Call
Exhale. If you recognize that you’re triggered or stressed, you need to slow yourself down so you don’t act out of reactivity. When you’re stressed, your fight or flight mode puts your amygdala in charge of your actions, which means you’re prone to less thoughtful self-control and more impulsive reactions to emotions. Exhaling activates your parasympathetic nervous system. This moves you from fight or flight to rest and digest mode, when your prefrontal cortex gets to run the show again. So taking a few breaths with a slightly longer exhale than inhale will help you regain access to the higher thinking that your prefrontal cortex is so good at. This “higher thinking” is where you tap into what really matters to you, what’s actually important in the moment, what your long-term intentions are, etc. You’ll literally give yourself access to thinking you can’t execute when you’re in stress! A big mistake people make when thinking about self-control is that they expect to be able to “talk themselves into good/smart behavior” (like “they should do better because they know better”). But when you’re in stress, that’s simply not how your brain is operating. If your amygdala is in charge, you can’t think of things like higher goals and deeper intentions. So make it easier on yourself by making the first step to self-control breathing!