Rock Paper Scissors
I went to a psychologist many years ago. Overall, I think he helped me but he also reinforced some of bad ideas I had acquired, from who knows where. It's also possible, even likely, that I heard what I wanted to hear and glommed onto the things that I found most agreeable. One of the best things he gave me though was a framework for thinking about my emotional states and some concrete things I could do to disrupt ineffective thought loops. It's basically a game of rock paper scissors, though I didn't think of it that way at the time.
As he expressed it, I have three systems: cognitive, emotional, physical. Most of the time my cognitive system is the dominant one. I walk around in a calm, rational state. For example, as I write this I am in a neutral state and my cognitive system is at the fore. My decisions are driven by my intellect and I'm mostly dispassionate. But at times my emotional state overwhelms my cognitive state. I no longer act rationally. Though I might rationalize my decisions, they are ultimately driven by my emotions, usually negative emotions, e.g. anger, frustration, fear most of all. When I get into this emotional state, my thoughts run to binary extremes, i.e. great over generalizations. I think the worst of people or situations and I use extreme words, e.g. never, always, everybody, nobody, and the like. I have not had much success reasserting cognitive control in these situations. I might even see the flaws in my thinking in real time, but that is not generally sufficient to assert control over my emotional state, especially if I'm really agitated.
I am not completely helpless, however, because I can exert myself physically enough to release the agitation. I have found bike rides to be extremely effective. If I'm wound up, it's better for me to take a break and go for a ride, if that's possible and practical, before I react, saying or doing something I'll regret later when the cognitive system reasserts itself. Riding is not always practical, but I can almost always get away from the situation and meditate or do some intentional breathing for 10 minutes or so. I've had mixed results with this, but it's not completely ineffective.
When my son was younger, he would have pretty big emotional outbursts and meltdowns. He couldn't usually get calm again until the outburst had run its course, but he was usually left feeling pretty bad physically, and sometimes these would be followed by migraines. He was pretty miserable. One of the things we started doing was having him do push-ups when he would start to have a meltdown. This turned out to be really effective for both him and me for a bunch of reasons.
His meltdowns were almost always in response to me, usually in response to my asserting some power over him in the form of a punishment. For example, I ask him to clean up his toys or do some other thing that he doesn't really want to do. He says no, he doesn't want to. I say, then you lose some toys or some privilege. Now, he's threatened and the emotions take over, so he assumes a defensive posture. The situation escalates and I threaten him with another consequence unless he backs down, and now we're off. Both he and I are in emotional states, threatening each other, getting defensive, with no hope of reaching a rational solution. This really has become a power struggle. The consequences compound, and his reactions compound until he's lost some privilege for days, well past anything effective. Specifically, he is still paying for the meltdown or original transgression well past when his emotional upheaval has subsided, and it's not as though he'll remember this or change his behavior in the future. In fact, he does remember it, but it just makes him resentful and even less likely to cooperate the next time, and our relationship deteriorates.
After years of this, we decided we needed to do something different, so I started asking him to do push-ups. I would start with 10, and then it could escalate to 20, 30, and so on. Eventually, he would start to do them. The key point is that it is significantly easier for him just to start doing push-ups than to reassert cognitive control over his emotions and to act rationally. Once he starts doing the push-ups, a bunch of positive things would start to happen. First, the focus is now (almost) entirely on the physical act of doing push-ups; we are no longer talking about the catalyst for our collision. He is concentrating on his body, his form in doing the push-ups, and the physical sensations. I am concentrating, too, on his push-ups. I can start having an unambiguously positive interaction with him immediately. I compliment his form, observe how strong he's become, and talk to him about the push-ups themselves. "Spread your hands wider and see how it affects your chest," or "move your hands inward and feel it in your triceps," or "when I do push-ups, my elbows pop unless my hands are lower down and I keep my elbows in."
In the case of his push-ups and my bike rides, the physical system ascends and overwhelms the emotional. At that point, the cognitive can reassert itself. It's probably not necessary to take the rock paper scissors analogy too far, but I do think of the cognitive as the scissors, the component associated with fine motor skills. The emotions are the rock, the blunt object that smashes the scissors, which leaves the physical as the paper that calmly covers the rock and is easily shaped by the scissors. Anyway, YMMV but we have found this to be both nice description of our lived experience and a concrete collection of actions to break out of a seemingly hopeless state.