Chapter 11
Personalize Your RESTORE Plan

By now, you should have a fairly good understanding of the various facets of your emotional inflammation and the triggers that cause it to flare up. You’ve read about the lifestyle factors that can contribute to, aggravate, or calm your emotional inflammation, so you know, at least in principle, how to steer yourself in the right directions or set limits with difficult people and situations. Since so many of us are in this emotional state, try to stay empathetic and compassionate toward others who may feel equally inflamed or uneasy, so that you don’t inadvertently contribute to their distress. Like it or not, we’re all in this together.

Now, back to you. It’s time to put together your personal RESTORE plan to calm your emotional inflammation and reclaim your inner equilibrium. This involves a proactive approach to preventing flare-ups of emotional inflammation, as well as measures that can serve as a psychological life raft of sorts when it does get ratcheted up despite your best efforts. This may sound like a tall order, but if you approach this task in a systematic fashion, you will begin to calm the emotional flames inside you, bit by bit. Consider this an investment in yourself: a way to improve your emotional well-being, your health and vitality, and by extension, your life.

Depending on your overall reactor type or the style of emotional inflammation that distresses you most, you’ll want to prioritize certain steps over others, as you’ll see in the next section. So spend some time thinking about setting priorities for the strategies you’d like to try, based on what you now know from reading this book.

Strategies for All Reactor Types

Before we get into specific actions for each reactor type, let’s start with the following essential cool-down measures since they’re universally helpful for enhancing emotional regulation:

• Put yourself on a steady sleep schedule. Establish a consistent bedtime and awakening time that allows you to get the amount of sleep that helps you feel and function at your best (most likely something between seven and nine hours nightly). Stick with this schedule, both during the week and on the weekends. If you need to, you can vary your bedtime by an hour or two occasionally but try not to sleep in more than an hour (unless, of course, you’re sick and need extra rest).
• Give yourself a digital curfew. At least ninety minutes before you plan to turn in for the night, shut down all your digital devices, dim the lights, and turn to a quiet, relaxing activity, such as reading, stretching, listening to music, or taking a warm bath. Doing this will help calm your sympathetic nervous system and set the stage for better sleep.
• Move your body and mind. Doing as little as ten minutes of aerobic exercise, such as brisk walking, jogging, cycling or swimming, every day can help prevent stress hormones from landing on the receptor sites that will make you feel tense or frayed at the edges. Remember: regular exercise also can relieve symptoms of anxiety and depression.
• Check your emotional pulse periodically. Try to identify how you’re feeling with as much precision and specificity as possible; in other words, practice emotional granularity. Then address the way you’re feeling: if you realize you’re feeling tense, anxious, irritable, or downbeat, give yourself a brief time-out to engage in deep breathing exercises or meditation, to listen to soothing music, to treat yourself to a comforting scent, or to take a walk around the block.
• Feed your gut bacteria well. This means consuming foods with live and active cultures, foods with plenty of fiber, fermented foods, and anti-inflammatory foods, such as colorful vegetables and fruits, whole and cracked grains, beans and legumes, nuts and extra virgin olive oil, and fish and shellfish every day. Think of this as a helpful way of calming physical and emotional inflammation from the inside out. Be sure to drink plenty of noncaffeinated fluids throughout the day, too.
• Correct your distorted thoughts. Get in the habit of paying attention to your thoughts and when you catch them getting tangled or twisted, take a moment to question their validity. Ask yourself how likely it is that your worst fears will happen or consider whether there’s evidence that the negative messages you’re giving yourself are true. If your thoughts are off base, correct them and put them on a more truthful (and helpful) course.
• Connect with nature—and awe. Take a short walk in the woods, a garden, or a park and soak in the sensory stimuli. Focus on the magical patterns that are inherent in trees and plants. Listen to the soothing sounds of nature—the wind rustling through the trees, birds singing or chirping, water gurgling in a brook. Gaze at the stars and planets in the night sky. Make a point to appreciate the awe and wonder in the natural world—and that you’re a part of it.

• • •

After you’ve incorporated these basic measures into your everyday routine for a week or two, add specific strategies that will relieve your style of emotional inflammation. Of course, you are welcome (and encouraged) to choose and use any, or all, of the interventions recommended in this book. But the following are suggestions for strategies you may want to add to the basic priorities, depending on your reactor type.

Nervous Reactor

If you’re a nervous reactor (meaning you have the anxious, worried, or fearful form of emotional inflammation), you’ll want to take steps to calm and control your mood and behavior. To that end, it will help if you do the following:

• Decrease your intake of stimulants. This includes caffeine from any source (including chocolate). Also, increase your intake of calming foods that contain omega-3 fatty acids (flaxseeds, chia seeds, walnuts, and fatty fish like salmon, tuna, halibut, anchovies, and sardines) as well as magnesium (nuts, seeds, spinach, bananas, beans, and whole grains).
• Consciously relax your body and mind. Carve out time so you can practice progressive muscle relaxation or meditation for at least twenty minutes daily, even when you don’t feel particularly nervous or agitated. By doing this consistently, you will lower the overall temperature on your emotional inflammation.
• Put yourself on a media diet. Choose when or how you’re willing to engage with newsfeeds, newspapers, TV news, and social media—and honor those limits. This way you won’t be bombarded with negative or worrisome messages all day long.
• Write down what’s eating away at you. Not the big picture issues but the concrete, little things. Make a pledge to someone you trust to set up a plan with a timeline to address them one at a time. When you talk about them deliberately, it will help you gain control over the anxiety you are creating by holding onto these anxiety-provoking issues or letting them ricochet in your mind.

Revved Reactor

If you’re a revved reactor (meaning you have the manic, hyperreactive form of emotional inflammation), you’ll want to slow down and assess how you can best channel your energy and attention. To that end, it will help if you do the following:

• Exercise your critical thinking skills. Question the validity and veracity of the information you’re receiving in the news or everyday life before you decide whether or not to act on it.
• Manage your time effectively. Delegate unnecessary time-consuming activities to other people or eliminate them from your schedule. Practice saying “no” to nonessential requests in order to conserve your valuable energy.
• Schedule downtime. On a daily basis, make a point to set a specific time to stop what you’re doing. Then renew yourself with activities that take you away from the present—perhaps by reading the classics, watching old movies, or playing cards or word games with friends. Or take a dance class or pick up a musical instrument you used to enjoy playing.
• Get the right colors and scents on your side. You’re already feeling revved up so try to dial down your reactivity by surrounding yourself with or wearing a serene shade of blue or green and/or by applying a dab of a soothing essential oil (such as vanilla or lavender) to the pulse points on your wrists.

Molten Reactor

If you’re a molten reactor (meaning your emotional inflammation is largely marked by irritation, maybe even anger, and/or indignation), you’ll benefit from taking your outrage and indignation and turning it into constructive action. To that end, it will help if you do the following:

• Decrease your intake of stimulants. That includes caffeine, chocolate, and alcohol. Meanwhile, increase your intake of calming foods that contain omega-3 fatty acids (flaxseeds, chia seeds, walnuts, and fatty fish like salmon, tuna, halibut, anchovies, and sardines) as well as magnesium (nuts, seeds, spinach, bananas, beans, and whole grains).
• Act out your frustrations in your head. After an upsetting encounter or event, think about what you’d really like to say or do, then go ahead and imagine (in your head) cursing that person out or acting out in another way. Doing this will help release some of the pent-up frustration (or other toxic emotions) you’re feeling—without leading to negative consequences in the real world.
• Figure out who pushes your buttons. Then, consider how you can better deal with those people or set healthy boundaries in your engagements with them. Spend a few minutes practicing relaxation techniques (such as deep breathing or meditation) before walking into a situation that could rile you up.
• Expose yourself to water. If possible, go for a swim or walk the length of the pool (in the shallow end) and let the rhythmic activity calm your mind—or go for a walk near a river, lake, or pond. If you can’t get to water, buy a small fountain for your home or office or invest in an app that features the sounds of waves.

Retreating Reactor

If you’re a retreating reactor (meaning, your emotional inflammation is marked by a tendency to freeze, detach, withdraw, zone out, or numb yourself), it’s important to take steps to revitalize your mood and reconnect with the world around you. To that end, it will help if you do the following:

• Turn off the broken record. When negative thoughts swirl through your mind on a repetitive cycle, stop your thoughts and distract yourself with a pleasant activity such as petting your dog or listening to upbeat music. Kick the tendency to ruminate, in other words, because it will only make you feel worse.
• Think about what’s good in your life. Spend a few moments each day considering who or what you’re grateful for and why. Pausing to reflect on what you appreciate in your life can improve your mood, your outlook, and your relationships (especially if you express your gratitude).
• Do something nice for someone else. Volunteer to help a colleague with a project or bring flowers or a meal to a sick friend or relative. Prosocial actions like these help you get out of your own head and increase positive emotions.
• Develop a supportive social network. Resist the urge to withdraw by identifying people in your home, workplace, or community who support you, inspire you, and have similar values. Spending time with them on a regular basis will help you gain a sense of kinship.

• • •

By picking and choosing the strategies that nourish your unique blend of symptoms, you will be able to develop a personalized plan of action that suits your needs. As your emotional inflammation begins to calm down, feel free to tweak these interventions so they continue to work for you. Don’t feel limited by these strategies; use them as a launching pad to try other healthy, constructive tactics that appeal to or resonate with you. Spend more time connecting with nature. Seek social support from like-minded people. Celebrate the milestones you reach as you alter your lifestyle, take action on issues you’re passionate about, and begin to ease your emotional discomfort. This is your plan—use it, fine-tune it, own it. And appreciate the difference it makes in your state of mind over time.

As you’ve seen, emotional inflammation doesn’t have to be an inevitable state of mind. You can take steps to calm it, tame it, and quench the flames it produces. By taking action to restore your emotional equilibrium, you’ll be treating yourself to the best form of therapy there is for living in our mixed-up world. Think of the RESTORE plan as your golden ticket to arriving at a state of steady calm that allows you to feel and function better 24/7 and improve your quality of life. You’ve earned it!