Calming down is an important part of mood regulation. Heightened mood is sometimes triggered by circumstances, in which case calming down will give long term relief. However, generally mood is heightened due to biological reasons, which require addressing. In these cases, calming down is temporary, which gives you the space to do something about that biological aspect.
We discuss mood in more detail in our Moods and Feelings page.
The TL:DR for that is: feelings are our response to a thing. When accurate, it is informative, when wrong it can lead us to making poor choices. Feelings can be wrong in either type or strength. If the strength is too strong, it shuts down our cognitive ability, to make wise choices based on the circumstances. Feelings can be wrong due to nurture (prior history) or nature (a problem with biology). Frequent mood problems are generally due to adversarial surroundings (relationship violence, financial distress etc) or more commonly biological problems (neurology, heart, breathing or pain).
Calming Exercises help you get to a point of temporary calm, where you can make a wise choice to either effect your circumstances (address the cause, escape the cause, manage the cause), or take care of your biology (eat, take meds, sleep, exercise etc).
The important thing I am trying to convey to you is: Calming exercises are a part of the process, not the entire process, and should be assumed to be an important temporary fix. If your calming exercise either isn’t working, or doesn’t work for long, then your long term solutions require medical intervention.
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Breathing Exercise
1) take a medium speed deep breath in via your mouth, then breath out firmly and slowly through pursed lips, almost as if you were whistling.
– Breathe out along your extended arm and see how far down your arm you can feel the wind you generate.
– See how long you can go before you need to take a breath in again.
– Say to yourself, in your head, “This is a false alarm; There is no clear and present danger and no one is clearly hurt or in harm’s way; There is no action that needs to be taken” while you are doing the exhalation.
This breath method is the one that your cerebellum responds to most for decreasing the rate or your heart and feeling of anxiety.
Drink Water
2) Take a mouthful of liquid (sugar or non-sugar, but avoid alcohol). Try to swallow it in three gulps instead of one.
These can give you the space to do a better fix, like get your medication, eat some food, or make a wise decision.
Distraction
After we have decreased the fight/flight trigger, we want to avoid re-triggering the fight/flight reflex. To do this, avoid the action or thought that triggered you.
Some good and easy distractions:
- Play a phone game
- Watch a comedy
- Look up kitten pictures in an image search
- Watch someone do something in the distance
- Talk to a friend about a neutral but interesting topic – ask them what their latest interest is
Take Medication
The above steps often help us step back from a triggering situation and avoid a fight / flight action. However, if the fundamental cause is more biological than environmental, then we need to take some appropriate medication. If you have forgotten your medication then take it, or if you have taken your regular medication and you have some PRN medication prescribed for this situation, then take that.
Biological causes need biological solutions.
In the case of ongoing conditions, the above three steps, Breathing Exercise, Drink Water, and Distraction only serve to give you some time to implement your biological solution.