— takes place after the emotion has happened and you’re dealing with the repercussions.
Once an emotion sets in, it’s already changing the way you feel. Someone may reach for various outside substances, from doughnuts to drugs, to temporarily soften the pangs of sadness or cloud their shame, but once the brain’s reward system recovers, that person is back where they started and often worse off.
But distraction isn’t a true fix either, says MacCann, because it only works in the short-term. Getting to the root of your issues is the only way to keep them from coming up again. Luckily, learning to sit with an emotion can help and it doesn’t take as long as you might think.While there are longer mood states that last days or months, most emotions only last a few minutes before they pass, according to MacCann.
When you have too many emotions, she says, it can cause anxiety. But when you slow down and make space for your emotions, you can start to process them. And feeling them in the body is a good place to start — once anxiety goes down, you can identify the other emotions that are coming up in your body.
Grabbing your phone in a moment of weakness isn't necessarily a bad thing in the short-term. But if the same emotions keep coming up and causing you stress, learning to sit with them and work through them is the only way to move past trauma in the long-term, says Jacobs Hendel.