This is another post in my series on Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT), some of the most useful techniques I’ve found for being happy in the modern world. Emotion regulation is simple—it’s about doing the things that healthy people do on a regular basis. It encompasses eating well and exercising, as well as learning to be aware of and regulate your emotions. People prone to anxiety, depression, and general rumination tend to not do these things, causing a downward spiral of into feeling poorly emotionally and physically. Many of these we should have learned and practiced as children, but given the unstableness in modern schools and families, many people are left figuring out these basics as adults. (RELATED: Distress Tolerance: DBT for Depression, Anxiety, and Anger at the Modern World)
Emotion Regulation Techniques
Reduce Vulnerability Using the PLEASE Technique
Using the acronym PLEASE, this technique is to take care of yourself physically.
PL – Treat Physical ILLness: If you’re starting to get sick, go the doctor or otherwise take care of yourself by taking medication or drinking lots of fluids. Ward off sickness by taking vitamins, drinking water each day, and also doing the following:
E – Eating: Eat a healthy diet with minimal processed foods. Don’t overeat, and don’t skip meals due to stress or business. Don’t binge too often on sugar, but don’t make your diet so restrictive that it becomes a stressor itself. Find foods that make you feel good that are healthy too. (RELATED The Timeless Wisdom of the Brahmin Diet)
A – Altering Drugs (no drugs except those prescribed!): Avoid drugs, and start the process to quit smoking. Notice how alcohol and caffeine affect you, and adjust your use accordingly.
S – Sleep: Have a balanced sleep schedule—not too much or too little.
E – Exercise: Get regular exercise, preferably a variety of styles. If you only do one type of exercise, branch out and try something different so as to not damage your body.
Identify Your Emotions
Check in with yourself so you know what emotion you’re feeling. It’s amazing how often we can be taken for a ride by our emotions without realizing what’s going on. If you’re experiencing emotional extremes, this is Step 1—simply identify the emotion, and breathe while you’re aware of it.
Describe Your Emotions
Emotions don’t happen out of the blue. It takes an event or a thought to trigger them. After that, emotions not only affect your mental state, but they inspire you to take an action; that could be punching someone if you’re angry or staying in all day if you’re depressed.
For this exercise, first identify the prompting event, thought, or memory that led to the emotion in the first place. Then note how you’re interpreting it. Maybe the comment from your boss doesn’t mean he’s unhappy with you; perhaps he’s just having a bad day. Maybe your call wasn’t returned, not because the person hates you but because they’re dealing with a bad situation in their own life. Thinking about how you’re interpreting events can help you come to a more rational explanation, and calm you down in the process.
Also take note of how your body changes during intense emotional states. Your body might tense up due to fear, or slump due to sadness, or shake with anger. Or, if you’re used to suppressing your emotions, you might feel physically calm but be raging inside. Paying attention to such bodily changes and breathing your way through them will help the negative emotion to subside.
Pay attention also to action urges the emotion inspires—such as wanting to scream, yell, cry, be violent, or run away. Come up with alternative actions you can do instead—journaling, going to the gym, leaving the room, punching a bag, etc.
Finally, be aware over the next few days or even weeks if there are lingering effects of the negative emotional state. If so, the PLEASE technique above, or Distress Tolerance techniques can be used to mitigate the after-effects.
Examine Myths about Emotions
This involves examining your beliefs about emotions and replacing them with beliefs that are healthier. You might believe that emotions imply a feeling is “real,” that they’ll go on forever (as in the case of mourning), or that you can’t control them.
Build Positive Experiences
If we have a friend and there’s a high positive-to-negative interaction rate, we want to continue spending time with them. But once we start having a certain percentage of negative experiences when we’re around someone, the relationship is no longer worth it, even though occasionally we have a nice time. Of course, this ratio is different for everyone, and people define negative experience differently.
This technique follows the same logic: Incorporate positive experiences into your daily life. Once you have more positives than negatives, your life will seem happy, or at least worth living.
Focus on both short- and long-term positive experiences. Short-term positives are things you can do today like taking the dog for a walk, putting on music while doing dishes, making a nice meal, picking up a coffee or snack, or signing up for a class. Long-term positives are more far-reaching goals, like quitting smoking, going back to school, or revamping your diet.
Take an Action Opposite to the Emotion You’re Feeling
This is more of a Distress Tolerance technique, for extreme emotions. If you’re angry, do an activity that will make you feel peaceful. If you’re sad, do something happy-making. So if you feel enraged, make haste to the park for a quiet walk. Or if you’re down, go dancing or watch stand-up. If you’re lonely, make an effort to chat up the people you interact with.
Emotion regulation will help to keep you centered throughout your days, and thus will bump up those positive experiences and help you feel better overall. If you’re having a really bad time, see the post on Distress Tolerance: DBT for Depression, Anxiety, and Anger at the Modern World, a set of techniques for dealing with more extreme emotions.
The post Emotion Regulation: DBT for Making Yourself Less Vulnerable to the Modern World appeared first on Aristocrats of the Soul.
