative emotions into words seems to blunt their effect on us.

To understand why, we need to look inside the brain to see what’s happening. The right prefrontal cortex, involved in effortful control over our emotional states, which “turns on,” when we write. At the same time, the amygdala, the part of the brain that are related to strong negative emotions is turned off.

Putting our deeply emotional experiences into language and words facilitates our brain’s capacity to help us manage our emotional states.

So how can you put this into practice?

At the end of the day if something is 'weighing you down' or playing on your mind, spend 15-20 minutes writing about it. Don't worry about grammar, just write freely about whatever is on your mind. As yourself, why is this bothering me so much. Let all your frustrations come out. The goal of the task is to unburden yourself from negative though and gain insights into your own triggers and potential solutions you can take charge of.

Finally, spend the last 5 minutes taking total responsibility. Remember, responsibility doesn’t mean fault. Imagine you are telling this story from a place of total responsibility meaning you and only you are responsible for changing this outcome. It’s the most empowering feeling in the world to feel in control of your own fate, rather than at the mercy of other people or things.

Close the book on it and move on with a freed mind.