Issue #1 · Monday morning · 5-minute read

Name it to tame it

Good morning. Welcome to the very first Mental Health Morning. Every Monday you will get one idea, one practice and one good word, in about five minutes. This week: why simply putting a feeling into words can take the edge off it.

The idea: words calm the alarm

When something upsets us, the brain's threat system fires fast. A well-known UCLA brain-imaging study found that when people looked at angry or frightened faces and chose a word for the emotion (rather than just matching the faces), activity in the amygdala, part of that alarm system, went down. Researchers call this affect labeling.

It shows up outside the lab too. In a study of people afraid of spiders, those who described their feelings out loud while near a spider ("I'm anxious and scared it will jump") showed less physical arousal than people who tried to talk themselves out of the fear.

The more precisely you can name a feeling, the better. Psychologists call this emotional granularity: "disappointed and a bit embarrassed" gives you more to work with than "bad".

The practice: the 60-second feelings check-in

1. Pause. Put both feet on the floor and take one slow breath, longer on the out-breath.
2. Notice your body. Where is the feeling? Tight chest, hot face, heavy shoulders?
3. Name it, specifically. Finish the sentence: "Right now I feel ___ because ___." Try for two words, not one.
4. Choose one next step. "Because I feel rushed and worried, I'll write the three things I must do today."

Try it once a day this week, maybe with your morning coffee. You are not trying to make the feeling disappear, only to see it clearly.

The good word

“Care in the heart of a man boweth it down; but a good word maketh it glad.”Proverbs (Mishlei) 12:25

Worry pulls us down, and words lift us up. That includes the words we say to ourselves. Naming a feeling kindly ("of course I'm nervous, this matters to me") is a good word too.

Clinician's corner

A three-word session opener. Instead of "How was your week?", try: "Give me three feeling words for this week." It builds granularity, gives you a quick read, and works with teens who answer everything with "fine". Follow up with: "Which of the three was the loudest?"

Want this as a card your clients can hold? Our Therapy Methods Ours skills card decks and session planners are written in this same warm, plain language.

For families

Children feel big feelings long before they have words for them. Reading together is one of the easiest ways to build that vocabulary. Pause on a picture and ask, "What do you think she feels? Have you ever felt like that?"

That is why we made Feelings World Ours, a series of picture books (Calm, Kindness, Worry, Joy, Courage and more), each one about a single feeling.

Find support

One small thing

Before you close this email: what is one word for how you feel right now? That's it. You just practiced.

See you next Monday,
The Mental Health Morning team

Sources

• Lieberman, M. D., et al. (2007). Putting feelings into words: Affect labeling disrupts amygdala activity in response to affective stimuli. Psychological Science, 18(5), 421–428. doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9280.2007.01916.x
• Kircanski, K., Lieberman, M. D., & Craske, M. G. (2012). Feelings into words: Contributions of language to exposure therapy. Psychological Science, 23(10), 1086–1091. doi.org/10.1177/0956797612443830
• Torre, J. B., & Lieberman, M. D. (2018). Putting feelings into words: Affect labeling as implicit emotion regulation. Emotion Review, 10(2), 116–124. doi.org/10.1177/1754073917742706
• Kashdan, T. B., Barrett, L. F., & McKnight, P. E. (2015). Unpacking emotion differentiation. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 24(1), 10–16. doi.org/10.1177/0963721414550708
• Proverbs 12:25, JPS 1917 translation (public domain).

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