Emotional Processing in 90 Seconds

In my last post, I mentioned I would write about two chapters from Self Care for Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents by Lindsay C Gibson, PsyD. This week, I’m following up with the second of the chapters, in which I learned one of the most powerful emotional processing techniques I’ve ever tried: processing emotions in 90 seconds.

At first, it didn’t work

I had heard in the past that emotions pass through us in 90 seconds. I don’t know about you, but that had absolutely never been my experience.

This factoid was first shared with me earlier this year, and I had immediately tried it out because emotions in a minute and a half seemed so much better than the huge emotional processing sessions I was used to having.

For my first attempt, I was hiking on a trail and dude passed me with a rude comment. So I tried to process my anger at him in 90 seconds. I set my timer and fumed. At the end of the 90 seconds, I was still livid. For the rest of the hike, I kept allowing my anger to flare up to try to process it, but it took me forever to move through that emotion.

A couple of times after, I tried to process my emotions in 90 seconds, and it never worked. Moreover, if I was doing a JournalSpeak session or if I had activated something old and repressed, I could sob or rage out for a half hour (or significantly longer). After a few tries, I decided that factoid was BS.

The shift

Then, in the chapter on 90-second emotions in Gibson’s book, she made a comment that struck a chord for me. She said something along the lines of, “Instead of counting to 10, maybe we should try counting to 90.”1

It occurred to me that when I’d tried this in the past, I’d had a timer going and my emotional thoughts were racing as I felt my emotions. However, thoughts can sometimes keep us stuck in emotions rather than helping us move forward. As it happened, I was driving and listening to the book, and soon after she made that comment, someone cut me off and pissed me off. I wondered if the 90-second rule might work better if I counted and focused on feeling the anger, rather than allowing my thoughts to interfere.

So I stared at the car that had just cut me off, and I counted to 90. I felt the rage clenching up my abdomen and chest. My hands gripped the steering wheel tighter and tighter, and my jaw clenched so hard my teeth started to hurt. I focused almost solely on what the emotion was doing to me physically, and I counted (I also focused on driving safely while doing this). I didn’t allow myself to have any thoughts about the person who had just cut me off. At about 70, I was still so angry. I had the briefest thought that this wouldn’t work, but I kept counting. At 85, something shifted, and by 90, my body suddenly relaxed. I still thought I felt angry, but a moment later, I realized that I had let it go. I didn’t care any longer about the other driver.

How to do this

I’ve been trying this repeatedly and successfully for the last few weeks, and these are some tips that I’ve found helpful:

1. Count to 90, but don’t worry about whether it’s exactly 90 seconds. Sometimes I was counting faster, and sometimes I was counting slower, and it didn’t seem to matter.

2. Focus only on what’s happening physically in your body, and count. No other thoughts. You only have to do this for a minute and a half.

3. If there is residual emotions after, give it a moment to see if they fade.

4. If you’re in public or with family, you can step into a restroom for 1.5 minutes to process the emotion in private. I find it helpful to be able to make facial expressions or physical movements (like shaking, rocking or fist clenching) that allow the emotion to move through my body, and that can be easier to do in private.

5. Residual emotions might turn into other emotions as well depending on what triggered you. For example, you might start by having to count through anger, and then have to count through shame, and then have to count through sadness. So depending on how complex the emotional situation is, it may require more than 1.5 minutes of processing.

6. Remember that fear is an emotion. I had multiple instance of allowing myself to shake in fear while I counted to 90.

When to use this technique

Personally, I found this to be incredibly powerful for events that were occurring presently, such as feeling the anger when I got cut off. For me, this has been an incredible technique for making sure that new emotional experiences don’t pile up or exacerbate the old, repressed stuff.

I did not find it helpful for the older, repressed stuff that came up during JournalSpeak sessions. The older emotions just seem to be bigger and need a lot more time to work through (at least for me — you may find you can process the old stuff in 90 seconds, so I recommend trying it!).

Final thoughts

As a reminder, being with family can trigger a lot of the old stuff, and it can exacerbate health issues. So always be patient and kind with yourself if you’re having a hard time with the holidays, but I hope counting to 90 might help take the edge off some of your emotional interactions this holiday season!

I probably won’t post again before the new year, so I wish you all Happy Holidays and a Happy New Year!