How fast is emotion triggered?

120 milliseconds, (millisecond is .001)

Hummingbird wingbeat: .02 seconds

Blink of an eye: .025 seconds

In my new book Tough Transitions I write about our initial response when we find ourselves catapulted into a tough transition. I call these initial experiences Responding because that is what we do, whether we really want to or not. We respond to the event and often not in our best behavior. But our reactions are so normal, as you will read in the excerpt below. These paragraphs come from the chapter called Responding in Tough Transitions. After I describe the ways we Respond, I include an excerpt from the book containing a couple of positive things we can do during these initial experiences of a tough transitions. You’ll find many more examples of positive things to do in the complete chapter.

Excerpts from Responding Chapter of Tough Transitions

You’d think that we humans would be wired to begin problem-solving immediately when a disrupting change occurs in our lives. But instead we are wired to react with our emotions. The triggering of our emotions can do us a world of good if we need to run to get out of the way of a fast-moving bus, but they can cause a problem when we need to make well-thought-out decisions or step back from a situation and get our bearings. Our emotions exist, of course, to help us stay alive. Scientists tell us that there is always some part of us—our emotional center–that is trying hard to keep us “in a positively regulated life.” They tell us that this regulation, in fact, is “a deep and defining part of who we are.” Emotions exist to keep danger away or to help us take advantage of opportunities. They help us “maintain the coherence of [life’s] structures and function against life-threatening odds.”But to have our physical body go into emergency mode, causing a cascade of biochemical and neuronal responses, just when we need to be able to marshall every rational resource we have only adds to our problems. (Researchers have even pinpointed where in the brain these responses occur: if we’re sad, that emotion was probably evoked, for instance, in the ventromedial prefrontal region. Negative emotions like fear and anger usually trigger in the right frontal cortices.)

So when we find out that we have lost a job or a parent has to go into a nursing home or retiring turns out to be a disappointment or a relationship falls apart or the reality of moving to a new city sets in, our emotions fire into action immediately. Perhaps as quickly as 120 milliseconds after being triggered. Realizing that there are one thousand milliseconds in a second, it’s difficult to imagine how quickly the emotions spark. But if a hummingbird wingbeat rate is .02 seconds and the blink of my eye is .025 seconds, clearly 120 milliseconds (when a millisecond is .001 second) is too fleeting a time for a human being consciously to obtain control of these emotions.

When the emotions respond to the disequilibrium of a tough transition—and these tough transitions can be good events like getting a promotion or making a windfall on an investment as well as bad events like being betrayed or losing a family member–the body immediately secretes various hormones. For instance, in the brain trauma center where arousal, responses, and memories are integrated, there is an increased production of CRH, a corticotropin-leasing hormone that produces anxiety-like symptoms. Chemicals are released, such as catecholamines that are “emergency-mobilizing” chemicals that synthesize in the neuronal cells of brain and the sympathetic nervous system. As we become more and more stressed by the tough transition—again, whether we consider the transition good or bad–the chemical levels are increased and our central nervous system becomes highly stimulated. Perhaps we feel giddily euphoric and may act devil-may-care. Perhaps we’re anxious and can’t sit still or concentrate.

So much is happening in our body that it is little wonder we over-react when someone speaks normally to us or we feel so despondent that we don’t think we’ll ever have a good day again. How can we be our smartest and best selves when our hearts are beating faster, when our blood vessels are constricting and even rerouting the blood flow? No wonder we tense up, for our emotional responses are causing our muscles to contract. We come down with a cold or the flu because the T-cells that protect our immune system have changed roles. Our breathing may become defective. The autonomic, physiologic, biochemical and endocrinologic systems are all affected. The adrenal system is activated. The body’s homeostasis has been disturbed. We’re in a chronic hyperarousal state. So we don’t sleep well; have difficulty concentrating; experience outbursts of anger or irritation; and find ourselves jumping at the slightest noise. …

What Helps During Responding

People who have worked through tough transitions are the best source of suggestions for what helps at various points in the process. I’ve surveyed many individuals to ask how they managed during the disconcerting upheaval of Responding. Here are a few of their strategies.

Slowing Down

Someone described his friend the other day as a person who is so slow that it takes him an hour and a half to watch the television news program Sixty Minutes. I laughed, and at the same time I thought, “That slow man has a lot of wisdom.” People down around where I was born in middle Georgia used to talk about taking life at the speed of a jog-trot. That meant living at a slow but regular pace. Slowly down—taking things at the speed of a jog-trot—is one of the best things we can do for ourselves when emotions are rampant and our inner world echoes in a huge, unfamiliar void.

What alters when we decide deliberately to slow down during a tough transition?

• We allow as much time as is appropriate to pass instead of pressing to make a quick decision.
• We cut out extraneous activities that take up time and energy we do not want to give.
• We loaf, rest, and pamper ourselves at every opportunity.
• We use cues like a traffic signal that’s red or a phone that’s ringing to remind ourselves to breathe deeply.
• We pay deliberate attention to our health and well-being.
• We ask for time off if we really need it.
• We give up all forms of trying to be perfect.
• We linger wherever possible to listen to our own voices.

Often solutions to problems related to a tough transition will present themselves if we slow down enough to let our intuition work for us. Certainly by slowing down we redirect our energy. Instead of rushing from this thing to that , we allow time for responding to our emotions and for thinking about what assumptions have disappeared and what assumptions we might still gather—or discover–to stand on.

Part of slowing down is taking care of our health. Illnesses and accidents often increase during the Responding experiences of a tough transition. Studies report facts like these: Increase of almost 40 percent in death rate of widowers over age of 54 during first 6 months of grieving…4.8 percent of close relatives died within first year of bereavement compared with 0.7 percent of comparable group of nonbereaved people of same age living in same area…mortality rate at least 7 times greater among young widowed group, under age 45, than matched young married control group…mortality rates may remain high for certain categories of bereft individuals perhaps into sixth year of the loss.

With loss and unwanted change, there is often an increase in smoking and drinking, use of tranquilizers, anti-social, delinquent and criminal behavior (stealing, shoplifting, for example), promiscuity, dependency and eating disorders, and replacement, helping, and no-intimacy-required relationships. One researcher from Australia says that when transitions bring great grief, 1 out of 3 people may have morbid outcomes or pathological patterns that persist. Another researcher asserts that in his study 5-15 percent of the population have unhealthy grief reactions ongoingly.

All these indicators suggest that as part of slowing down we need to be aware that some of our physical and mental symptoms may be related to the transition we are going through. This awareness allows us to get the help we need before our health is gone or unhealthy behaviors and patterns established for the long haul. Too, we can distinguish between sadness and depression, one researcher reminds us, by understanding that sadness is a healthy response to a shared defining moment of change and loss in our lives. If we can say, “I am grieving” or “I feel discouraged,” we are describing normal responses that need to be distinguished from a statement, “I am depressed.”

Remembering that the Experiences of Responding Require Patience But Are Temporary

If we are honest about our emotional upheavals (or emotional deadness, as the case may be) and about the emptiness and uncertainty that accompanies the loss of our assumptive worlds, we can count on the fact that these experiences will be temporary. These does not mean, of course, that they will not return from time to time, perhaps over many years times; but they will not be the predominate modes of experience indefinitely, if we tell the truth about our feelings and allow ourselves to feel them. We choose to endure these periods when it feels as if we are living in a vacuum. We choose to be patient. We recognize that it takes time to rebuild an inner world. We understand that in these Responding experiences we are having to find a way to redefine ourselves and the situation. And until this redefinition is done, we don’t know what plans to make for the future. So we are truly in betwixt and between. It is almost inevitable that we will feel discouraged, lost, even in despair, in the time between having to discard the old ways we acted, thought, and felt and finding new ways to consider examining and meeting our new situation. For a long time we may find ourselves alternating between the old and the new. We choose to endure with patience, however, knowing that these experiences are an authentic part of an in-the-long-run positive process.

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Dr. Elizabeth Harper Neeld offers wisdom and practical insights to anyone whose life is in a time of transition, change, grief and loss of any kind. As an internationally recognized and accomplished consultant, and author of more than twenty books - including Tough Transitions and Seven Choices: Finding Daylight After Loss Shatters Your World - she is committed to work that helps lift the human spirit.