Wellness Matters Webinar - The Science Of Seeing Red: Understanding And Calming Emotional Triggers

Join us for a seminar to explore what happens when we “see red” and rationality leaves the room. In these moments of emotional hijack, the body recalls past experiences while the mind reacts to perceived threat, often leading us into patterns of reactivity rather than reflection. This workshop weaves together insights from neuroscience, mindfulness, and body awareness to help participants recognize early signs of activation, calm the nervous system, and find choice in the heat of emotion. Grounded in self-compassion, the session emphasizes the power of the compassionate pause: a mindful space of self-understanding that allows us to respond with clarity, care, and intention.

Facilitator: Jakia Jari

• What does “seeing red” mean, and why does it happen so fast?

  “Seeing red” describes an emotional hijack - when the brain’s threat system reacts before the thinking brain fully catches up, leading to impulsive reactions.

• Is anger bad? Should I try to get rid of it?

  No. Anger is a normal emotion and often carries useful information (like boundary crossings, hurt, or unfairness). The goal is to respond with choice, not to eliminate anger.

• What will I learn in this session?

  You’ll learn how emotional triggers work in the brain and body, how to notice early physical warning signs, and practical tools (like the compassionate pause, grounding, and emotion naming) to calm the nervous system.

• Who is this webinar for?

  Anyone who wants to better understand intense anger or reactivity - whether for themselves, their relationships, or to support a loved one. It’s especially helpful if you want tools to pause, ground, and respond more intentionally in heated moments.

Watch the video

Transcript

Good evening everybody and welcome. My name is Nicole Imgrund and I'm the owner and director of River's Edge Counselling Centre and welcome to the science of seeing red understanding and calming emotional triggers with Jackiea Jari. I am going to introduce Jackia in a moment. If you don't mind, I'll just take a couple of minutes though to let you know about some of the other talks that we have coming up.

This talk tonight is part of a series that we have been hosting for almost 12 years, wellness matters. We have over 150 recorded webinars on every topic you can think of on our website. You're welcome to take a look at what we have and we also have some coming up live, quite a few this winter still.

Coming up in March, we have what to expect when you're not expecting, managing infertility, also fostering resilience through life's transitions. Uh, another one on emotions. This one for about children, building emotional intelligence in children.

And we'll end our spring series with boundaries that breathe, preventing burnout through healthy limits. Those are our free online talks. We also have a lot I think 10 or so in-person workshops, talks, and programs that are all starting in the next six six weeks or so. I'll just name a few for you, but please go to the program page on our website. we have one postpartwellness circle that is starting a group called navigating ADHD supports and strategies for adults. We have a workshop with Christine Crocker on parenting through divorce. We have a communication skills program.

We have a new workshop in early April, a kind of a rebranding of one that Candace has done and has been really wellreceived the last couple of years and it's called nurturing the nurturer building strength, self-compassion and resilience. That is for people who are caregiving whether that's children, dependent adults, parents, any caregivers at all. We have a self-esteem group that Sheila runs a couple of times a year. And we also have a teen wellness talk and we actually got some we're partnering with the St. Albert Family Resource Centre for that one. And we got some funding from the St. Albert Community Foundation. So, we're really excited to be able to offer that one at no charge. and that is six six weeks. So, we still have a handful of spots open in that. a grief group and we've got a couple of others. Lots of things going on spaces in most of those upcoming groups. So, please feel welcome to look at those. Join us for anything that we have coming up. And with that, I'm going to introduce our facilitator. Jackiea is has a bachelor of science with a double major in biological sciences and psychology. and she began working in the caregiving field during the pandemic where her passion for supporting individuals with disabilities and their caregivers was founded and continues to grow. Through this work, she recognized a significant gap in adapted counseling skill resources for people with disabilities and caregivers.

She is in her third year of the Master of Counseling Psychology program at City University of Seattle and we are so fortunate to have her on her internship at River's Edge. She's been with us since September and she's about halfway through the year doing amazing work with clients. And while doing all of that, she still works as a casual support worker with a restbite organization that focuses on empowering and creating possibilities for participants of the organization. And I don't mind naming the organization that that's adaptabilities. And a shout out to our amazing community partners that are in St. Albert now as well. A particular passion of Jackie is supporting the management of intense emotions and emotional expression, which is perfect for her talk tonight. And as she continues to build her clinical knowledge, she's especially interested in learning how these approaches can be thoughtfully adapt adapted for caregivers and individuals with disabilities. Wonderful. So, Jackie thinks her talk's about 45 or 50 minutes, so we'll have a few minutes at the end to answer some questions if you have them. You're welcome to put comments in the chat or use the Q&A and we will take a look at them at the end and have a bit of discussion and answer questions if you'd like. I think that's all. I'm going to hand it over to you Jackie.

Well, thank you so much for that introduction, Nicole. I am really grateful for this opportunity and also grateful for the amazing supports that you have built for us students for the river's edge team and and for the community through all these wonderful webinars and events. So, thank you very much and welcome everyone to the science of seeing red where I hope that after this webinar you will have an increased understanding of your emotional well-being and have some calming tools and strategies to increase coping when you are in emotionally charged moments.

Before we begin, I want to take a few moments to acknowledge and express my gratitude to the land that we are on and the stewards of the land. We are located on Treaty 6 territory, the traditional lands of the First Nations and the Matei peoples. I am grateful to the protectors and the stewards of the land.

And I hope that as a settler and a non-indigenous person, I can contribute to the indigenous cause and care for this land and the people living here. Whoops. Sorry. Okay. Now, as we open up this topic, I want to acknowledge why this topic may be important. But those who are watching this are either here to understand intense emotional experiences like intense anger or rage for themselves or understand the emotional experiences of their loved ones or learn more about emotions that were often not socialized to express in healthy and caring ways. Many of us have experienced a situation that tipped us over the limit.

It could have been a minor incident that may have led us to react in ways that we were not happy about. Seeing red is often an expression used to describe that sudden anger, that sudden intense reaction. It gives meaning to the event where we lost control. Our emotions flooded out in ways that we may not have wanted to express and in ways that may have been damaging and hurtful to us, to our loved ones, to others. And this out of control expression may have been against our values and our vision for our self and just our sense of self. Now, today's goal is not to eliminate anger or strong emotions. Instead, we're going to understand what is happening underneath the surface, learn how to calm our nervous system, and create space for choice even in the heat of the moment through gentle and compassionate awareness. The more we understand our mind and body and the connections in between, the more we can live true to ourselves, make space for self-compassion, self forgiveness, and move to better ways to soo ourselves during emotionally intense moments.

I want to give a little disclaimer, a note that my webinar today is but a stepping stone to understand our relationship with intense emotions like anger. This is to educate, bring awareness and provide some tools and strategies. This webinar is not a treatment and cannot replace therapy. I also want to acknowledge my position here as a student and an intern and as someone who is passionate about learning this topic for myself as well as to help others understand and make peace with anger.

I want to acknowledge that what I will be sharing today is just surface level. Anger as a topic is vast and has so much depth and requires years of education, training, and insight. And understanding and managing intense emotional expressions can be a lifelong process that gets better with consistency and care. Today's topic is very general and I want to be mindful and acknowledge that intersectional identities like disabilities, neurode divergence, social injustices and inequities play a role in regulating, firing up and exhausting our nervous system. So, I invite you to use this webinar as a stepping stone to understanding anger. And I invite you to seek a therapist who will walk alongside you to deepen your understanding of yourself compassionately in a way that is sensitive to your culture and your life. So, what will we cover today? First, I'm going to use a tool to understand emotional regulation. We're going to split our brain into two. Next, we're going to go deep into our brain and find the little part that causes that is the major player in that big emotional reaction.

Then we're going to know what what purpose does anger serve and learn how anger is a source of information. We're going to explore some physical signs of the emotional hijack of anger and then I will use a demonstration a role play to show how in those moments in those heightened moments we can regulate the nervous system.

I'm going to use this tool called the compassionate pause and integrate it with these five other strategies. Yeah. So let's begin. So first the tool that is used for better understanding our brain and our mind. We're going to take our brain and divide it into two. So first is our emotional brain which is at the back connected to our brain stem between our ears roughly it is called our emotional brain or the lyic system. It is responsible for emotions, survival and behavior. And more closer to the like the top and front half is our logical executive planning insight brain. Daniel Gleman, a psychologist who popularized the concept of emotional intelligent says, "In a very real sense, we have two minds, one that thinks and one that feels." This is a very simplified tool to deepen our understanding of emotional regulation. The emotional mind is driven by feelings and bodily sensations. It plays a very important role in reacting quickly to protect us when something feels threatening and unfair.

It also provides meaning to life through emotions like excitement, joy, happiness, sadness. Now, the rational or the reasonable brain focuses on logic, facts, problem solving, often trying to think its way through situations. When these two parts communicate with each other, they are in sync. We are regulated. We are able to connect with oursel, make choices that are true to our values, that are healthy, promote compassion and connection with ourselves and others. But separately and you can see here if just the emotional mind is driving the car then we're likely to react quickly want to hurt others the way we're feeling hurt behave impulsively or act on urges that may be unhelpful or even harmful. And if the reasonable mind is just driving the seat driving the car, then we may feel cut off from emotions completely and rationalize behaviors that may be unjust or unacceptable. We may avoid or be in denial when something happens. And we may minimize or shrug off our own feelings and the feelings of others. maybe when they're sharing a boundary or sharing a hurt um to solve the interpersonal issues. Now these two concepts have been used in dialectical behavior therapy or DBT which you may have heard of to introduce the concept of wise minds. So the wise mind is the integration of the two where they both are in sync. They're communicating with each other and it honors this wise mind that we see in the pink honors what we feel and considers what we know. So from the wise mind perspective, we can acknowledge our anger, understand the concept and then choose responses that align with our values rather than reacting from urgency or overwhelm. I also want to make a note here that substance use, excessive chronic stress, hunger, thirst, these can dampen the connection between our emotional brain and our reasonable brain and then contribute to that activation of intense emotions and can lead to also impulsive actions. But now we will dive a little deeper into our emotional brain and see What contributes to intense emotional reactions when we see red? Okay, so if you're wondering why I have a picture of a bowl of almonds here, it's because the activation of intense emotions happens in these two little almond shaped bits just in between our ears called the amygdala. They are part of the emotional mind, the emotional brain.

Interesting fact, amygdala comes from the Greek word amdale, meaning almond. So that's a great way to remember these little almond shaped things in between our brain are responsible for some of our big reactions. So amygdala is part of the lyic system and contributes in emotional processing especially emotions associated with fear and anxiety and it plays a major role in fear processing and learning. Amdala is the area where high emotional intensity of say trauma or just overwhelmingly stressful events are processed into memories and then stored as fearbased memories just focusing on sights, sounds and smells rather than narrative. So you know just the sight of an angry expression and you know that you have your fear response activated, your stress response activated rather than that anger may not be towards you. It's just or maybe it's someone else's discomfort. There's no narrative to it. So how does amygdala do this? It detects the emotional stimuli and triggers and produces rapid responses to the fear, anger and threat. This is further reinforced by repeated threatening experiences and leads to overlearning these stress responses. The amygdala is basically like a library of fearful faces, fearinducing objects, fear conditioned cues.

It's a quick access for survival for protection. It also is responsible for social behavior processing like social bonding by recognizing facial expressions. But its main like task responsibility is initiating the body's fight or flight. Let's learn a little more about that. So when the amygdala detects a stimuli that matches a threatening or emotionally charged pattern based on our memories, usually a memory of hurt, pain, or trauma, it can trigger that fight, flight, and freeze response very quickly, often before the thinking brain has time to assess whether this threat is actually real. In such cases, the amygdala hijacks control of our behavior. It activates that overlearned stress response, rerouting all our processing away from a thinking brain to ensure survival and protection. So, hijack is also called emotional hijack. so, I'll be using that term as well. Now, this process is very important when there is a real threat. Uh, for example, if you're in nature and something is coming towards you really fast, looks like it's going to attack you, you either fight or flight or find a quick way out to increase your chance of survival. Now, this very important survival and protective instinct can also get activated in situations that are mostly non-threatening.

And this is exactly what happens when we are in our homes, in our offices, in our cars. When everyday stresses piles up, and when it feels like we're not being acknowledged, we're not being treated fairly. We are so tired from doing things and getting nowhere that our peace of mind and sense of self is, they're at stake. Emotions like anger can come up especially when we feel criticized or rejected and then these can trigger that emotional hijack leading to intense reactions like aggression or rage. So this lovely article from simply psychology.org or shares some of the common triggers that you may relate to like work pressures, deadlines, criticism, rejection that we talked about, conflict, arguments, social anxiety, judgment, and just everyday frustrations like traffic jams.

These can just accumulate and lead to a sudden emotional outbursts. Now I want to point out this very important thing that this article highlighted. These triggers highlight that the amygdala doesn't differentiate between actual physical danger and social and emotional stresses. So these stresses if our partner says something that triggers our us we're unable to differentiate it between oh a bear is coming to attack us and then we react vague rather than connecting with ourselves and connecting with our partner to understand what is happening there.

So then in this lovely video by Dr. Dan Seagull. He uses a hand model of the brain to describe what we just talked about, the emotional hijack. What I especially like about this video is how he uses another metaphor about flipping the lid to describe this intense reaction. One of the most rewarding experiences for me has been to study brain science and apply it to the experience of parenting. And the hand model of the brain that I use to teach parents is very useful to understand that. So if you take your thumb and put in the middle of your palm, put your fingers over the top, this is a very useful model of the brain. And when we can actually see in front of us what's going on in the brain, then we can change what the brain does. So let me walk you through very basically what happens in this brain and the structures in it. And it goes like this. The spinal cord comes up representing the wrist and then you have coming up into the skull the brain stem and the lbic area which work together to help regulate arousal and your emotions and the way you have a fight, flight, freeze response. These are below the cortex, the liyic and brain stem areas. And the cortex is this higher part of the brain that allows us to perceive the outside world and to think and reason. And this frontmost part of the brain right behind your forehead. So the person's oriented like this is actually the part that regulates the subcortical limbic and brain stem areas. This regulation is very important because sometimes we can have all sorts of things happen in our life. We're tired, we're exhausted, someone pushes a particular emotional button and we can flip our lids.

So rather than being tuned in and connected and balanced and flexible, we can lose all that flexibility, even lose moral reasoning and act in ways that are terrifying to others, including our children. Now, you can actually bring yourself back online and come back to the high road and make a repair with your child. And that's important to explain to them. And you can also use this hand model of the brain to explain to children even as young as five and six how to understand when their emotions are rising up from the brain stem and limbic areas here and how it's overriding the prefrontal area and making it so they may be about to flip their lids. So I've had kids come tell me that they're about to go flip their lids and they need a break. They need a timeout. And by even just naming that, they can tame it. And that's the power of using the hand model for ourselves and our children to help us all make sense of what goes on in the emotional communication that we have in the course of day-to-day life. Oops. Okay. Notice how he says that if we know what is going on in our brain, we can change what the brain does. And I think that is so hopeful that we are all capable of change. and this metaphor, right, is another great tool to communicate our inner experiences.

Now, how does the emotional hijack, the amygdala hijack relate to the unhealthy big expressions of anger? Let's understand what anger is. So anger is an emotional state that varies in intensity from mild irritation like annoyance when someone inconveniences you in traffic to intense fury and rage when someone inconveniences you in traffic and you want to go in front of them and hit the brakes. Just create an unsafe situation to really let them know that what they did was wrong and unfair. Anger as an emotion is completely normal. It's usually healthy and often carries information about hurt, unfairness, boundary crossings, grief, and especially information about whether our needs are being met. Anger can carry important information such as you feel excluded, you experienced an injustice, something unfair happened to you. Now there are ways to express these messages that anger carry in constructive and productive ways. But what happens when we don't know how to express anger or process it and have ways to express it and make space for it? It can be very difficult and it becomes even more difficult when such events are further reinforced by past memories where our emotional and psychological and physical safety was at stake. If there have been past repeated trauma reinforcing such patterns and information with fear, the amygdala hijack or the emotional hijack will be activated rapidly disproportionate to the trigger. The flipping anger to irrational rage that can be harmful. Now this is where working with an experienced therapist someone who's experiencing trauma can be very valuable to process such memories from sensory fear-based like we talked about amydala stores it as sight smell sounds to a more narrative processing giving meaning to it and thus helping our amygdala differentiate between actual physical danger and emotional and interpersonal stresses and thereby increasing our capacity to make more balanced assessments of high stress events. Be less reactive, be more compassionate and responsive to ourselves and the trigger. Oops, sorry. Um, anger can also be a protector of raw feelings as shown here in this anger iceberg.

It's called an anger iceberg because it shows other it shows other emotions that are underneath the surface. Sometimes it is embarrassment, loneliness, depression, fear, and often it is a combination of several of these feelings. And we're not usually taught to express these underlying emotions and needs. And these unmet needs and unexpressed anger can rise up as Dr. Dan Seagull had mentioned and contribute to flipping our lid. It can get out of control and turn destructive leading to problems in our personal lives, professional lives. Yeah, it anger is not just outward rageful experiences. It can also be expressed sorry unexpressed and suppressed anger can also manifest as social withdrawal, depression, anxiety, substance use problems and physical illness. So what happens to our body? We've looked a little into how anger turns into emotional hijack. Let's let's learn how that anger transitioning into emotional hijack. What impact it has on our body. So, some of the physical signs that you may have noticed is that racing hard, sweaty or clammy skin, goosebumps, trembling or shaking, fast shallow breathing, tense muscles, feeling extreme temperatures like really hot face and very cold hands. our pupils dilate when we're in that heightened state making us focus only what's in front of us. So creating a tunnel vision our adrenaline and cortisol surges causing tension around our eyes reducing our blink rates and increasing pressure in our eyes. So that might be where that metaphor relates, right? That's seeing red when you're tunnel vision. There's so much pressure and heat around your eyes. So people often say, I saw red and then something destructive happened. I was so angry, couldn't control myself. These were some of the physical things that they were experiencing. An awareness of these physical changes that happen with an emotional hijack is an important tool for early intervention and prevention of going into an emotional hijack situation.

And we'll do that after this little video and a quote where we'll go into interventions. So this is a video by Daniel Gleman, the person who popularized the term of emotional intelligence and self. So I hope you enjoy. There are four or five triggers that in the US are very common in the workplace. These are triggers for amigdala hijacks. One is feeling not of respect. A second is feeling unappreciated. A third is feeling that you're not being heard. Fourth, that you're being treated unfairly. And the fifth is someone else taking credit for your work. Now, that's a generic set. Any one of us may have our own personal list. So the amygdala can have a reaction like remember the amygdala actually falls back and overlearned responses that means it's really childish. It's very childlike in its thinking and its impulse. So the amiga could have a thought speak like this. This guy is not treating me fair. I'd like to slug him. That's the way the amygdala thinks and acts. The good news is that the prefrontal cortex, the executive center, may draw information from other parts of the brain. Like, oh, but this is your boss. So, okay, I'm not going to slug him. I'm going to smile and change the subject. And that's emotional intelligence. What you're doing is integrating smoothly the executive center with the emotional networks. So it's being smart about emotion. Being smart about emotions like connecting with our wise mind. how do we do that?

These are two really lovely quotes from Danielle Gleman's book on emotional intelligence. There is perhaps no psychological skill more fundamental than resisting impulse. It is the root of all emotional self-control since all emotions by their very nature lead to one or another impulse to act even say joy and happiness. in movies and stuff, we hear, "Oh, I'm so happy I could kiss you." Right? That's an impulse, but we don't always act on it. We know that we're not gonna act on it, right?

Same with anger. Anger is an emotions. We may have that emotion of, "Oh, this guy makes me so mad. I want to slug him, but I can I can control this and do something else with it." the second quote here, the more we can notice the thoughts that are running through our minds, the less they control us. Now this is very powerful and often what we do in therapy is surfacing the thoughts, taking control of it rather than it controlling us. Yeah. Okay. So now for the interventions. So what do you do when you're noticing those physical signs? Imagine like someone hurt your pride. You've had a rough day. You had a couple to drink and this person has just said something that insulted you. You're stressed that your friends are seeing you poorly and it's causing all those physical symptoms. You're hot, shaky, and you know you want to kind of hurt this person. or just remove this person, walk away or criticize them in ways that may not be productive and may even be harmful, right? Like what can we do?

So here is where I would invite you to use the compassionate pause. It is driven by mindfulness and self-compassion. It is used to interrupt that overwhelm of stress and provide a moment to self soothe. It involves taking a compassionate moment to take few deep breaths, connect with self through self-compassion and come back to the present moment. provide opportunity to reduce that impulsive reaction and encourage more mindful choices and communication that are aligned with your values, care and compassion. For example, in this state in this situation, hey buddy, what you said really hurt me and I want to talk about it. So that's a more compassionate and caring communication. So here I'll do a demonstration. I'm going to pretend to be Jane. Jane has had a long day. She is so tired. She's a bit overstimulated and she's running on fumes. It's the end of the day and just as she is about to sign out, she receives an email from her boss giving her feedback about the recent project she completed. As soon as she receives this email notification, she feels sick. She is so tired and she knows she does not have the capacity to handle any feedback of growth. But curiosity gets the best of her. Um, so she reads it. At first read, the tone of the message feels critical and condescending. Jane feels a surge of anger and in her anger types in an email response sharing all the things the boss has done wrong and how she has been underappreciated and treated unfairly despite the extra hours of work. and she does not care about how about taking the low road and writing really terrible things about how she sees her boss before she writing I quit. She thinks about how satisfying it would feel to hit that send button and she feels right at this moment it's the right thing to do. Okay, so I'm going to be Jane and I'm going to be in that state of anger. This is scripted but I'll apply these following calming tools. Okay, I am going to hit that send button and say goodbye forever to this horrible tyrant. Someone has to tell him how awful he makes everyone feel. I've been working so hard. I am so tired and exhausted and I hate everything about this job and this boss. How dare they not see how hard I am working. I'm going to quit and they will know how much I do when I'm gone. And I'm going to send this message and ruin their day like they ruined mine. And I don't care that I will lose this job. Anything is better than this. I feel like burning this place down and I don't care what happens to me. Okay, as much as I feel like doing this right now, maybe I should wait and take a pause and understand this anger. Okay, I'm going to take a deep breath. I know I am experiencing this emotional hijack. I am shaking. I can't take my eyes off the laptop. My hands are freezing and my face is hot. My jaws are clenched. My heart is beating so fast. I just can't breathe. I'm going to name my emotions. How am I feeling right now? I am so mad. I'm so so so angry. I feel so disrespected. But I also feel hurt. Why did I receive feedback when I did everything so perfectly? I attended to every detail.

I did ask for feedback. And on the second read, it doesn't look too bad. I just feel so disappointed in myself. I wanted to be perfect in my job. I feel that I am not being recognized for my work and I'm not appreciated. I feel ashamed of how I just reacted. He's not a terrible boss. I know he's just as overworked as I am. He also feels so anxious now that this feedback means I will lose my job. But I know that is not true. Hey, I guess I do want this job. Oh, I feel so worthless and inferior.

But I do feel much calmer. Okay, I'm going to do three deep breaths. Okay. Feel myself coming back to the present moment. Let me do a little check in with my body. What does my body need right now? My face is still hot. My hands are cold. Maybe I can rub them. I feel so restless and ungrounded. Going to do a quick grounding. I'm just going to tap my feet. Feel myself supported by the ground. I am here. I am supported. Okay. I remember learning that I had to engage my senses. So I can stop looking at the computer because I have tunnel vision right now. Okay, I can't remember the 5 4 3 2 1, but I remember it doesn't have to be perfect. So I'm going to look at five things around me. Okay, I see my cup of coffee, the clock, the door. Oh, I can't wait to leave. Right. Um, then four things I hear. Um, I don't hear much, but I can think of things I like to hear. Oh, maybe I'll listen to Mariah Carey on my way home. Yeah, I need to sing that song. What were the other ones?

Oh, smell. Oh, I love the smell of oranges. They just calm me. Okay. Okay. I feel grounded. I'm here. I am safe. I have survived today. Of course, my body reacted the way it did. It felt like my sense of competence was threatened. Anyone would feel this. And I'm allowed to feel angry. I've also not had food today or water. So, I'm just going to go home, give myself food, water, and extra self-care. I don't have to decide anything right now. This feedback does not mean I am worthless or inferior. It means that I have more to grow, which is true to what I want for my next steps in my career. I'm going to delete my message. Oh, I'm glad I didn't send it. I'll respond to him more professionally and constructively tomorrow. Today, I'm allowed to have my feelings. Going to call my friend, grab some ice cream, and just go home. Okay, scene. Okay. Well, thank you for listening to that. Um, and I hope that was helpful. So, I know this was scripted. Um, but notice how when we were expressing our anger, the anger was that threat and the quick, I want to leave this situation. I want to quit. I never want to deal with it again. That's what the anger was kind of conveying like, hey, this is unfair. And our amygdala hydra is like, yeah, we should leave. We should leave quickly. Right? So what happened when we took that compassionate pause and started naming the emotions? We gave space to notice our anger, right? Oo, I'm mad. And once you've expressed the anger, it went deeper to hurt to disappointment.

And then it shifted to, okay, what does my body need right now? Let's let's notice what I can do to take care of myself cuz I just had this big reaction and towards the end having a more balanced compassionate thought. So the naming emotions one great tool that I would like to recommend is the feelings wheel. You can just Google feelings wheel and it and use it when you're having those big emotional reactions to name what is going on. That pressure in your eyes, the shakiness, what is it? Let's name them.

Like David Dr. Dan Seagull said, name it to tame it. You are bringing it to your control rather than this big emotional whirlpool controlling you. And there is actual brain science brain scans showing how when you just start naming your emotions, your emotional brain is connecting like firing to the the reasonable brain and yeah you come back to that equilibrium. You engage with your emotional intelligence, your wise mind. So, grounding techniques. Um, what I demonstrated was just that very rough version of 54 321. You may have heard it many times. And what I want to show is it doesn't need to be perfect. You can have this like you could Google it when you're like, I need to ground myself. I'm going to do the 54 31 ex exercise. You can Google it. But say you don't want to touch your phone because that's the emotional trigger. Just see five things like start engaging your senses. What's something you can touch, hear, smell and engage that again engages your insight brain, your reasonable mind and you're you come back to equilibrium. You start creating a narration rather than the want to escape, the want to fight. Other grounding the one that I demonstrated was that physical grounding. Noticing your feet, feeling the weight of your feet. One of the physical signs of the emotional hijack is tension. Right? Can you notice that tension and intentionally relax it? Unclench your jaws, warm your hands, lower your shoulder, and notice what that does for you.

Other great grounding tools are sensory grounding like holding ice cubes, running hands through warm or cold water, washing your face, small strong smells, again bringing things to your control and rather than letting your emotional experience control you. Nature is a great way even though it's minus 20 now. Sometimes if you're feeling that emotional hijack, just step outside for a moment, let that cold shock you and come back to the present, right? Let that do the opposite of what you're feeling. Cool you a little bit. And it's a way of removing yourself also from that situation to think to ground and then come back. Other ways is thinking in numbers, thinking in categories like counting backward backwards from 100 and connecting with positive affirmations. You can read your holy scriptures if if you're religious or connect with content that connects you with your values and you know what you envision yourself to be and that can be through self-compassion. Now there is this wonderful resource that I invite all of you to check out and use and practice and this is this self-compassion.org. It's it's a wonderful resource by Dr. Kristen Nef. She has lots of exercises community and book recommendations to increase our capacity to give ourselves self-compassion. All right. So, we explored a lot of things today. We explored two minds. Dived deep into how two little tiny almond shaped so fascinating things in our brain have such an impact on how our mind and body react. We explored anger and that it is not inherently bad but can have valuable information about care and connection if we make space for it compassionately and with care. We explored compassionate pause. So when we slow down and listen to our anger with compassion, we shift from being hijacked by our little almond shaped friends in our brains trying to protect us. we shift to a deeper understanding of ourselves. So, thank you for your presence, your openness, and your willingness to explore this really heavy topic. I hope you leave today with a lot more kindness to yourself. Thank you so much.

Thank you, Jackie. That was wonderful. I love that you ended on such a warm note about self-compassion. for we have a bit of time for questions or comments if there is some but I want to say goodbye to those of you who can stick around for that. thank you for joining us and you are always welcome to come to any one of our talks online or in person. Have a good evening.