The 4 Ns Strategy: How Naming Emotions Can Help You Regulate Them
Have you ever found yourself feeling overwhelmed by difficult emotions in response to a challenging situation or person? By incorporating the 4 Ns strategy - awareness, self-regulation, self-compassion, and normalization - you can learn to approach these situations with greater equanimity and calm. In particular, the act of naming the bodily sensations and emotions that arise when we feel triggered can be a powerful tool for regulating these difficult feelings. In this article, we will explore the 4 Ns strategy in more detail, and explain how it can help you navigate difficult situations with greater ease and self-awareness.
Awareness coupled with Acceptance - the 4 Ns Strategy
When we are triggered by difficult people or when we face adversity, awareness becomes particularly powerful when it is coupled with a deep sense of acceptance of ourselves and of whatever we are currently experiencing.
The 4N strategy below incorporates awareness, self-regulation, and self-compassion. Once you start using it, you will see that you can use it quickly (in as little as one minute) and still get benefits from it.
Step 1: Notice the signs that your body gives you when you are triggered
The simple act of noticing the signals of our body sets the foundation that allows us to depart from our “fight, flight, or freeze” mode.
The internal process we experience when we get a nasty email from a colleague, a rejection for a promotion, a contemptuous look from our partner, or a student who is yelling in class, is very similar to the one we experience when we are in actual imminent physical danger. While our brain can distinguish the difference after a few moments have passed, the immediate internal experience is very similar. Whether it is a stimulus that triggers anxiety, trauma, or anger, our sympathetic nervous system sends hormones that increase our alertness, our heart rate, the speed of our breathing, and even the amount of glucose in our bloodstream. Our body is sending us a clear message that says: “Pay attention to me!”.
While it is common to feel “hijacked” by our body’s reaction to the stimulus, it is possible, a split second later, to tell yourself: “Wow, I just felt hijacked, my body just told me that. I’m noticing it in my heart, chest and throat.”
Setting the intention to notice your body signals when triggered, will lead you to successfully notice them fast, and the more practice you have, the easier it will become. Also, daily mindfulness somatic practice will help you be more attuned to those signals.
Step 2: Name (in your mind or out loud) the emotions and bodily sensations that you are experiencing. Whatever you name, you tame.
Every emotion is tied to a sensation in our body. The word emotion comes from the Latin root emovere which means energy-in-motion. When we experience an emotion we experience energy moving in our body, that is why emotions are often referred to as feelings. Because we can literally feel the sensation of the emotion in our body. If you want to read about a research study that proves this, use the QR code below or go to eqschools.com/resources to access this resource.
Name the sensation and emotion, silently, to yourself: “Wow, my heart is beating faster and I’m feeling angry!” or “Woh, my chest feels so heavy and like it’s collapsing on itself, I’m scared.” or “Ah, my stomach feels like it has a massive brick in it, I’m just feeling so sad about this.” The process of naming what is going on immediately tames your experience, and you are no longer hijacked by the emotion and sensation, you are now an observer of the emotion and sensation and you can approach your experience with equanimity (aka mental calmness). As Dr. Daniel Siegel says, whatever you name, you tame.
If you are having a hard time noticing where you feel your emotions in your body, you can simply notice your heart either by putting a hand on it or simply bringing your awareness to your chest, and naming whatever emotions you experience.
Step 3: Normalize - Allow the emotion to be there.
The only dangerous emotion is a repressed emotion, for whatever you resist persists. If you try to stuff an emotion down it will become stronger over time and take more of your energy. You are experiencing these emotions because you are human. There are two groups of people in the world who don’t feel difficult emotions. Psychopaths and dead people. So if you are experiencing emotions such as anger, shame, and fear, that’s a great sign. In other words, there is nothing wrong with you.
Give yourself permission to be human by allowing the feeling(s) to be there. I recommend that you even tell yourself silently in your head: “I’m feeling angry with this kid, and it makes sense that I am. I’m human, most people would feel the same.” “I’m feeling ashamed of making this mistake in front of my colleagues, most people would feel exactly the same way.” “I’m feeling afraid because I’m human, there is nothing wrong with me.” To be clear, you are not justifying any bad behavior on your part at this stage, and you are not asserting that you have a right to feel like this forever and be stuck in it. You are simply saying: “At this moment, I’m feeling X, and that is okay. ” This step is our bridge from the sympathetic nervous system (fight, flight, or freeze) to the parasympathetic nervous system, the rest and digest mode of our nervous system.
Step 4: Nurture - Soothe yourself by taking in slow breaths and making your exhalations longer than your inhalations.
This last step allows us to fully activate our parasympathetic nervous system so we can experience a physiological shift and a rush of soothing hormones such as serotonin and endorphins. The fastest, and most effective way to do so is by stimulating our vagus nerve (the longest nerve in our body that connects our gut, heart, and brain). The easiest way to stimulate the vagus nerve is through the regulated breathing exercise on page… The longer exhalations activate vagal tones in our body, which allow the parasympathetic nervous system to take hold. If you only have time to take a couple of deep breaths before you respond, those breaths can make all the difference between having a rotten rest of the day to having an amazing rest of the day.
You can deepen the nurturing and soothing experience by touching the part of your body that is feeling most active with one or two hands with intentional warmth and compassion. This allows us to by-pass our thinking brain and to experience, at the deepest level, that we are cared for, and that we are safe. With every exhalation, invite that part of your body to “soften”, by silently saying the word “soften” and visualizing that part of the body relax.
If you want more of these prompts, you can get my book here.