Why ‘Letting It Out’ Can Make You Feel Worse

Emotions are often accompanied by “action urges” that make us feel like doing something. Many of these action urges reinforce the initial emotion. For example, take a look at road rage: a person is driving really slowly (we’re talking 20 miles in a 35-mile zone), and the driver behind is getting increasingly angry, eventually finding an opportunity to pass the slow car. As the red-faced driver passes by, he rolls down his window and bellows, “What on earth are you thinking?” In this example, the emotion was anger, and the action urge was to aggressively scold the driver.

Now I have an interesting question: do you think the action urge here helped the driver calm down? Do you think that acting on his emotion brought him any peace of mind? I, for one, strongly doubt it. It’s more likely that the whole way down that road he kept muttering under his breath about the driver's incompetence, successfully working himself up into a frenzy. Negative emotions encourage actions that are often unhelpful, and sometimes detrimental, to the situation.

We live in a society that believes in having a certain lack of constraint, in “feeling what you’re feeling” without much discretion. In recent years, a viral activity has been “rage rooms.” Essentially, people come to these rooms to let out their anger. They’re given a bunch of objects, such as plates, bottles, and electronics, with only one instruction: destroy them. These rooms are intended to provide catharsis and help release negative emotion.

What many fail to realize is that acting on emotion often reinforces and strengthens it. Acting aggressively on anger might feel satisfying in the moment, but it can also maintain and intensify the anger long-term. Instead of teaching ourselves that we can experience anger and let it pass, we behave in ways that match the emotion, often to our situation's detriment.

When we feel an intense negative emotion, we should consider the action urges that accompany it. Are these actions what we truly want to do? In most cases, we’ll find they aren’t actually in our best interest. Moreover, instead of simply resisting the action urge, we can do the opposite of it. There’s a DBT skill called “opposite action.” In a moment of intense negative emotion, do the opposite of the action urge in order to decrease the negative emotion.

Let’s return to our angry driver. His action urge was to speed up, pass the other car, yell, and make his frustration known. The opposite action would be to do the reverse: slow down, slightly loosen his grip on the steering wheel, keep a distance, maybe switch his route on Google Maps. Doing the opposite of an action urge doesn't feel natural, easy, or pleasant. But ultimately, it helps you lessen the intensity of your negative emotion and prevents you from making rash decisions. You can even make a checklist for yourself: every time you apply opposite action to your life, you can mark it down. It’s a great skill to develop to maintain balance and peace.