Today I got caught in a loop of negative emotions that I just couldn’t escape. All I could do was stare at my phone as a wave of anxiety spread like dilute acid in my stomach.
This was unexpected. In the last year I’ve made tremendous progress in my mental health due to a sustained meditation practice, changes in mindset and flourishing relationships. All in all, I’m more confident that I know how to cultivate a happy and healthy mind now than I’ve ever been.
And still, all of a sudden today, I was that guy again: tumbling in loops in my head; suffering without cause or escape.
Chances are, you’ve been there.
Like me, you might know of an array of tools that can help you build a healthy mind in the long term. Meditation, journaling, therapy, exercise, diet and social connection are among several practices with proven positive effects on well-being. Maybe some have even worked for you in the past.
But, in the crucial instant when we get caught up in a familiar loop of despair or anxiety, these tools of long-term transformation desert us.
How are you supposed to help yourself the moment you’re caught in a loop of negative thinking if you cannot even get out of bed?
Here’s what I do and why it works:
Investigate Your Discomfort with Child-like Curiosity
Caught in that loop of anxiety today, I surfed my phone absently for minutes. Finally, when I was able to, I closed my eyes. Then, I tried to find out exactly how the anxiety felt in my body.
I’ve done this before. Sometimes, anxiety feels like a numb ache (like a headache) in my stomach. Fear can feel like a sharp stabbing in my lower abdomen. Each investigation is unique, though.
Within moments of doing this exercise — something shifted for me. The anxiety didn’t disappear, but it lost its force on me. And having taken this moment to pause, I was in a position to do something else. My mind had come out of the clouds.
So, I got out of bed, and went for a walk. After the walk, I meditated. By then my day had transformed. Here’s how to do the exercise:
The Mindfulness Exercise: Examine Your Suffering Physically
Pay attention to how the emotion feels in your body. What is the shape of the pain, and which parts of your body does it cover? What kind of physical discomfort is it most like? If this was a physical discomfort, what could have caused it? Do this for a minute or two. Try not to dwell on feelings or thoughts about the emotion. Examine the emotion as it is, in this instant, with curiosity — as if you were trying to recognize an object blindfolded. Pay attention to the physical attributes of the emotion rather than thoughts about the emotion.
Remember: don’t get spooked by the initial rush of discomfort that might arise when you try this. Simply take deep breaths and focus on the physical discomfort. To keep your mind on task, you might want to silently repeat “What does this feel like?”
If you’re feeling the slightest mental unease at this moment, you should try it right now. It’ll just take a minute.
If you want to try this later, commit to the idea right now by setting a calendar reminder to do this at a specific time.
The exercise may not magically make your negative emotions disappear, but it reduces their force. Most importantly, it allows you to choose your next action carefully and calmly. With practice, it can help your negative emotions dissolve altogether within moments.
But don’t take my word for it. The technique works because of the three truths about why we suffer:
1. Your Experiences aren’t Fueling Your Discomfort, Your Thinking About Them is
Have you ever watched a three-year-old react to the world?
She might burst into a rage of tears on seeing her mother attend to her sibling before her. An instant later, her rage turns into delight with vanilla ice-cream. God forbid that the ice-cream falls on the ground. If it does, the deepest sorrow will overtake her instantly.
Obviously, children aren’t practiced at managing emotions. Yet, they never suffer from the prolonged cycles of pain that adults go through in their head. Children experience their emotions deeply, but do so only in the instant that they arise. Then, they move on.
Obviously, children aren’t practiced at managing emotions. Yet, they never suffer from the prolonged cycles of pain that adults go through in their head.
The truth is that our negative emotions themselves do not cause us the prolonged suffering that we feel when stuck in our heads. What fuels our suffering is our own mind, our constantly repeating the memory of this emotion and the incidents that incited them in our head.
Perhaps a friend hurt or betrayed you several years ago. Why are you suffering about it today, for the thousandth time? Your friend might have betrayed you once all those years ago, but you have betrayed yourself in your mind countless times by replaying this memory in your head.
Perhaps you will lose your job next year. It could be terrifying if you do. And you might want to prepare for it. But what about the fear you feel every day thinking about this hypothetical incident? You have not lost your job yet, so why do you suffer as if today was the day you lost your job?
It should be a relief to learn this truth. We do not suffer nearly as much at the hands of reality as we do of our own accord, in our minds. And, unlike the causes of our suffering in reality, our mind is something that we can control.
Usually, improving our minds takes time. But even in the instant, even if you can’t do anything else, you can take yourself out of the loop of overthinking and suffering by simply paying attention to what the emotion bothering you feels like.
Children do not dwell on their emotions because they are present in the world and curious about it. You cannot hold on to anger for too long if you’re brought to laughter by a game of peekaboo or enthralled by a butterfly on the sidewalk.
Similarly, by trying to precisely identify the physical aspect of your suffering you tap into your natural curiosity (which is the perfect antidote to self-obsession). When you pay attention to the physical, you stop paying attention to the causes of your suffering in your mind.
By stepping off the treadmill of your negative thoughts, you stop refueling your suffering in every moment. And without its fuel, the suffering is extinguished within moments. So, by simply paying attention to suffering and not its causes, you make it disappear.
2. You Are Not Your Emotions
The second reason this works is that negative emotions take control of us when we forget they are just one part of our experience.
When we’re angry, we forget that our anger is a passing boat in the ocean of our larger experience. We do not realize that we are experiencing anger like we experience the cold, or a spicy pasta. Instead, we become anger, and completely forget ourselves.
Sometimes, we are so fixated on the anger that we do not even realize we are angry.
By paying attention to the emotion, and the physical space it occupies in your body, you can reorient yourself. You realize that your negative emotion is one part of your experience, it occupies a finite space, and it’s a finite feeling.
Realizing this helps you to stop drowning in the feeling.
3. Your Emotions are not as Painful as they Seem
Finally, paying attention to the discomfort of your emotions works because it helps you realize that your emotions aren’t as painful as they seemed. They’re not as permanent or overwhelming or large as we thought.
This true nature of suffering is what allows us to pay attention to our pain and come off the better for it. This also makes the technique actionable even when you’re suffering most, because instead of shifting your attention from what’s bothering you, it asks you to pay attention to it closely. And anyone is capable of this.
The three truths of suffering reveal why this simple, child-like practice can help us come to grips with our most dysfunctional emotions. This is why the technique is a core Buddhist practice.
And, while it doesn’t replace the need for long-term practices that build a healthy mind, it opens the door for action in the moment of suffering itself. In fact, by transforming your mindset to suffering over time, this practice is a long-term tool in its own right.
As you get better at it, you will learn that your negative emotions can dissolve altogether when you pay attention to them.
And that will be tremendous progress. I’m genuinely excited for you to get there.
And — like all good things — it will start with a minute well spent.