It’s hard to attribute the phrase “walk it off” to a single person, but most people associate the phrase with sports. When players experience minor injuries or physical pain, their coaches might tell them to “walk it off” and get back out there to win the game.
But at a certain point, “walk it off” stumbled its way outside of athletics and became a way to deal with emotional pain and licensed marriage, as family therapist Marisa Ronquillo explains.
“Over time, ‘walk it off’ has become a shorthand for emotional avoidance, especially for boys and men,” says Ronquillo, who has seen many examples of this in her clinical work. “This phrase reinforces the belief that vulnerability is weakness and emotional expression should be hidden or quickly managed.”
Research shows that throughout childhood, boys and girls tend to cry comparable amounts up until the age of 11. But by the time guys reach adulthood, many of them have been conditioned to discourage emotions like sadness and deploy more “masculine emotions” like anger. Even well-intended coaches, fathers and other male role models can be quick to tell boys to brush off their pain. Multiple studies demonstrate how parenting has a crucial impact on the emotional expression of boys, particularly their ability to express sadness over anger.
For this reason, it’s not entirely surprising that the idea of walking off has been the subject of humorous and serious online criticism in recent years. At the same time, the proliferation of “mental health walks” on social media suggests that the sentiment of walking to cope might not be entirely bad. Daniel Gospodarek, a licensed clinical social worker, says: “Taking a walk when you become upset can help you re-regulate your nervous system and emotions. This helps you stay responsive versus reactive.”
Ronquillo agrees: “Walking can be a highly effective form of regulation, not avoidance.” In other words, walking it off is not inherently bad — it just depends on how you approach it. Here, experts share when walking it off is best, why it works and how to tell if you’re doing it right.
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When emotions are running high, licensed marriage and family therapist Saba Harouni Lurie emphasizes that “It’s healthy to pause, cool down and give the nervous system a chance to regulate.”
When people lose their temper in conflicts or get angry, their sympathetic nervous system becomes activated as they shift into fight-or-flight mode. But the simple act of walking increases endorphins, lowers stress hormones like cortisol and allows the parasympathetic nervous system to override the sympathetic nervous system, producing a calming effect. Ultimately, “walking away with intention can prevent us from saying or doing something that might cause more harm in the end,” Lurie says.
The alternating action of taking one step at a time is also a form of bilateral stimulation, an essential aspect of Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) therapy, which activates the parasympathetic nervous system. “This provides just enough distraction to shift someone out of a reactive state into one where they can reflect more clearly,” Ronquillo explains.
While it can take at least 20 minutes to come out of a fight-or-flight state, there’s evidence that even a five to 10-minute walk can be beneficial for your mental health.
Being Outside Helps
Light physical activity helps stabilize your nervous system so you can think clearly — and performing it outside can encourage an even deeper sense of calm. “Trees and other natural elements like streams and wind have a great way of regulating the natural flow of the body with the natural flow of nature,” Gospodarek says. “This can have a significant positive impact on your body and nervous system.”
Nature is so beneficial that many scientists consider it to be a crucial part of salutogenic mental healthcare, an approach that focuses proactively on health and well-being rather than disease prevention alone. Other research indicates that green exercise had similar effects to gardening and nature-based therapy, all of which effectively reduced symptoms of depression and anxiety.
So as much as walking alone can have calming effects, where you walk matters. Whether or not you touch grass, greener pastures are preferable to pacing in your office.
When Walking Is a Problem
Experts agree that taking a stroll can be misused as a way to avoid emotions. Walking isn’t that helpful if you refuse to return to the issue at hand.
Anger is regarded as a secondary emotion, meaning that there is often another, potentially more uncomfortable emotion underneath it, like sadness, fear or shame. As a result, “walking only helps if we come back to those emotions and take time to process what’s underneath,” Lurie says.
In the end, walking it off is a healthy coping skill, but it’s the “off” part that is the problem. The goal is not to abandon your emotions in a field, but to reflect on them and return with a clear head. Without deeper reflection, you might be “pushing past discomfort instead of tending to it,” Lurie warns. “So the phrase becomes less about recovery and more about emotional avoidance.”
Look at it this way: When an athlete walks it off, they’re likely going to get that injury checked out later. If you walk off an argument, the situation deserves the same kind of follow-up attention.
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