🧠 How the 90-Second Rule Helps You Stop a Mindset Spiral
Ever notice how quickly your brain can go from “I’m fine” to “Everything is falling apart”?
That’s your fight-or-flight system kicking in your amygdala firing off stress chemicals like it's sounding the alarm.
Here’s something powerful to know: emotions chemically peak for about 90 seconds. After that? It’s not your nervous system keeping the spiral going, it’s your thoughts.
🧬 “Within 90 seconds from the initial trigger, the chemical component of my anger has completely dissipated.”
– Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor, Harvard-trained neuroanatomist
(from her book My Stroke of Insight)
Dr. Taylor explains that if an emotion lingers longer than 90 seconds, it’s because we’re feeding it replaying the story in our mind, judging it, or resisting it.
🧘♀️ So how do we stop spiralling?
You don’t need to suppress the feeling, in fact doing the opposite helps. This is where emotional acceptance comes in. Just saying, “This is what I feel right now” can interrupt the loop. You're not fixing the emotion you're letting it move through you.
Try this when you feel the spiral start:
🧠 Name it: “I feel overwhelmed.”
💧 Regulate the body: Splash cold water, shake out tension, or walk away for a moment.
🕯️ Accept, don’t resist: “This won’t last forever. I don’t need to fix it right now.”
Naming the emotion helps engage your prefrontal cortex the part of the brain responsible for logic, planning, and self-control. This has the effect of calming the amygdala’s stress response.
You don’t have to get it perfect. You just have to pause long enough to let your brain reset. The spiral loses its power when you stop feeding it!
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Dolores Andrew