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An emotion lasts about 90 seconds
Amygdala versus cortex
The amygdala, the brain's fear center, fires in a fraction of a second. The prefrontal cortex takes about ten times longer to turn on. Challenging a thought takes more bandwidth than reacting, so flooded people go straight to the amygdala.
The one-minute pause
One minute of pause lets the neurotransmitters and chemicals in the body relax, and then the prefrontal cortex can come online to question the thoughts and stay with them.
The spiky ball
In her practice, dating coach Sabrina Zohar has people close their eyes for about three minutes and focus on the sensation. If it is a black spiky ball in the chest, she asks what happens if the ball is bounced. Every person who has tried it reports that it feels less intense.
Why does stress switch off careful thinking?
Neuroscientist Amy Arnsten of Yale reviewed the evidence in a 2009 paper in Nature Reviews Neuroscience. She found that even mild uncontrollable stress can impair the prefrontal cortex by flooding it with norepinephrine and dopamine. As the prefrontal cortex goes offline, older, more automatic brain circuits, including the amygdala, take over. The prefrontal cortex handles planning, flexibility, and the regulation of emotion.
Why does rethinking restart an emotion?
Psychologist Susan Nolen-Hoeksema studied rumination, the habit of repeatedly turning over the causes and consequences of a feeling. Starting in the early 1990s, her research showed that people who ruminated stayed in a depressed mood longer than people who distracted themselves. Her response styles theory, introduced in 1991, laid out why: each replay of the thoughts keeps the emotion fed.
How did a stroke inspire the 90-second idea?
Jill Bolte Taylor was a Harvard-trained neuroanatomist when she had a stroke in the left hemisphere of her brain in 1996, at age 37. She described the experience and her recovery in the 2008 book My Stroke of Insight. The book spent time on the New York Times best-seller list.
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