Blog 2: Working Through Negative Emotions

Working Through Negative Emotions After Cancer: The Timer Technique

If you spend your whole day worrying, you need to put some limits on your brain. Believe it or not, we can actually tell our brain what to spend its time thinking about. I created this technique for patients about 15 years ago, and this has been lifechanging for many. Today, we will learn to allow bad feelings for some part of the day, and then tell our brain that it is done with fear, worrying, obsessing, what-if-ing for the next 24 hours. This is how you do it. Get a timer, your phone, the oven timer, whatever you have. Set aside time that you can do this without interruption – if you have a crazy life like me, one option is getting to work early and sitting in the car away from everyone! This time will make you a better parent, spouse, daughter or son, friend, and colleague, so don’t feel like you are being selfish taking this time every day. Set the timer for 15 minutes. Then really allow all the awful feelings. Lean into them. I imagine opening your arms to them, like old friends meeting up. See what’s there that you are always trying to push down, avoid or deny. Let them wash over you, without a whole lot of outside reaction to them. Some tears may slip out, but uncontrolled wailing is not processing them. Punching the wall is not processing them. When you start this, the feelings may feel overwhelming. The way to start to process them and get some relief from them is to get out of your head and into your body for a few minutes. Describe to yourself how they feel in your body. Where are they located? Do they flutter, or pulse, or sit like a stone in your belly? Are they heavy or light? Are they hot or cold? When you describe them to yourself, it allows you to identify them and gives you some relief from them in your brain.

I know this sounds really unpleasant, but hear me out. They are just feelings. A vibration in your body. They can’t hurt you. When you let them be there, let them in, they actually get less intense with time. Suppressing or avoiding our feelings is like trying to keep a beach ball under water. You can’t. Eventually, it pops up, and goes higher than if you had left it floating on the surface. So – let them in. It’s only for a little while. Be there with them. When the timer goes off, tell your brain, ok, that’s it for the day. For the rest of the day, I will think about what brings me joy. My family, my job, my pets, what book I am reading or project I’m passionate about. When the thoughts come creeping back, and they will, remind yourself, no, it’s not time for that now. Right now is time for living. There is time set aside again tomorrow for them and they will be there then.

I’m going to share one of the places that in the past I have really resisted emotions and how this work helped me. I have 4 kids, and I have a huge fear of something happening to both me and my husband, leaving them without parents. I also have a huge fear of flying. That may surprise some of the people who know me, because that fear doesn’t keep us from having epic adventures. When my husband and I would go away without the kids, the flight was a HUGE issue. I was terrified. Initially, I would just sweat, and grip the armrests, and stuff it down. But every trip was worse than the one before. It started being an issue even when we flew WITH our kids. I started taking some Xanax before we flew. A normal human dose did nothing. I was literally vibrating in my seat from the strain of forcing the terror down, denying it, resisting it. So I took a stronger dose the next time. I was still wide awake and panicked during the flight, but when my husband and I arrived in New Orleans for a long weekend, I slept for 18 hours. It took that long to get the big dose of sedative out of my system. I am sure you can imagine, this took a big chunk out of the 3 days we had away.

Then I started life coaching, and decided take a flight with the kids with us with NO meds so that I could really work on allowing the anxiety. I got on the plane, and my heart was hammering, I was sweating, and really miserable. I sat down and closed my eyes. I went through my body and noted all of the sensations. Pounding heart, pit in my stomach, tight shoulders and neck, feeling my muscles in my limbs trembling, a little dizzy and lightheaded. I said, yes, this is anxiety. This is anxiety, and it can’t hurt me. I calmed down a little. We took off, the plane dipped a bit, and made a noise (like planes do when they take off!) and the anxiety came roaring back. Same process, note the sensations, remind myself, this is anxiety and it can’t hurt me. At that point, I also reminded myself that it does not help the pilot fly the plane. It does not lessen the chances of crashing. It changes nothing and just makes the experience so much worse for me. I decided at that point to forgo meds on ALL flights, including the ones just with my husband and me. We went away alone last Valentine’s weekend, just before all of the craziness from Corona came. I told him I was flying med free. I meditated when we sat down, and then used the rest of the flight to work on writing my first podcast. Both of us were amazed. I didn’t let myself grip the armrests – that is a form of resisting. I didn’t obsess that the plane might crash. Every time I thought that, I told myself, NO – I have faith in the pilot, just like my patients have faith in me. I had some mild anxiety at takeoff and landing, but it was manageable and not even a big deal. I stopped writing and just leaned into the anxiety. It was amazing. I hope that by sharing this, maybe some of you can see how allowing the negative emotions related to your cancer can make a huge difference in your experience of this. I don’t think I will ever love to fly, but we flew through a storm with lightning bolts jumping from cloud to cloud last March, while we were with the kids were on spring break. This normally would have had me in a full blown panic, but I weathered it with no more anxiety than the other people on the plane. And you, you never have to love that you had cancer, but you can live with it without having to avoid, resist or react to it.

If you are really struggling with negative emotions, I offer a free consult (minisession) to discuss one issue of your choosing, help you brainstorm it, give you a technique to work on it, and give you some information on how we can work together if that session was helpful. You can book a minisession HERE.