A Neuroscientist Explains Exactly What To Do If You Get An Upsetting Text

Picture this: You're powering through a productive workday when a text notification flashes across your phone or computer screen. It's unsettling—maybe someone is criticizing you, delivering some bad news, or maybe an ex has reached out. No matter how you slice it, it's troubling, and the feeling lingers long after the ping's echo fades. The problem is, you can't exactly turn your attention toward the anxiety-provoking situation—you're having a productive workday, after all. 

Here comes the real conflict, says neuroscientist Amishi Jha, Ph.D., author of Peak Mind, on the mindbodygreen podcast: "You need to devote your mind to the task at hand—meeting that deadline, getting the work done—but you have this pull toward that negative, probably self-related content." 

Rather, she recommends treating the experience with a mindfulness-based orientation—meaning, allow yourself to accept and feel any emotions that do bubble up. "A mindfulness-based approach is to first acknowledge and allow the emotional reaction that you had receiving the text message," Jha explains. Embrace the emotions rather than squashing them down, and hold them in the space with you without particularly engaging with them.

"Sort of like if you have a friend or a child in the room with you when you're trying to get something done—they're there with you, but you know that your attention needs to go toward what you're doing right now," says Jha. "You're not ignoring it, but you're also not engaging with it; you're not denying it, but you're also not trying to reframe it."