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But get this: there is credible research that movement and exercise is as effective as Zoloft in reducing depression.

The study involved splitting clinically depressed people into three groups: The first group did four months of aerobic exercise (three sessions of forty-five minutes each) while the second group took the antidepressant Zoloft and the third group did both.

By the end of the four months, all three groups had experienced their depressions lift and reported fewer dysfunctional attitudes and increased happiness and self-esteem.

Lyubomirksy concluded...

Yesterday we talked about how an emotional overreaction or flooding lasts a mere 6 seconds. 

What you do during those six seconds can be either helpful or harmful in dealing with the situation that you are facing. 

What is NOT useful to do whilst you are pausing is to replay the situation in your mind, think about how the other person is wrong or to plot your revenge.

Instead try this:

1. Ask yourself: What do you want from this situation and for yourself? 
2. Remind yourself that you only have control over your own thoughts and behaviours. 
3. Get in touch with your core values. What do you stand for? What can you say or do that comes from those values rather than in reaction to what the other person is doing. 

These steps will help you gain your composure, to focus on what is most important in the here and now and prepare you to continue the conversation minus the overreaction.

Last week we started talking about flooding (aka emotional hijacking) and how it shuts down our thinking brain and can lead us to behave in ways that we later regret. 

Although it is very uncomfortable and a potentially destructive state of mind, there is one very good piece of news about flooding: It only lasts about 6 seconds. 

Yes. Six seconds. 

So when we encounter an event which is emotionally triggering for us, we can practice waiting six seconds before responding. 

Pausing for six seconds gives the rational brain a chance to process the sensory information.  It allows the thinking brain to put the breaks on the alarm set off by the amygdala reacting to an outside stressor. It allows us to respond based on our values rather than react based on our heated emotions at the time. 

So take a breath and start counting . . . 
1001 . . . 1002 . . .1003 . . . 1004 . . . 1005 . . . 1006

Even if we have high emotional intelligence, we can expect to feel triggered or flooded occasionally. The sign of having high EQ, in other words, is not that we never get triggered but that 

a)   We get triggered less often
b)   We don’t act on our emotions and 
c)   We are able to soothe ourselves quite quickly.

In her book Stop Overreacting: Effective Strategies for Calming Your Emotions, author Dr. Judith P. Siegel suggests asking yourself the following questions to assess whether you have a problem with overreacting. 

Do you often:

§  Lash out at loved ones?

§  Have to apologize to others for your actions or words?

§  Feel surprised at your seemingly uncontrollable reactions?

§  Assume the worst about people and situations?

§  Withdraw when things get emotionally...

As we mentioned yesterday, an emotional hijack or flooding is an immediate and overwhelming emotional response out of proportion to what triggered the response. Flooding happens because the triggering event has triggered a more significant emotional threat.

The reason we do not behave rationally when we are flooded is because when the alarm system of the brain (the amgydala) perceives a threat, it sparks the brain into self-protective "fight or flight" survival mode with a stress hormone, epinephrine. 

In a fight, flight or freeze mode, the thinking component of our brain is shut down. We simply cannot think effectively and usually cannot speak with clarity or insight.

So how do we know that we are flooded? Experts explain that there are three hallmarks of emotional flooding: 

1. A strong emotional reaction out of proportion to the stimulus or trigger
2. A sudden onset – we are often blindsided and cannot understand where this strong reaction is coming...

Overreactions are often referred to as "flooding", "emotional hijackings" or "amygdala hijackings". 

The term hijackings is appropriate as the rational or thinking mind (the neocortex) is basically hijacked or flooded when we are emotionally overwhelmed. 

In order to prevent and deal with such flooding or hijacking, it can be very helpful to understand how our brain is designed to react to danger. 

To put it extremely simply, when our brain senses imminent danger, a whole system gets into action and blasts adrenaline into our bodies to cope with the perceived danger at hand. The thinking parts of our brain shut down and we react instantly. When there is an actual danger, this automatic and immediate response saves our lives. 

If we see what looks like a snake for example, it is much wiser to react instantly to protect ourselves rather than to look at the snake, consider the actual danger and plan a course of action. 

In situations like these, the brain...

We have begun hinting at emotional overreactions for the last few days. Just to be clear, emotional overreactions do not only mean exploding or shouting in anger. 

Different people cope differently when they are emotionally triggered: some may explode and others may shut down and disengage from the other person. 

An external overreaction or explosion is visible. Others can see for example, if we lash out in anger, throw our hands up or have an angry expression. 

An internal overreaction (or "implosion") on the other hand is an emotional response that may be undetected by onlookers. We may appear to be calm on the outside even though an emotional storm is brewing inside. At this point we are so emotionally flooded that we cannot think straight. We may be replaying a situation over and over in our heads, wondering if we said or did the right thing, overanalyzing a comment made by a friend or loved one or we may be having a stream of negative thoughts and...

Have you ever witnessed a fight or aggression between two or more people? And if you have, did you notice how the tension between those who were involved in the conflict appeared to spread to everyone around even if they were in no way involved?

This is what we mean when we say that there is "tension in the air". Like the ripples created when you throw a stone in a pond, our emotions, and the behaviours resulting from those emotions appear to spread to everyone who witnessed the emotion in action. 

And it doesn’t stop at the witnesses either.

When people see others engaged in conflict, they disperse and take with them a feeling of anxiety and stress. They may in turn act out those feelings on others and so on it goes. . . 

So notice yourself catching a bad mood from others when it happens the next time. 

When we become mindful of our emotional unleashing on others, we are much more motivated to take action to begin to change things.

In Daniel Goleman's book "Emotional Intelligence", the author explains that there are five main domains of emotional intelligence: Self awareness, emotional regulation, internal motivation, recognizing emotions in others and handling relationships. 

So let’s begin to explore these domains one at a time. 

Self awareness:

This is the foundational basis of emotional intelligence.

Self awareness is the ability to recognize and understand your own emotions. As we mentioned last week, our emotions drive us to act. If we are unaware of our emotions, we will act in ways that don’t make sense to us or to others. Our unrecognized and unprocessed emotions may result in us acting against our own self interest and in ways that hurt other people.

Recognizing our emotions as they are happening also allows us to become aware of of the effect of our moods and behaviours on other people, both at work and at home.

Once we become aware of our emotions, we can begin to recognize the...