What Does "Self Help" Mean?

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Avoiding emotions only strengthens them.

Naming feelings creates space for thoughtful response.

Waves of emotion can often pass in just 90 seconds.

Self-awareness builds trust, unlocking clarity, resilience, and better decisions.

At the beginning of my session with Lloyd, I knew something was off.

“It’s the product launch,” he said, anxiety written across his face. “It’s going worse than I ever could have imagined.”

Lloyd had already founded and sold one successful company. He entered his second venture brimming with confidence and backed by plenty of investors. But unfortunately, when his product launched, it was clear it would evoke none of the warm reception of the first.

“How could I have been so wrong?” he lamented in our session. To him, it seemed like all roads were leading towards failure. The fear of it consumed him, paralyzing him until he felt unable to make decisions at work or otherwise.

Before pushing Lloyd to set any goals or put any plans in motion, I asked him to describe how this fear felt to him.

“It feels like a tight knot in my stomach,” he responded woefully.

“Feel into it,” I replied. Together, we took several deep breaths until Lloyd told me the knot in his stomach was dissipating. “What else?” I asked.

“There’s a kind of fog in my head, between my eyes.”

I attempted to draw Lloyd’s focus to this fog, suggesting that he travel to its center in his mind. Though he was resistant at first, eventually he pictured traversing it.

“It’s lifting,” he said. “Not completely, but I can see a few steps ahead.”

“That’s enough,” I told him.

Lloyd’s challenges didn’t disappear overnight. But over time, his relationship to them changed. Each time the fog returned, or the knot reappeared, he stopped resisting and instead turned toward the experience, exploring it with curiosity.

Our anxieties, fears, grief, and anger can all manifest throughout our bodies in different ways. I’ve found while working with clients that they’re expending much more energy than they realize while resisting these so-called “negative” sensations.

It takes trust to open ourselves to life. Lloyd had to have confidence that he’d be all right, no matter what awaited him in the fog. By learning to sense and examine his emotions, he took away much of their power over him. Soon, he was able to find new creative solutions with his team, never giving up until they found something that worked.

Research Reveals: Labeling Emotions and Regaining Control

When we notice and name our difficult emotions, we create much-needed space from them. By putting feelings into words, engaging the brain’s language centers, we shift out of raw reactivity and gain the freedom to respond more thoughtfully and intentionally.[i]

As part of the interviews[ii] I conducted with individuals nominated by their peers as the embodiment of spiritual intelligence, trust emerged again and again as a theme. These subjects understood that when we shy away from our emotions, or “avoid thinking about something,” that we are ignoring our bodies’ requests for attention. Only by turning inward can we begin to understand what those signals are trying to communicate.

What Does "Self Help" Mean?

Take our Self-Esteem Test

Find a therapist near me

Furthermore, psychology readers might be familiar with Jill Bolte Taylor’s “90-second rule,”[iii] which explains that when an emotion is triggered, the body experiences a chemical surge that naturally dissipates in about 90 seconds (unless we keep feeding it with looping or recurrent thoughts). By pausing, noticing, and allowing that initial wave to pass without resisting it, we build self-control and give ourselves the capacity to choose how we respond next.

As Viktor Frankl put it, “Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”

Your Turn: A Simple Awareness Practice

Begin by noticing your present experience. What sensations are you aware of in your body? What emotions, if any, are arising? What thoughts are moving through your mind?

If you detect any tension or discomfort, simply observe it. What happens in your body and your breath when you bring gentle awareness to that tension?

Now, if you’d like, allow yourself to make a small adjustment to become more comfortable. As you do, notice: What happens when something that was in the background of your awareness is brought into focus? Does it soften, intensify, or shift in some other way?

Let whatever is present be there, just as it is, for three slow breaths.

As you continue breathing, notice any changes. Has the feeling shifted? Become more or less intense? Taken on a different quality?

Finally, reflect: What did you observe? What did you learn about how your inner experience changes when you bring awareness to it?

Even this brief exercise is a form of meditation. With practice, these moments of awareness can help you become more present, more connected to yourself, and more able to respond to life with greater centeredness, clarity, and intention.

[i] Putting Feelings Into Words: Affect Labeling As Implicit Emotion Regulation by Jared B. Torre & Matthew D. Lieberman (2018). Emotion Review, 10(2), 116–124.

[ii] Amram, Yosi (2007). The Seven Dimensions of Spiritual Intelligence: An Ecumenical Grounded Theory (PDF). Paper presented at the 115th Annual (August 2007) Conference of the American Psychological Association, San Francisco, CA. Available at intelligensi.com/spiritual-intelligence/

[iii] Taylor, J. B. (2009). My stroke of insight. New American Library.

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