The 90 Second Rule: Feel Your Feelings  ## Metadata - Author: [[We Can Do Hard Things]] - Full Title: The 90 Second Rule: Feel Your Feelings - Category: #podcasts - URL: https://share.snipd.com/episode/78a3d3cc-cced-4815-ad6d-be95a47339c2 ## Document Notes ## Highlights - **Feelings Are 90-Second Waves** - Feelings are physiological waves that build, crest, and fade on their own in about 90 seconds. - Thinking about or labeling a feeling converts it into anxiety and prolongs it indefinitely. Transcript: Amanda Doyle So what usually happens when I try to feel my feelings is I will, usually it's when I'm going to bed because I think the rest of the time I'm able to avoid it, but like I feel some disquiet. I feel some like restlessness. I feel something that like won't let me go to sleep. And so I think I need to feel my feeling. And so I try to identify what the feeling is. So am I feeling stressed? Am I feeling angry? Am I feeling, and, and when I identify what the thing is, I begin to process through that by thinking, okay, you're angry about this. This is what you're angry about. This is what they did. This is what you did. Can you think of a way through that? What if you try X? I try to talk it into resolution. Okay. And this is the way of dealing with my feeling. A couple weeks ago, I was having a feeling and I think it was stress. And I was doing the thing where I was talking about it, processing it, solving it. And for some reason I decided, okay, I'm just going to do what she tries to tell me to do in therapy. And I'm just going to try to feel what it actually feels like. And so I sent my energy away from my thoughts about the feeling to try to feel what it felt like. And so my energy goes away from my head and into wherever it is in my body. And in that case, it was like a kind of like clenching, like pulsating. I stayed with it for one minute, and then it stopped. And this is what I think people are talking about. Okay. It turns out that thinking about feelings is not the same as feeling your feelings. Wow. That's right. Glennon Doyle That's good. Amanda Doyle Thinking about your feelings turns out to be the opposite of feeling your feelings. Feelings don't have words. This is important to me because I think this, all I have is words. And so then I talked to my therapist about this and she's like, yeah. And I'm like, well, you should have just fucking said that because it's really clear now to me. But here's what here's what the actual science is. OK. A feeling, a real emotion feeling. Like a wave where it builds, it crests, it crashes, it's done. That process, good people of America, lasts a maximum of 90 seconds. That is one minute and 30 seconds that that lasts. Why then do we stay up for two hours and 20 minutes sitting with our feelings? It's because we aren't feeling our feelings. We are thinking about our feelings. And that is a different thing. Here's what happens. You have disquiet, if you have anxiety, if you have sadness, if you have clenchy, icky, fiery, and then you go to it like I do and say, hey, little baby, we're here to help. We're going to start identifying what that is. That's a first kind of thinking. Even going to it and saying that's stress, that's anger, that's whatever. You don't need any of those words. In fact, you need not those words. You don't even need to identify what it is. And you sure as shit don't need to start thinking about why it's there or what to do to solve it. Because when you start putting words on a feeling, you have now taken it out of feeling and you have taken it into processing, solving, anxiety, and you are prolonging it for however Long that takes. And by the way, that takes indefinite amount of time because you're solving something you have possibly misdiagnosed and you are solving for potential outcomes that aren't even in The present. They are made up things, right? So that is what is happening when you add words to a feeling. And not only that, but the wave never crests and it never breaks. You don't allow that process to happen. And so for me, What was absolutely mind-boggling is that there was no work to be done. There was no solving or fixing to be done. Like literally, I just put the energy towards whatever the rumble constricting thing was. Then it was over and I had this weird peace and was able to go to sleep because I hadn't introduced the words that then I needed to spend the next three hours solving for and working my energy And frustration and having all the pretend arguments in my head that I thought was in service to resolving my feeling. But the feeling resolved on its own in its 90 seconds of a window. ([Time 0:14:08](https://share.snipd.com/snip/cb2d3376-eace-4931-8320-390f4f312805)) - **A Minute-Long Pulsation That Passed** - Amanda tried directing energy into her body and felt a clenching pulsation that stopped after about a minute. - The sensation resolved without any problem-solving or labeling, allowing her to sleep. Transcript: Amanda Doyle About the feeling to try to feel what it felt like. And so my energy goes away from my head and into wherever it is in my body. And in that case, it was like a kind of like clenching, like pulsating. I stayed with it for one minute, and then it stopped. And this is what I think people are talking about. Okay. It turns out that thinking about feelings is not the same as feeling your feelings. Wow. That's right. Glennon Doyle That's good. Amanda Doyle Thinking about your feelings turns out to be the opposite of feeling your feelings. ([Time 0:15:46](https://share.snipd.com/snip/94e679dc-c65a-4c14-a8a8-d79db85b73c2)) - **Words Turn Feelings Into Anxiety** - Adding words to a feeling turns it into anxiety that never exhausts itself. - Feelings naturally exhaust; anxiety perpetuates and fuels ongoing mental loops. Transcript: Amanda Doyle Thoughts. But it's not even the wave you've, you've got, you've, you've ignored the wave. You have now been like, I think you're solving the wrong problem. And it's not, it is not a feeling. It is anxiety. When you're adding words to a feeling, you are in anxiety. And so when you're in anxiety, that is the opposite. Anxiety doesn't exhaust itself. Feelings exhaust themselves. So when I would say, hey, my tool is anxiety. I'm here to solve your feelings. I am now ignoring my feelings because they don't operate in words. And now I am in the spin cycle of anxiety, which by definition will never end. So like, and I'm also feeding that anxiety to such an extent that I am now fighting with people who haven't started fighting with me. I am finishing pretend conversations that will likely never happen. And so I'm now adding that to my mental load. So when I have the actual conversations or the actual things, I am bringing all of that pent up energy to those interactions. But like, what is so huge to me is that there is a system that requires nothing of me to resolve itself. Abby Wambach Like it seems so simple that it should not be true. Right. But I think it is. ([Time 0:21:10](https://share.snipd.com/snip/c5a9506a-603f-4f14-9076-97dc99346438)) - **Stay With Yourself Like A Caregiver** - Refuse self-abandonment by staying present with your internal experience instead of escaping into thought. - Practice meeting your own feelings like a parent would hold a crying child: stay close and let the wave pass. Transcript: Abby Wambach Right. But I think it is. It requires presence of you. It requires like what you're describing to me sounds like refusing self-abandonment. Like sometimes we go to our mind because that's what we've been doing forever. And it's almost like a form of self-abandonment of not like staying with yourself and staying with the feeling. So it does require something of you. Like you did something different with your awareness. Amanda Doyle Right. Right. It's, it's a, but it doesn't feel like self abandonment. It feels like, like I always thought when I went and was like, what am I feeling? Let me solve that. I was partnering with myself. That's right. That I was helping myself out, that I was hooking myself up like, hey, body, you don't need to be alone in this. I'm here to help. I'm here to solve for you. I'm here to brainstorm and problem solve. And so it didn't feel like a denial. It felt like, you know, it's the equivalent of like, if your kid is crying and you run in and you say, oh my God, what happened? Who's mad? Okay. I can call their mom who can do whatever. Maybe you could try this versus going in and holding them and letting them cry it out. Abby Wambach Oh my God. That's it. That is what everyone's talking about. It's a form of parenting your inner child, reparenting yourself. It's like staying with yourself, not making up stories, being with the wave until it's over. ([Time 0:22:44](https://share.snipd.com/snip/261cb2e1-4e51-4757-a091-34e22becf192)) - **The Body Knows How To Cleanse Itself** - The body has innate self-processing capacity that often only needs you to get out of its way. - Intervening with words or problem-solving can disrupt a natural resolution system. Transcript: Amanda Doyle In fact, assistance will only fuck it up. System felt as profound to me as when Bobby was being born and we took, you know, six months of Bradley natural birth classes and read the books and bought all the shit and figured out what We need to do on day one and day two and day three. And here's like the breast consultant person who's going to come help with the thing. And he was born. And 30 seconds after he was born, they put him on my chest. And he started rooting around, looking for my breast, attached himself and started nursing. Now, I also realize nursing is very hard for a lot of percentage of the people and very hard for a lot of babies for a lot of reasons. It didn't happen for me, but... Yes. But for some... For my baby and for some large portion of babies, 30 seconds after they're born, you have taught them nothing. There has been zero, literally zero things modeled for them in the world. There is no learning or of any kind. And he knew exactly what he needed to do to exist. And for me, it felt like this kind of like, oh my God, is everything I've taught been wrong? Because I've always just taught that you had to acquire more knowledge. You had to figure something out. ([Time 0:32:22](https://share.snipd.com/snip/6dc90725-80bb-4341-a64b-0971ea98acc2)) - **Don't Use Others To Calm Your Wave** - Avoid using other people to regulate your nervous system when a feeling arises. - Wait out the wave yourself so you don't create messy interactions or unnecessary conflict. Transcript: Abby Wambach Anyway, I did not sit with it enough. What sometimes I tend to do when I attach words and then I reach out to somebody that I think should fix it. And I made up a story about no one's protecting us. And then I somehow connect that to somebody in our life who I feel like should be doing more. It's like a weird step process. And then last week, reached out to this person. Usually now that I'm almost 50, I can feel when I'm activated. I can feel when that wave is happening and I know don't do anything right now. The last thing you need to do is do anything right now. But sometimes when the wave feels really strong, I can override that. I hear it. I feel it. I know it. And I'm like, fuck it. I don't care. It's too big and I'm going to do it anyway. So I reached out to this person, said some shit. It was just shit. It was ridiculous. Like I have to see this person today. I have to be like, I am so sorry. And the crazy thing is that what I was saying to this person who I love so much was basically like, I don't trust that you're showing up. I don't trust you. I didn't say those words, but that's what I was saying. And I think what I really meant, like if you took out my heart and like untangled everything that was going on in that moment, I think what I meant is I trust you so much and I'm scared that, Can you help me? I think that's what I was saying. Can you help me protect my family? Can you, are you my mom? Glennon Doyle Like, I trust you so much and I feel scared. Abby Wambach I'm scared. And can you fix it? And all of this, all of this, the stuff that I'm going to have to clean up today, this stuff that I like, I got messy, got messy. It's embarrassing to get messy. It's like needy and messy and not making sense and entitled and all these things. Anyway, if I had sat with the energy inside of me and not asked someone else to fix the wave, none of this would be happening. ([Time 0:41:45](https://share.snipd.com/snip/6d2e80e4-15aa-4588-9354-172bdd6351c5)) - **We Learned To Solve Instead Of Feel** - Many people learned to intellectualize feelings because their families rewarded problem-solving, not internal sensing. - That adaptation protected them then but blocks access to self-intimacy and bodily wisdom now. Transcript: Amanda Doyle I think there's at least as many reasons for us to do that as there are people and experiences. I think people who think that their value is solving things. And so, you know, if your only tool is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. This thing has presented itself my job is to solve. We'll jump in and do that. I think people who, for whom that's their gift, where they're like, I, okay, this is how I contribute, is I help to solve. I think there's people who have never been taught that there's any value in feeling, which is, by the way, probably 95% of us. But we have been taught that the way that we survive this world is thinking and strategizing and solving. And so, of course, we're going to jump straight to that because we don't know what this weird thing is that keeps interrupting shit quietly. But we do know that if we keep our head on a swivel we'll be able to get through things and so of course that's why we do that there's also that like oh i feel like i'm not sure i'm allowed to Have this feeling so let me build a case for myself before anybody else tells me i'm not allowed to have it. But also, I think at the end of the day, it whether however you get there, it is the baseline is I don't have a tolerance for this discomfort. And so I can't tolerate this. I can't tolerate this icky thing. So my way to survive that is to attach whatever it is, is to say, I'm going to make this go away by doing the solve. I'm going to make this go away by making it someone else's fault. I'm going to go by lashing out at someone else. You You know, I was at Gilbert's All the Way to the River book event last, a couple weeks ago. And she, in her recovery for codependency and Love and Sex Addiction defined her sobriety as any day in which she does not use another person to regulate her nervous system. Yes. That's what I was doing last week. Is what I do every time I have a feeling. And it is either using myself or it is using someone else. Like yourself can count as that. You don't need to use a person to regulate your nervous system. By adding on your own solves or and I think that's what happened with you and your mess right you're like I need I need someone else I did it last night I was super upset about something and I felt very itchy and very uncomfortable in my body and very like this is all fucked up but i couldn't i it didn't make any sense to me and so i texted john about why why the fuck don't we have Any avocados in this house that's basically my problem had nothing to do with avocados right avocados have never been anyone's problem but that little hit of someone take a fall right Now to balance out the fact that I feel like shit and don't know why is using someone else to regulate my nervous system. Even when it has nothing to do with my original disquiet. But still, when if I'm paying really close attention, that did level that shit out a little bit. Someone else got in trouble for something, even if it had nothing to do with my thing. Abby Wambach You know, but then what happened? But then you had guilt and right. Did you experience the same thing that I'm experiencing now where I, every night I want to cringe. I go to bed each night. I go to bed every night and think about this thing last week and I can't sleep. I have to force myself to think about something else. Amanda Doyle What if, what if tonight when you go to bed and feel like shit about that thing, you don't add any words to it. Whatever the disquiet is will rise up in your body and it will because it's there and you let it. Yeah. It will go. See, here's what I think the thing is, is like I spend so much of my energy and time and thoughts purportedly solving my problems, which is not solving my problems because I'm solving Something that isn't a fucking problem. The feeling that I'm having is not the problem. And so if I let the feeling come in its baby 90 second lifespan and then go, suddenly I have so much time and mental energy to actually solve a problem. Abby Wambach This is making me wonder if this is the whole deal with trying to get parents to be emotionally mature. Because hear me out. If you live with a parent who didn't learn all of this, and who thinks that every feeling is a problem to be solved, and that everyone in the family are chess pawns to rearrange in some way So that they can be calm again, because they actually believe that. Then if you're one of the pawns, you don't ever have any practice in this internal language, because you're a pawn. You're always being moved to regulate somebody else's nervous system. So you don't witness what it feels like for somebody to just deal with their own stuff. And you also don't learn how to deal with your own stuff. That is the, the, the aversion of eggshells that psychologists talk about, right? So that could be for some listeners, an origin of, then evolution because i actually think a lot of the past generation didn't have this language and really thought if they were upset I mean even the word upset just means like a a lake where the there's a little ripple and then the the bottom comes up a little bit you up the sediment Yeah. It's like upset. It's like, so if you, there's actually not a value or judgment of the word upset. It just means activated a little bit. Amanda Doyle Well, and what you're talking about with the, ([Time 0:50:24](https://share.snipd.com/snip/6b14b2ec-a684-4194-a88c-e9d088d42902)) - **Teach Kids To Ride Their Own Waves** - Turn children back to their own feelings instead of solving for them so they learn self-regulation. - Practice disciplined holding and redirecting, not passive avoidance or authoritarian control. Transcript: Abby Wambach It's like it's hard it's all full circle because what activated me to do all this crazy shit is because my kid called me and was upset. And I could not sit with her hot loneliness for 1.7 seconds. And I only cannot do that because I must not believe that she can sit with her hot loneliness for 1.7 seconds. So if you buy this theory, then it works all the way through. Then you actually just have to keep turning your kid back to feeling it and letting it pass. Then fixing it and making a big mess because that makes them not trust themselves either. Then they're like, oh, my mom had to do all that shit. Glennon Doyle That's right. That is correct. Amanda Doyle Oh my God. I also just think if you say out loud, like I think the other, I think you can get really religious about atheism too. And this is what I mean by that. Exactly. You could be like, I am trying, I am not going to be an authoritarian parent. I'm going to be so the hell they're calling it i don't know that you like try so hard to get it right and then when you fuck that up you like try to hide it i mean i think i'm just always messing Up i'm like i'm like getting it right barely and then i'm messing up it up and then i'm just trying to be like oh lord what just happened there was i was upset that we keep making dinner and Nobody eats it and it's really frustrating and like this just happened last night i like got so upset because i'm trying so hard to make them eat food and nobody's eating the food. Abby Wambach But that's a story too. Do you think that's even it? Amanda Doyle Or is the wave like, we're all going to lose each other one day? Well, I'm just saying in the moment to moment things where I'm like, I'm just super frustrated and I snapped. But I snapped at a moment where Alice was like, I don't like that. And I was like, oh. And so I came back and I was like, listen, I want, I got really frustrated. I am really frustrated that no matter how hard we try, we can't seem to make this work. And what I want you to know is that I don't want you to pretend to like things you don't like. And I don't want you to put into your body things you don't want in your body. And I always want you to be free to say that. And so this is why I'm telling you that that was not about that. The way to fix that was not let me pretend to like this thing and smile even though I don't like it. What I'm telling you is I am just a human who's frustrated about not being able to figure out how to do dinner. And you bear no responsibility for that. What you're going to have to do is go in the kitchen and find something for yourself. Amen. Because I'm not taking responsibility for that either. Thank you for that. Thank you for that. Yeah, like Godspeed and hope you like bagels and cream cheese because that's probably what you're having. But like, but I'm going to take responsibility for what was mine there. You're going to take responsibility for what's yours. And we're going to super clarify that I actually actively don't want you to use your body to regulate me. I will be so sad if you ever put in your body something you don't want in your body or pretend to like something to make mommy happy. No. That's what, so like, I think it's just like saying out loud the things. I don't even think there's a perfect way to do any of it. Abby Wambach Well, cause also, and then I'm sorry, we're going to stop. But like, if you had jumped and fixed her thing, then Alice is learning to use you to regulate her problem. She has a problem. She does have a problem. She has a problem almost every night. Like, she doesn't like what's on the plate. You got upset because you were defending your right to not be used by Alice to solve her problem. So really, if Alice learns, I get upset at dinner because I don't like any food, so I better get up and get something. Then Alice is regulating herself. You're okay regulating your own self. You might have a feeling when Alice gets up to make something else and that will be your problem. Right. Everyone has to solve their own problem. Okay. Wow. Thank you for that. Absolutely amazing. Squad. ([Time 1:04:00](https://share.snipd.com/snip/5a9a9382-8bf2-4c6a-9ca8-afb9def0c661))