Dr. Cherise Johnson explains why emotional intensity peaks for about 90 seconds, how replaying the story prolongs it, and guides a four-step practice: name the emotion, wait 90 seconds, notice bodily sensations, and breathe.
Dr. Cherise opens the live, welcomes viewers from different places, asks them to rate their week, and encourages chat engagement to set a warm, communal tone.
She briefly introduces herself as a licensed clinician and shares personal context (perimenopause, neurodivergence, anxiety) to normalize imperfection and create a nonjudgmental space.
Dr. Cherise announces the topic—riding out emotions without acting on them—and frames the conversation by contrasting ignoring emotions with responding differently.
She teaches that the peak intensity of an emotion lasts about 90 seconds, describes amygdala activation and stress responses, and explains how replaying the story extends the emotional experience.
Dr. Cherise gives a four-step method—name the emotion, resist solving it for 90 seconds, notice where it shows up in the body, and breathe through it—using metaphors and brief audience prompts to guide practice.
She explains how pausing interrupts reactive behavior, reframes feelings as waves rather than commands, invites viewers to try the technique, and closes with follow-up info and reassurance.
Hello, conscious fear. It is so incredible to be here with you. I genuinely feel like it's been forever and it's been too long, which brings me to a point. You're going to have seasons where you're not showing up in certain spaces with the same level of consistency as you normally would. And if that happens, it's okay. You are still human. All is not lost. But as you find yourself in this space, come in, say hello. Let me know where you are in the world. It's our way of just reminding ourselves how incredible it is to connect with people all across the world, whether it's east to west, north to south.
Hello, Statesboro. And rate your week. Even though it is the start of the week because it's Monday, it's still a great way to kind of determine where am I right now? Where have I been? How am I feeling at this part of my day on a scale of 1 to 10? One meaning your week is already working you. 10 meaning you feel optimistic, at least about how you can show up in the week. Hello, Carlette. Hello, Andrea. It's so great to have you here. So I want to first introduce myself because you might be new. I'm Dr.
Cherise Johnson. I'm a licensed clinical mental health therapist, also a chief clinical officer at CADRE. But more importantly, I am a contributor in this space and I come to you as a human. I come to you as a woman who is in perimenopause, who lives with neurodivergent and who has also navigated anxiety, burnout, depression, and multiple health dynamics. which don't ever disqualify us from being able to share. And it's a reminder to you, hello, Vermont, that all are welcome and there are many ways to be well.
So know that you can come in this space and not be judged, right? What happens here stays here. Hello, Ken. You guys are making my heart smile. I've missed you so much. Today I want to focus on how do you ride out an emotional wave without letting it be the driver. I think that's a dynamic that is more real than sometimes we'd like to admit. I want to talk about it from kind of two different angles. Sometimes we're too good at letting an emotional wave ride, meaning We're ignoring it. We're not being honest about the impact.
And that's not necessarily, of course, what I'm encouraging. I'm more focused on what do you do when you notice that you are holding a significant emotion, whether that's overwhelmed, stress, burnout, anxiety, whatever the case may be, and you want to respond to it, but you're working on responding differently and really kind of getting yourself out of your normal. So here's what I also want you to keep in mind. I love sharing this with people. What if I told you that the most intense part of an emotion only lasts about 90 seconds?
Not the story you tell yourself, not the argument you replay, not the spiral that we create. The actual intensity of the emotion only lasts about 90 seconds. So the chemical surge that's in our body is only fueled if we continue the conversation, if we continue the narrative. So you don't have to believe every emotion that visits you and you don't have to respond to every emotion that visits you. If you're comfortable, take a moment and put in the chat what's an emotion that you can name and identify that you realize this is an emotion that has been challenging for me to manage or tolerate lately.
I'll go first. anxiety. I don't enjoy anxiety. Don't know anyone that does. And I also feel like the way anxiety has been settling on my body lately has felt a little different. It's like a new sensation of anxiety and it is so uncomfortable and so hard. But what is an emotion that you can say over the last week or two It's been really challenging. Yeah, frustration. No one enjoys frustration. All right, that is absolutely one. So here's what happens when something upsetting happens. Our brain's amygdala fires off.
That's our brain's alarm system. Am I safe? Am I not safe? Stress hormones are released. Your heart rate increases, your muscles tense, your body prepares to react. But here's the important part for us to always remember. that emotional wave is often going to be temporary. What turns into 90 seconds, into 90 minutes or 9 hours or 9 days is we repeatedly replay the event, imagining the worst case scenario or arguing with reality or mentally rehearsing what we wish we would have said. And all of that is somewhat common to do, but it keeps the story alive and then it keeps the emotion alive.
So here's a practical tool if you find yourself in one of these moments. The next time you feel overwhelmed, stressed, frustrated, anxious, X, Y, and Z, ride the wave. Here's step one, you name it. I'm feeling rejected. I'm feeling angry. I'm feeling afraid, whatever it is. Step two, don't solve it. That's the hard one. For 90 seconds, resist fixing, texting, explaining, defending, or making a decision. I know that I just gave some of you anxiety by saying not to try to fix it. For 90 seconds, don't fix it.
Step three, feel it physically. Where is it? Chest, stomach, shoulders, throat. and stay with that sensation. I want to ask you another question. So you have that emotion that you know that you've been experiencing over the last several weeks. Where is it showing up in your body? Take a moment and think about it. You could probably pause right now and track. Again, I'll say for me, anxiety was the emotion that I named and identified, and it has been sitting on my shoulders and in my low back like a ton of bricks.
And even though that's uncomfortable to feel and acknowledge, it's still helpful because it's a reminder to my brain that things aren't as great as I might be trying to tell myself. So step one is you name it. Step two, you don't solve it for at least 90 seconds. Step three, you feel it physically. Identify where you feel it. And then step four, breathe through it. Slow inhales, long exhales. Almost imagine yourself surfing a wave instead of fighting the ocean like it's here. and I'm just gonna ride it out.
Yeah, shoulders and neck shows up in emotional eating sometimes for sure. And you're just acknowledging that I can hang with this for a moment without crashing out. Here's why it's so important. That pause, that interruption, that stepping back for a moment allows us enough time to interrupt stimulus and action. Not every emotion requires an action. Sometimes the strongest thing that you can do is to stay present long enough to discover that that feeling was a wave, not a command. Feel it, name it, write it, then decide this is your power.
What deserves your energy, right? Because emotional maturity isn't learning how to never feel. It's learning how to not let every feeling take the wheel. Let me know how it goes as you incorporate this into your week. As always, I'm so glad you came. I'll be back. Stay tuned. Make sure you press follow and become a part of the community so that you get alerts as I come into this space. And remember, you're enough. You're doing so much better than you're giving yourself credit and everything that you feel won't last forever.
I promise. See you soon.
