How to Process Emotions Without Drowning in Them

Last Tuesday, I got an email that made my chest tight before I'd finished the first sentence.

Nothing catastrophic — just someone criticizing something I'd put significant effort into. The kind of message that lands in your inbox like a small grenade. I could feel my jaw clenching, my shoulders rising toward my ears, that familiar heat spreading through my chest.

And here's the thing: after thirty years of meditation practice, I still had all of those reactions. Every single one.

The difference is what happened next.

Twenty years ago, I would have done one of two things: either white-knuckled my way through suppressing it ("This doesn't bother me, I'm evolved, I'm fine") or dove headfirst into the story ("They're wrong, they don't understand, I need to respond right now and explain why they're wrong").

Both approaches would have ruined my afternoon. Both would have left me either falsely calm on the surface while churning underneath, or caught in an emotional spin cycle that burned hours of my day.

Instead, I did something I've learned to do through years of getting it wrong first. It took about ninety seconds. And then I got on with my day.

This article is about those ninety seconds.

The Two Mistakes Almost Everyone Makes

When a strong emotion hits, most people default to one of two responses. Both feel instinctive. Both make things worse.

Mistake One: Suppression

This is the "don't feel this" approach. You notice anger rising and immediately try to push it down. You tell yourself you shouldn't be upset. You slap a lid on the emotion and hope it stays contained.

The problem is that emotions don't work like that. Research consistently shows that suppression doesn't reduce the internal experience — it just prevents external expression.¹ The feeling stays exactly as intense; you've just added the extra burden of holding it down. It's like trying to keep a beach ball underwater. You can do it, but it takes constant effort, and the moment you relax, it explodes to the surface.

Mistake Two: Identification

This is the "I AM this feeling" approach. You don't just feel angry — you become angry. The emotion takes over. You replay the triggering event on loop, building a case for why you're justified, adding fuel to the fire with every repetition.

Psychologists call this rumination — the tendency to repetitively focus on symptoms of distress and their possible causes rather than solutions.² It feels like processing because you're thinking about the emotion. But you're not processing; you're marinating. The difference matters.

Most people oscillate between these two mistakes depending on the emotion. Anger often gets identification. Sadness often gets suppression. Fear gets both, sometimes in the same minute.

"For years I thought I had two modes: pretending I was fine, or becoming a human tornado. Turns out there's a third option. It just took me an embarrassingly long time to find it."

What Your Brain Is Actually Doing

Here's what's happening neurologically when strong emotion hits:

Your amygdala — the brain's threat detection system — fires. This happens fast, before conscious thought. The amygdala doesn't do nuance. It registers "threat" and floods your system with stress hormones. Heart rate increases. Muscles tense. Blood flows away from your prefrontal cortex (the thinking part) and toward your limbs (the fighting-or-fleeing parts).

Neuroscientist Dan Siegel calls this "flipping your lid" — when the emotional brain essentially takes the prefrontal cortex offline.³ In this state, you can't think clearly. You can't access your wisdom. You're operating from survival circuitry that evolved to handle saber-toothed tigers, not critical emails.

Here's the crucial insight: you can't think your way out of an amygdala hijack. The thinking part of your brain isn't fully available. This is why telling yourself to calm down doesn't work. The part of you that could implement that instruction has temporarily left the building.

What you can do is work with your body to bring the thinking brain back online. The amygdala listens to physiological signals. Change the signals, and you change what the amygdala decides is happening.

What I Actually Do (After Years of Getting It Wrong)

I want to be clear: I didn't invent anything here. I pieced this together from neuroscience, contemplative traditions, and two decades of trial and error. It's not a patented system. It's just what I've found works — for me, consistently enough that I trust it.

Here's what those ninety seconds look like from the inside:

First, I drop into my body.

I stop thinking about the emotion and start feeling where it lives physically. Where do I actually feel this? Tight chest? Clenched jaw? Heat in my face? Knot in my stomach? I don't analyze — I just locate.

This works because of something researchers call interoception — awareness of internal bodily sensations.⁴ When you shift attention to physical sensation, you activate different neural circuits than when you're caught in mental loops. It's like changing the channel.

For that email last Tuesday: chest tight, jaw clenched, heat spreading.

Then, I name what's happening.

Silently, simply. "This is anger." "This is anxiety." "This is hurt." Plain language. No elaboration. No justification. Just a label.

This engages what neuroscientists call affect labeling. Brain imaging studies show that simply naming an emotion reduces amygdala activity.⁵ It's like the act of labeling engages your prefrontal cortex just enough to turn down the alarm.

For me: "This is anger. Some hurt underneath it."

Next comes the subtle part: I unhook from the story.

There's a difference between "I am angry" and "Anger is present." The first one fuses you with the emotion. The second creates space. You're not trying to make the feeling go away. You're just not merging with it.

It's the difference between drowning in a wave and floating on it. The wave is still there. Your relationship to it changes.

The mental move is something like: I notice anger is here. It makes sense that it's here. I don't have to become it.

Then I settle, just for a moment.

One conscious breath. Just one. Feel my feet on the floor. Feel my weight in the chair. I'm anchoring myself in the present moment, in physical reality, rather than in the story my mind is constructing.

This isn't meditation. It's a reset. Three seconds. Maybe five.

Only then do I ask what the emotion is trying to tell me.

What does this feeling want me to know? Is there something here I need to address? Or is this old wiring misfiring?

Sometimes the emotion is pointing to something real: a boundary being crossed, a need being unmet, a situation that genuinely requires action. Sometimes it's my nervous system overreacting to something that resembles past threats but isn't actually dangerous now.

Both are valid information. But I can only access this evaluation when my prefrontal cortex is back online — which is why the earlier steps matter.

"This isn't about controlling emotions. It's about not letting them control you. The emotion still gets to exist. It just doesn't get to drive."

What This Looks Like With Different Emotions

The same basic approach works across different emotional flavors, though the texture varies:

With anxiety:

Anxiety usually lives in my chest and throat — tight, constricted, sometimes with shallow breathing. When I notice it, I name it ("Anxiety is here"), remind myself that I'm having anxious thoughts rather than facing actual immediate danger, take a breath, and then ask: is there a real problem to solve, or is my nervous system pattern-matching to old fears?

Often it's the latter. Anxiety is my brain trying to protect me from things that aren't actually threatening right now. Knowing this doesn't make the feeling disappear, but it changes how much authority I give it.

With sadness or grief:

Sadness tends to be heavy — in my chest, sometimes behind my eyes. When I notice it, I name it ("Grief is here. Loss. Missing them"), and then — this is important — I don't try to fix it. Grief doesn't need solving. It needs space.

The "evaluation" here isn't about action. Sometimes the appropriate response to an emotion is simply to let it move through you.

With that email last Tuesday:

I noticed the physical sensations (chest, jaw, heat). Named what I was feeling (anger, with hurt underneath). Reminded myself I was having this reaction, not being this reaction. Took a breath. Felt my feet on the floor.

Then I asked: is this criticism worth responding to? Is there anything useful in it? Or is this just someone having a bad day and taking it out on my work?

Turns out there was one valid point buried in the criticism. I made a note to address it. The rest was noise. I closed the email and moved on.

Ninety seconds. Maybe two minutes. My afternoon stayed intact.

When the Emotion Is Too Strong

Here's where I need to be honest about limitations.

This approach works best when you're within what trauma therapists call your "window of tolerance" — the zone where you can feel things without completely losing access to your thinking brain.⁶

Sometimes emotions are too intense. The amygdala hijack is too complete. You're not in the window; you're through the roof or through the floor. In these moments, the steps I described won't help because you can't access them.

What helps instead:

Physiological regulation first. Before you can do any of this, you might need to literally move your body. Walk. Splash cold water on your face (this activates the dive reflex and slows heart rate). Press your feet hard into the floor. Do something — anything — that shifts your physiology.

Time. Intense activation naturally diminishes. The stress hormones flooding your system have a half-life. If you can avoid making things worse for about twenty minutes, your baseline will start to return. Remove yourself from the situation if possible. Don't send that email. Don't have that conversation. Wait.

Co-regulation. Our nervous systems are wired to regulate with other nervous systems. Sometimes the most effective intervention is another human being — not to talk about the problem, just to be present. A calm presence can help your system find calm.

I've had moments where none of what I described earlier was accessible. Where all I could do was go for a walk or wait it out. This isn't failure; it's accurate assessment of what's available in that moment.

"Knowing when you're too activated to process is itself a form of processing. Sometimes the smart move is 'come back to this later' rather than forcing yourself through steps you can't actually execute."

The Skill Behind the Skill

Here's what took me years to understand:

This works best when you've practiced it during low-stakes emotions. You don't learn to swim by being thrown into a riptide. You learn in a pool where you can touch the bottom.

Start with minor irritations. The slow driver in front of you. The slightly annoying comment from a coworker. The small frustrations that don't threaten to overwhelm you. Practice there, when the stakes are low and your prefrontal cortex is fully available.

What you're building is a new habit — a new default response to emotional activation. The more you practice it with small emotions, the more automatic it becomes. And the more automatic it becomes, the more available it is when the big emotions hit.

This is the part nobody wants to hear. There's no hack for this. You can't read about it and expect it to work perfectly the next time you're hijacked. You have to practice it. Regularly. Over time.

But here's the encouraging part: it works. The neural pathways get laid down. The skill becomes available. Twenty years ago, that critical email would have ruined my day. Last Tuesday, it took ninety seconds to process and I moved on.

That's not because I'm special. It's because I've practiced this enough times that my brain knows the route.

What This Doesn't Mean

Let me be clear about what I'm not saying:

I'm not saying emotions are problems. They're not. They're information. They're part of being human. The goal isn't to stop having emotions or to become some detached observer who floats above feeling things.

I'm not saying processing means the emotion goes away immediately. Sometimes it does. Often it doesn't. Processing means the emotion doesn't control your behavior, doesn't send you into suppression or rumination, doesn't hijack your afternoon. The feeling can still be there. You're just not drowning in it.

I'm not saying you should be able to do this every time. You won't. I still don't. Some emotions, some days, are just too much. Some situations require support, time, professional help. Knowing when you're out of your depth is its own wisdom.

And I'm definitely not saying this is easy. It's simple — a few moves, maybe ninety seconds — but simple isn't the same as easy. It takes practice. It takes willingness to feel things you'd rather not feel. It takes catching yourself mid-spiral and trying again.

For You

If you've ever felt like your only options were stuffing emotions down or being swept away by them — I get it. I lived there for years.

The third option exists. It's the narrow path between suppression and identification, between pretending you're fine and becoming a human tornado. It's not transcendence and it's not control. It's something simpler and more sustainable: being with what's here without being consumed by it.

Start small. The next time you feel a flicker of irritation — nothing major, just a flicker — try it. Notice where it lives in your body. Name it simply. Remind yourself you're having this feeling, not becoming it. Take one breath. Then ask what it's trying to tell you.

Notice what happens.

Then try it again. And again. Build the skill when the stakes are low so it's available when the stakes are high.

This won't make you emotionless. It won't make you invulnerable. It won't stop difficult feelings from arising.

But it might give you something I've found genuinely useful: the ninety seconds between stimulus and response where you get to choose what happens next.

That's not nothing.

That might be everything.

~ Soren Ross

Notes & References

¹ Gross, J.J. & Levenson, R.W. (1993). "Emotional suppression: Physiology, self-report, and expressive behavior." Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 64(6), 970-986. This study demonstrated that suppression reduces behavioral expression without reducing the subjective experience of emotion.

² Nolen-Hoeksema, S., Wisco, B.E., & Lyubomirsky, S. (2008). "Rethinking rumination." Perspectives on Psychological Science, 3(5), 400-424. A comprehensive review showing how rumination maintains and amplifies negative mood.

³ Siegel, D.J. (2012). The Whole-Brain Child. Bantam. Siegel's "hand model of the brain" offers an accessible way to understand how stress takes the prefrontal cortex offline.

⁴ Craig, A.D. (2009). "How do you feel — now? The anterior insula and human awareness." Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 10(1), 59-70. This research established the neural basis for interoception and its role in emotional awareness.

⁵ 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.

⁶ Siegel, D.J. (1999). The Developing Mind. Guilford Press. The concept of the "window of tolerance" describes the optimal zone of arousal where we can function effectively.