How not to be at the mercy of your feelings
Parent Post
Perspective hopping. The more
Perspective hopping.
The more we are entrenched in one perspective, the less likely we are to understand others, and the more likely we are to get defensive and emotional when we are challenged.
Roleplay.
Family reunion ahead, and worried you will lose it yet again around a parent? It can be helpful to role-play possible challenges with a trusted friend or partner.
And that doesn’t mean keeping it all positive. Sometimes it can help if you say all the angry, outrageous, or ridiculous things you want.
When you feel yourself
When you feel yourself about to explode, you can: Hold your breath and plunge your face into cold water, triggering the ‘human dive reflex’ (or try holding ice in your hand).
Do about 20 minutes of aerobic exercise, at about seventy per cent of your ‘all out’ point.
Breathe in a measured fashion right into your diaphragm and keep it up for several minutes
The power of five. Look
The power of five.
Look at all the ways in life you give in to impulse and start adding five minutes.
If you are hungry, wait five minutes before eating your snack. Add five minutes to your cardio routine. Time five minutes before sending a text or email.
Once you get used to five, try ten. The more you teach your brain to hold off, the more you might find you start holding off on emotional responses.
Setting the groundwork for
Setting the groundwork for long-term regulation
It’s important to recognise that we can make emotional regulation skills far more likely to be a success if we set the stage for them. The following can make things far easier.
1. Create structure. Structure in and of itself doesn’t stop emotional bursts, but it makes them less likely.
2. Find a healthy way to let off steam. It might also be hitting a pile of pillows, dancing around the living room, or having a punching bag in your garage.
3. Track and reward your wins. Write it all down in a notebook and give yourself a reward for every ten wins.
Start with your mindset Sure
Start with your mindset
Sure you can never be that sort of calm, cool, and collected person?
You already regulate your emotions. If you haven’t cried in a theatre, stayed strong as a friend needed you in a difficult circumstance hidden your own fear or remained calm in a job interview when the employer was being rude.
4. Have support. Find
4. Have support. Find a support buddy. Not your romantic partner but someone else also working on their emotions.
5. Up that self-care. Eating healthy foods that lead to even energy instead of living off of soft drinks. And exercise, by the way, is now proven to go a long way for stabilising moods.
Emergency emotional regulation techniques When
Emergency emotional regulation techniques
When we are first learning how not to ‘freak out’ emotionally, emergency tactics can be a godsend.
Dialectical behaviour therapy (DBT) was created for people with emotional dysregulation or borderline personality disorder (BPD).
It offers a scientific-based set of techniques for emotional tipping points, called ‘TIP skills’:
- Temperature of your face
- Intense aerobic exercise
- Paced Breathing and Paired muscle relaxation.
The best emotional regulation
The best emotional regulation skill out there? Mindfulness.
It helps you to label and step back from your emotional states.
Mindfulness leads to greater activation of the medial prefrontal cortex, which activates when we do self-related tasks.
With practice, you will be able to catch your thoughts and feelings before they get out of control, meaning you can choose better ways to respond to life’s stressors than lashing out or hurting yourself.
What is emotional self-regulation? It’s
What is emotional self-regulation?
It’s your ability to monitor and control your emotions, and thrive in spite of them.
If we grew up without consistent parenting or lived through difficult circumstances as a child, our capacity to emotionally regulate can be poor, called ‘dysregulation‘.
Our impulsive reactions can damage our relationships and career.
What are emotional regulation
What are emotional regulation skills?
They include things like the ability to: think before you speak or act stay calm in the face of stress, not let other people get to you continue progressing towards your goals despite your emotions.
Thought balancing. What to
Thought balancing.
What to do when you hear all the negative or critical things you come across?
Cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) uses ‘thought charts’ to help you recognise when you are having ‘cognitive distortions’, thoughts that seem real but actually aren’t.
It then teaches you to replace such dramatic thinking with more useful thoughts.