Capturing Emotions in Words Calms the Nervous System
Putting specific words to feelings helps dial down stress. But... they don't always need to be real words.
Whether you call it "name it to tame it" like child psychologist Dan Siegel or "emotional granularity" like neuroscientist Linda Barrett, effectively capturing how we feel calms our nervous system and activates our higher thinking.
UCLA's Matthew Lieberman calls naming emotions "affect labeling." His research found that when people label their emotions, the activity in their amygdala (the brain's emotion center) dies down, and the activity in the frontal lobe (the brain's thinking center) lights up. That makes it easier to respond rather than react in challenging moments.
Just to be clear about this, feeling stressed and saying, "I'm stressed" doesn't dial down the nervous system. Even yelling "I'M STRESSED!" doesn't. What impacts the nervous system and shifts the frontal lobe into gear is to get specific. "I'm stressed because I feel pressured. And I feel resentful about that." This is what Linda Barrett means by getting granular. You have zoom in on the emotion or feeling for the nervous system to chill out.
