Psychologist Joan Rosenberg explains the 90-second rule: bodily sensations from emotions peak and fade in about 90 seconds. She describes how anger often masks sadness and disappointment, and why recognizing the physical feeling first helps you move through it.
Questions this video answers
January 14, 2025
Everyone I know is under strange stresses financially, business wise, and there's just an enormous amount of mental health issues, including many that affected my own family.
Most of us come to know what we feel through bodily sensation. And the good news is they dissipate that intensity. Their feelings are transient, and they dissipate in roughly an upper limit of 90 seconds. So that's the 90 seconds rule.
I showed him how his anger outbursts were really an ineffective way of dealing with sadness and disappointment. And it was a moment of, you know, kind of stunning awareness where he realized that, oh, yeah, what I really am is disappointed or sad, and I don't know how to communicate that.