8 Simple Ways to Calm Yourself Down When Strong Emotions Hit

When anger, anxiety, frustration, or fear starts to take over, it can be hard to know what to do in the moment. These eight simple calming strategies can help you interrupt the downward spiral and regain your sense of balance.

I’ve found that I can’t do much to prevent the rise of negative emotions, but I have found ways that help to halt a downward plunge. I call it “calling down the calm.”

Negative emotions are often justifiable, especially in emotionally or physically toxic environments, and on those days when one calamity after another seems to strike. But ruminating on what caused the feelings or acting impulsively when I’m in the grip of a negative state does nothing to fix the situation and sends you down a path you may not want to follow.

In my experience, “calling down the calm” is empowering because each technique involves self-awareness and choice. Each of these strategies is available immediately, costs nothing, and takes no training.

1. Take a Breath (or 10)

Breath is one of our greatest psychological and physiological tools. It’s always available, and, practiced mindfully, it exerts immediate positive effects on both body and mind. Try it right now: Inhale slowly, breathing through your nose and expanding your lungs. Keep your shoulders relaxed and relax your jaw. Exhale slowly through your mouth, making a soft “whooshing” sound as you exhale.

Repeat this breathing exercise. Do it for several minutes until you start to feel better.

2. Count to 10

Mom’s old advice to “Count to 10” really holds up in moments of great emotional stress. Not only does it refocus attention, but also its ordering function tends to keep me moving forward with the task at hand or with a calm and appropriate response to the situation.

3. Sit With the Discomfort

Somebody once gave me this valuable advice: “Nobody ever died from a strong feeling. Sometimes just sitting with your discomfort and doing nothing is the most powerful act of all.” This is different from suppression, because I’ve acknowledged the rising feeling and named it. I find naming a powerful psychological tool because it gives me some distance from the focus of my discomfort, so I don’t fully identify with it. I feel angry, but I’m not the anger.

4. Tell Yourself to Stop

Sometimes just interrupting the negative feeling with a stern injunction to quit it works wonders. Because all I have to do to avoid any damage from hanging on to a feeling, really, is just to stop it cold.

5. Get Moving

Intentional physical movement—a quick turn around the parking lot or the driveway, a few jumping jacks—brings the attention to the working muscles instead of the mental chaos.

6. Laugh

Laughing, even when you don’t feel like it, measurably reduces stress hormones and positively affects the immune function and cardiovascular systems. Researchers say that laughter is contagious and works its magic best in company with others. But laughing alone works, too. Fake laughter works. Even anticipating a humorous experience confers health benefits. 

7. Groan, Shout, or Scream

People instinctively groan in the grip of strong emotion. But I’m talking about groaning intentionally, just to break the grip of a negative emotion. It works wonders for me. I do most of my groaning and shrieking in my car (alone), where I don’t feel self-conscious. Groaning and shrieking encourages deeper, more complete breathing (see previous) and sometimes morphs into hilarious laughter (see previous).

8. Look for a Little Joy

Be joyful. Finally, when I can remember to, I take the advice of the opening lines from Carl Sandburg’s wonderful poem, “Joy”:

Let a joy keep you.
Reach out your hands
And take it as it runs by… .
Keep away from the little deaths.

After all, nothing describes the corrosive effects of long-held negative feelings better than “the little deaths.” I’m for grabbing the next little joy that runs by!