Opposite Action

Why Use this Skill

Emotions usually come with “action urges” that make us feel like doing things. Often, these urges make us do things that keep the emotions stronger. Like, when someone feels depressed, they may follow their urge to stay home in bed all weekend,  which may  lead to feeling more sad and lonely because they’ve missed time with their friends. Opposite Action interrupts this cycle, and can actually change the way you feel.

When to Use This Skill

Use Opposite Action when:

• You feel an emotion that you don’t want to be feeling.
• You feel an emotion that isn’t helpful for you to act on.
• You’re struggling with a “sticky” emotion (like chronic shame or anxiety).

How to Use This Skill

Opposite Action is doing the opposite of whatever your emotion makes you feel like doing. It’s going to be different depending on the situation, emotion, and action urges that you’re experiencing whenever you’re trying to practice the skill.

Below, we offer some specific steps and tips for how to practice.

When you want to practice Opposite Action, follow these steps:

1) Practice self‑validation.

1. Practice mindfulness of current emotion, even if briefly.
2. Tip: don’t ignore, suppress, or judge the emotion! Remind yourself that your emotions always make sense.

2) Identify your emotion’s action urges.

1. Ask yourself: what does this emotion make me feel like doing?

3) Confirm that your emotion’s action urges are unhelpful.

1. Ask yourself: would acting on this emotion right now help me or hurt me?
2. Tip: consider both the short-term and the long-term. Sometimes acting on our emotions makes us feel better right now, but then causes us problems in the future.

4) Do the opposite of your action urges.

1. Ask yourself: what is the exact opposite of this emotion’s action urges in this situation?
2. Then, do those things!
3. Tip: consider how you could act opposite all of the way.
   1. Think about all of the different parts of an emotional experience…
      1. What can you do or say differently?
      2. How could you change your thoughts or focus your attention differently?
      3. How could you change your facial expression or body language to not express the emotion?
      4. Are there any skills you can use (like Paced Breathing) to change the emotion-related physical sensations you’re feeling?
4. Tip: consider how you could act opposite even just a little bit.
   1. When you can’t bring yourself to act opposite all the way yet, do whatever small thing you are willing and able to do that isn’t following through with your action urges.
   2. Maybe that’s just riding the wave of your emotion by feeling it without acting.
   3. When depressed, maybe you put your feet on the floor, rather than getting out of bed entirely; or getting out of bed, rather than going out with friends.
   4. When anxious, maybe you stay still and practice paced breathing, rather than walking away from the thing you’re scared of.

5) Keep acting opposite. 

1. Keep practicing Opposite Action as much as you need, following the steps above!
2. Sometimes it takes a lot of repeated practice or a lot of time for a particularly tricky emotion to reduce.
3. If you are autistic, highly sensitive, or otherwise neurodivergent, it may take your emotions longer to reduce, compared to other people.
4. Tip: if you feel exhausted or burnt out by practicing Opposite Action, you may need to focus more on self-validation, self-soothing, and physical self-care skills.
5. Tip: if Opposite Action isn’t working, go back to step 3 and make sure your emotion is still unhelpful. If your emotion is being triggered by a real problem in your life, it’s likely that only practicing Opposite Action isn’t going to help decrease your emotion in the long-run. You’ll need to solve the problem in order to change your emotion.