In whatever form you choose to do it, naming your emotions shifts the activity in your brain from the emotional center to the higher order prefrontal cortex; it’s there that you have access to insight, creativity, and reframing of issues. “Name it to tame it” as UCLA School of Medicine professor of psychiatry Dan Siegel coined. Even the words you choose to describe your experiences to yourself — your self-talk — can begin to change your emotional state. Looking around and saying “This is crazy!” will leave you in a more distressed mental space than asserting, “We can meet this challenge.”
Daniel Goleman
