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Jul 3, 2007

"Words are not as satisfactory as we should like them to be, but, like our neighbours, we have got to live with them and must make the best and not the worst of them." --Samuel Butler

The Power of Naming Your Emotions

If you name your emotions, you can tame them, according to new research that suggests why meditation works. Brain scans show that putting negative emotions into words calms the brain's emotion center. That could explain meditation's purported emotional benefits, because people who meditate often label their negative emotions in an effort to "let them go." Psychologists have long believed that people who talk about their feelings have more control over them, but they don't know why it works. "In the same way you hit the brake when you're driving when you see a yellow light, when you put feelings into words, you seem to be hitting the brakes on your emotional responses," says UCLA psychologist Matthew Lieberman.