Sensory Shock Therapy

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Girl playing in rain

I was in an emotional funk. Not sure why. Sometimes, they just show up. So, I did what, to me, seemed the reasonable thing. I went for a hike during one of our infamous below-zero wind chill events, after which I was in a funk no more. I call it “shock therapy,” although it bears no relationship to electro-convulsive therapy (ECT), sometimes used for intractable depression. On the other hand, in an indirect way maybe it does.

Now, most of us experience vexing moods that seem to appear without an obvious cause. Frequently, these involve anxiety or worry, melancholy or regret, or simply an amorphous agitation or disquiet. These moods can drive unhealthy behaviors, including self-medicating with food or alcohol, compulsive shopping, gambling, doom scrolling or other deleterious distractions. Of course, sometimes we just wallow in these funks, surmising there’s little to do but wait it out.   

However, there are healthier alternatives, including my version of shock therapy, which is basically a sensory “splash” that constitutes the mental equivalent of a cold bucket of water dumped on one’s head. Now, while this self-help approach doesn’t have to be painful to work, it does need to be sufficiently intense. My sensory immersion in wind and cold not only quieted my morose thinking, but also catalyzed a positive mood reset that persisted the remainder of the day.

While not for everyone, I sometimes recommend this approach to my clients. Most often, it involves interacting with the natural world, as was true with Sally.

“I have these mood swings where I’ll be feeling fine, and then all of a sudden, I just flip into a bad headspace,” she told me, exasperated.

Dramatic Shifts

The term that shrinks use for this seesaw tendency is “labile,” which refers to moods that shift abruptly and dramatically. In Sally’s case, she often went from happy to gloomy in the blink of an eye and without warning. What’s more, rarely could she pinpoint a clear catalyst for these emotional gyrations.

Labile moods can stem from a variety of causes, including medical ones. I never assume moodiness is always psychological and often refer clients for a medical evaluation to rule our physical sources. However, unless these swings are extreme and interfere with one’s functioning, they are not necessarily suggestive of mental illness. Some of us are just moody. Nonetheless, for the labile crowd, it’s important to develop methods that help reduce the duration and intensity of these emotional undulations.  

For Sally, doing so involved experimenting with a variety of nature-based interactions, including getting soaked down in the rain, swimming, making snow angels, and getting buffeted by the wind on blustery days. Of course, nature doesn’t always provide high amplitude conditions, so alternatives become necessary. For Sally, these included cold showers, short bursts of intense exercise, banging on her son’s drum set and even extemporaneous dancing.

The key here is awakening one’s senses in a dramatic fashion. Research suggests that high intensity sensory inputs change emotional states, primarily by stimulating zoned-out neural pathways and putting the thinking mind (the source of many funks) at the back of one’s experiential bus. 

So, if you slip into a dour mental space, consider sensory shock therapy. Sometimes you really can, as they say, snap out of it.

For more, visit philipchard.com.