How to Break Emotional Reactivity and Build a New Response

They took the session from bed.

Not metaphorically. Literally. Their camera was angled up at the ceiling, the light muted, both of them propped on pillows, faces puffy with exhaustion. He had been up since 1:30 a.m. The markets were on his mind again.

She hadn’t fully woken, but she felt it anyway.

“I could hear your brain moving,” she said, looking at him. “Not the tossing or the bathroom door. Just... the intensity. It was like something heavy was happening on your side of the bed.”

He nodded, hollow. “I was thinking about the gold. Again. It’s happening again. I couldn’t stop looping. I want to sell.”

She cut in gently, clearly: “I’m not going to sell.”

That was the moment that mattered. Not the price of gold. Not the market fluctuation. Not even the exhaustion. It was the decision: not to feed the panic.

And that’s where we began.

Because what looks like a financial conversation is almost never just about money. It's about fear. Control. Helplessness. Nervous system overwhelm disguised as market insight.

The pattern is so familiar: fear rises, urgency builds, and the brain scrambles for something—anything—that will relieve the discomfort. And the fastest way to do that is to take action. Sell something. Move the money. Change the currency. Do something now.

It feels strategic. But it’s not. It’s reactivity that feels like decision-making.

In therapy, I see this every day. The coping strategies people reach for: the ones they swear by and the ones that offer short-term relief are often the very things keeping them stuck. They solve nothing in the long run. But they do offer something immediate: a sense of agency. A hit of false certainty. Relief from the intolerable feeling of not knowing what comes next.

But the cost of that relief is high. It reinforces the loop.

Fear → Action → Relief → Consequence → Regret → Renewed fear → More action.

No learning. No shift. Just another lap around the same track.

What breaks that cycle isn’t action: it’s containment. It’s the refusal to obey the panic. It’s saying: “I see you. I feel you. And I’m not going to do the thing that makes you stronger.”

And that’s not passive. That’s a fight of its own kind.

It means sitting with your demons instead of running with them. It means postponing gratification. It means not doing the thing that gives you a quick hit of control or relief but keeps the deeper wound wide open.

It’s the same as not reaching for the drug.
Not sending the 3 a.m. text.
Not spinning out in an anxiety spiral.
Not kicking the wall.
Not blasting your partner.
Not screaming at your kid.
Not swallowing your truth just to keep the peace.

All of those are moments where we could go down the old road. But we don’t. And that not-doing is everything.

That’s how the system begins to shift.

At first, it’s just a pause. A breath. A choice to sit in the heat without flinching. To feel the tension rise, crest, and… if you wait long enough, settle.

Eventually, you find something else. A new move. A slower path. A different outcome.

But first, you don’t do that thing. The thing you’ve always done. The thing that keeps you looped.

That’s where change begins: not by doing more, but by refusing to do what keeps you stuck.

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