Developing Emotional Intelligence to Manage Your Emotions

Hey there everybody, and welcome to this presentation on emotional intelligence and emotion regulation. I'm your host, Dr. Donnelly Snipes. Today we're going to define emotion regulation and emotional intelligence. We'll learn about the HPA axis and how dysregulation can contribute to mental illness. We'll identify why emotional intelligence and emotion regulation are important and how it can help people prevent as well as address mental illness issues. And finally, we'll explore techniques to improve emotional intelligence and emotion regulation. So emotional intelligence is your ability to identify feelings in yourself and others, to regulate and respond to your emotions and to respond appropriately to other people's emotions. So emotional intelligence really involves knowing a lot about, about emotions, not just regulating them. You can know a lot about emotions and not regulate them. You hey I'm happy, hey I'm sad, hey I'm angry, but not do anything about it. And or you can I be able to identify those feelings in yourself and others and regulate them. So part of emotional intelligence is being able to not only have the knowledge but also the abilities. Emotional intelligence can help people identify emotion driven behaviors, including avoidance. When people are using emotional reasoning, they often drop into fight or flight. When they feel scared, they start looking for reasons that they might be scared instead of looking at it the other way and going what are the facts that there's something to be afraid of right now? And or they may engage in avoidant behaviors when they are feeling anxious. They avoid engaging with people, they avoid going out. They may not know what it is about those situations that makes them anxious, but they just avoid it. So emotional intelligence can help people start becoming aware of their triggers, their vulnerabilities and their emotions. They can learn how to identify those emotions, tolerate them that distress tolerance, interpret them, why am I feeling this way at this time? And then regulate them. It doesn't mean making them go away, it means I. Once you identify them and interpret what it means, what do I do next? What is the best use of my energy in this situation to move towards my rich and meaningful life? Or said another way, how, how can I improve the next moment? And emotional intelligence can help people improve their sense of safety by being able to accurately read and respond to other people and situations. When we grow up, every experience we have, we see and hear verbal and nonverbal messages from people. And the verbal and non verbal messages you get from one person may not mean the same thing when you see them in another person. So it's important for people who have develop emotional intelligence to recognize that every situation is specific. So we need to look at non verbals, for example, in context. You have a general idea if somebody has a particular look on their face, if they're experiencing some form of distress. And you can respond appropriately and empathetically instead of apathetically, for example. But it also can help you feel safer. Because if you see somebody is in, in distress, they're tired, they're angry, they're depressed, then you're aware ahead of time of, hey, they're probably more vulnerable to distress, they're probably more vulnerable to dysregulation today than other days. So maybe today's not the right day to approach them with X, Y and Z. So people start feeling a greater sense of mastery because they feel more empowered, they feel safer. Emotion regulation is the doing part. It is the part of emotional intelligence that helps people tolerate distress as well as eustress. But generally when we talk about tolerating emotions, we're talking about distress and, and take steps to change and, or prevent painful emotions. Now again, I'm going to say this multiple times because it's so important for people to hear emotions serve a purpose. They're there for a reason. We don't want to get rid of them, but we want to prevent unnecessary distress. So if you are getting ready to go on vacation, for example, you can prevent unnecessary distress by making a packing list and checking it in order to make sure you have everything that you need to go on the trip. Otherwise you may forget something that you really need, like your medication, you know, something you can't easily get wherever that is, and then it's a big issue, it's a big deal, and that's unnecessary distress. So emotion regulation, one of the aspects is recognizing what your triggers are, recognizing what your vulnerabilities are, looking forward, not necessarily too far forward, but being able to anticipate things that might cause distress. And if you can prevent them, then by all means do that. If you can't, okay, not ever. Not all distress can be prevented. How can you tolerate it or minimize how much upset it causes? Going to the doctor or the vet or the dentist? None of them seem to run on time. And that causes me a lot of distress. I really dislike when things are not punctual. So I have decided when I try to get appointments, I try to get the first appointment of the day, you know, first thing in the morning, they're a lot less likely to be running 20 too far behind. If I have to take an appointment later in the day, I call the office ahead of time and I Ask is the doctor, vet, dentist, whomever, running on time. That way I can gauge, you know, when I should leave in instead of sitting around in the lobby or, heaven forbid, the exam room for an hour. So that's one of those things I do in order to regulate my emotions and prevent unnecessary distress or painful emotions. Now, changing your feelings, sometimes when you're feeling depressed, there's a reason for it, and feeling those feelings when there's a reason for it is what you need to do if you're grieving, allowing yourself to feel that grief. But at a certain point, it's time to move forward. And only you can say when that point is. But at a certain point, it's time to move from depression to acceptance in that grieving process. So emotion regulation can help you figure out, how do I do that? How do I move from being depressed to accepting what's going on? How do I move from being angry right now to some other emotion? Anger and fear are emotions that are there. And I'm going to talk about this in a minute, but whatever, I'll say it twice. They're like a fire alarm. They're like a smoke alarm. When it goes off, it doesn't necessarily mean there is a threat. It means there might be. And your body, as a result, is giving you a bunch of energy that you can use to fight or flee if needed. But the first thing you've got to do is check it out. And so anger and anxiety are what I call motivational emotions. They're to motivate you to get your butt up off the couch and see if there's a problem. You're not meant to dwell in them. You're not meant to hold on to them for days, weeks, months on end. They're meant to motivate you to action, to address the threat. So that's what we're talking about when we talk about changing an emotion. It's not invalidating. It's not saying, oh, you shouldn't be angry about that. It's saying you're angry about that. Okay, now you got the energy from triggering that, that stress response. You've got the energy, what do you do with it in order to address the threat. Emotion regulation also helps us reduce vulnerabilities. And a big part of that is recognizing what situations or what conditions make you more likely to respond to something with a 5 when it only deserved a 2. For me, if I'm in pain, if I am overwhelmed, if I am tired, those are the three big ones for me, for my husband, if he, if his blood sugar is low, that's one of his vulnerabilities. But knowing what your vulnerabilities are is really important because then you can prevent them when at all possible, you know, for, for my husband, making sure that he has, keeps his blood sugar up. That helps prevent unnecessary distress for me. You know, if I have pain, for example, sometimes I can't make it go away completely, but I can recognize, hey, I'm in pain today, so I'm going to be more likely to be a little bit irritable. And I'm going to try not to be, but I am going to be. I tend to be a little less patient, so I recognize that and I say, okay. Now, before I take on a task that may require patience, I need to ask myself, is this something that I really have to do today? How can I mitigate this? And if it is something I have to do, you know, maybe I need to go visit my daughter and help her out with something, letting her know, you know what, I'm in a lot of pain today, so I'm a little bit grumpy. Nothing to do with you, just letting you know ahead of time. So now she's aware that I have a vulnerability and she is able to be more empathetic, more responsive to that. You know, she's not going to hit me with something that would, would tend to stress me out unless it's absolutely necessary. So knowing your vulnerabilities is really important. And then again, preventing and mitigating, make sure that you think ahead of time. What do I need in order to make this the best day possible? And emotion regulation teaches that emotions in and of themselves are not good or bad. They are just your body's communication. A happy feeling tells us, hey, let's do that again. That was pleasurable. We like that. A scared, a angry, a depressed feeling says, oh, that's, that's not good. I'm, I'm sad or I'm feeling threatened for some reason. It gives us information. And suppressing these emotions makes things worse. When we regulate them, we acknowledge them and we say, okay, what, what should I do with this? Suppressing it is like taking, getting a wound and not cleaning it out. You know, you've got this debris in there, something that is causing a immune reaction and you're not doing anything about it. You're just trying to ignore it. So what's going to happen? You're going to get an infection, you're going to get a bunch of pus build up and all kinds of nasty Stuff, same sort of thing with your emotions. You know, if something triggers anger, you know, that was some debris, some sort of threat that triggered that anger. So it's important to deal with it, even if that just means acknowledging the situation and saying, hey, that's not worth my effort, not actually a threat to me at this context at this time. Emotional dysregulation can be caused by a combination of things, but often it's high emotional vulnerability and a lack of skills to regulate or modulate those intense emotions. So what causes emotional vulnerability? For some people, it's innate. They are born more sensitive than others. For other people, they develop emotional vulnerability as a result of traumatic experiences and becoming extremely hypervigilant because that was the only way to stay safe in their chaotic family of origin. But people who have innate emotional vulnerability tend to have differences in their central nervous system reactivity, differences in their vagal tone, that nerve that regulates the stress versus the relaxation hormones, if you will, and differences in the HPA axis. And all of these may play a role in making a person more emotionally vulnerable or, or reactive. So let's talk a little bit about why that might be. When somebody's exposed to stress, the stress response system kicks off, all these hormones and chemicals are released, the synapses respond, they get the message, they respond and, you know, the process goes on. The person gets to a place where they're safe and then they downregulate. Wonderful. But what happens if that threat never goes away? What happens if everywhere the person looks, or it seems like everywhere they look, they see threats? What happens if they have never felt safe and they've never been able to develop a sense of trust in anybody? So there's this constant sense of unsafeness and, and powerlessness. Okay, so when that happens, when people are growing up in a chaotic environment, when they don't develop emotional intelligence skills, the world can seem very scary. And their emotions can feel very scary because, you know, they can feel overpowering. People with high emotional intelligence and emotional regulation skills are able to effectively ass and respond when their stress response or their HPA axis is triggered. So they see what's going on, they identify it, they respond to it, they get safe, move on, everybody's happy. People who haven't developed emotional intelligence, they can't identify or rate their emotions and they don't know how to respond and regulate their emotions. Often fault to emotion based responding. Those emotions just kind of take over because you, when you're triggered, that stress response system puts you in emotion based reasoning, puts you in fight or flee. Don't think about it. Fight or flee. Well, if you are not able to actually turn down or turn off that system to get into the wise mind, then it's going to be really hard to respond from a purposeful fact based place. So you're going to respond from that emotion based fight or flee, get me the heck to safety place. Since the brain assigns more weight to threatening events than non threatening events, when people experience these threats, especially if they can't process them and and they still, they're still in emotional reasoning, the world starts feeling very dangerous. Never is a mnemonic that was developed not by me, that stands for negative emotional valence enhances recapitulation, which basically means the brain gives more weight to stressful threatening events and makes the person more likely to relive or, or ruminate on those stressful experiences in order to stay safe. It's like that was a threat. You need to remember next time you see a cottonmouth snake that is very dangerous and you need to stay away from it. Unfortunately, because of this, because of the constant rumination and hypervigilance, chronic stress becomes exponentially additive. Instead of each threat being representing one instance, think of it as representing five instances. So every time you encounter a thread it's five plus five plus five. But when you encounter something positive, like a bunny rabbit, it's only a one. So it takes a whole lot more positive things to balance out those negative things in terms of their strength in your memory banks. Now recapitulation can be cognitively processed and we're going to talk about that a little bit later. When people are in encounter a trigger that reminds them of a prior trauma or that triggers that anxiety because it's similar to that prior trauma. Asking themselves in this context at this time, what is similar to and different from what happened back then or said another way, Is there a thread at this content in this context at this time, when people feel unsafe, they become more hyper vigilant. Think about when you're walking through a haunted house or you're walking through a parking garage late at night. You tend to be more alert, more vigilant, and they and you notice more threats which can increase the number of stress triggers. People's brains make connections from experience and prune away connections that are not used. So when people have a lot of ruminations about those stressful events, when they're constantly noticing threats, guess which pathways get solidified, guess which pathways get strengthened, and guess which pathways get pruned away. Activation of the HPA axis or the stress response system due to emotional upset also prevents learning new positive things to counterbalance the threat. Think about, well, maybe you don't want to think about a stressful time in your life and you know, maybe not the worst day of your life, but think about a stressful time. Were you noticing everything or were you noticing and remember? Do you mainly remember the bad thing that happened and you scratch your head and go I, I can't remember the whole situation? When people are experiencing emotional upset, glutamate is in their brain and glutamate actually acts to sort of prevent solidification of some of those trauma memories, which is sort protective in a way. But it can be really frustrating for people because they can't remember all the details. Likewise, if somebody is under chronic stress and they are chronically in that fight orf flight state where they don't feel safe, they're not in their wise mind, they're not in their thinking mind, they're not using that as much executive functioning. So they're not going to be able to learn. It's, they're not in a place where their brain is prepared to learn coping skills, to learn to process things. So they continue to feel unsafe, they continue to fail to develop these new skills because they're not able to until they can get into their wise mind. Additionally, chronic or extreme stress causes changes in the HPA axis that result in, in emotional disregulation. Just like somebody who abuses alcohol, their body develops a tolerance to alcohol so it takes more alcohol to get them the same high. The same thing is true with cortisol and our other stress hormones. So when our body is regularly flooded with these stress hormones, eventually the things receptors become resistant to them. They're just like, I'm not going to pay attention to you. And it requires more cortisol and more adrenaline in order to trigger that stress response. So what does the body do? The body, body says, you know, normally I just, I've got stress, but I'm just not feeling much of anything. I'm kind of numb, I'm kind of flat because there's not enough to really trigger that stress response. It's just enough to be exhausting. But when something does trigger the stress response, the body sends out a tsunami of stress hormones and that causes the dysregulation that causes the person to go from flat to furious or flat to frantic just like that. Now remember, the mental connections that make up your schema or your memories that help you interpret the world tend to become skewed towards stress and Trauma at the expense of positive experiences. Remember, those positive experiences are pruned away if the stress and trauma pathways are constantly being activated. So then you end up with somebody who has a imbalance in their cognitive pathways. They actually have changes in their brain that favor fear responding. Unfortunately, a lot of this may happen as a result of poor emotional intelligence, as a result of lacking a secure attachment in childhood that taught somebody emotional intelligence. Remember that emotional behavior is functional in theory to help the person survive. Now, it may not be functional today, but when it was first developed to help the person survive, it had a function. Now, they may be older today, they may have more skills, tools, resources at their disposal today, but they haven't learned how to integrate. They haven't morphed their skills to be more developmentally appropriate or be more advanced than they were back then. What worked back then, they're continuing to use. It worked back then, why shouldn't it work now? So, but unfortunately, we expect different responses from adults than we do from children, recognizing that, recognizing behavior as communication and that behavior served a function. What function? What are they trying to accomplish with this behavior now? Doesn't matter whether you agree if that it's the right behavior. But what are they trying to accomplish now? And my guess is they're trying to feel safe. Emotions can be more intense when people are experiencing vulnerabilities or. Or when they struggle with dirty discomfort. Now, we already talked about vulnerabilities, things that make you more likely to react more strongly to something like being sick or in pain. Dirty discomfort is a phrase that, that Hayes coined in acceptance and commitment therapy, and it refers to struggling with feelings about feelings. You may wake up one morning and feel, for example, depressed. All right, it sucks. You feel depressed. That's clean discomfort. That's a simple feeling right there. You woke up, you felt depressed. Dirty discomfort is the anger that you start feeling because you're depressed and the frustration that you feel because you're depressed and the guilt that you feel because you're depressed. Now you have this other. This onslaught of attackers, if you will. If you want to think of like a Jackie Chan movie or something, you've got this onslaught of distressful emotions that you're trying to deal with instead of just the depression. Now you're having to deal with the depression and all of his buddies, and that can be exhausting. It's important to help people identify and process those emotions, though, and learn to identify and address both clean and dirty discomfort. And that's part of emotional intelligence. If I'm depressed And then I start feeling guilty that I can't do the things that I wanted to do with people today because my depression is just so oppressive. Okay, well, let me acknowledge the depression and then that let me evaluate and deal with the guilt. Let me try to prune that layer of the onion away, if you will, and get to the point where I recognize that feeling guilty about being depressed is actually compounding my problem and developing tools to prevent that dirty discomfort. But that's another video. Emotions also function to help you learn about yourself and live more authentically. As I mentioned, we're wired. We're all wired a little bit differently. And emotions can help you learn about your temperament. When you were little, for example, you may have figured out just by experience, when you go into certain situations, you feel relaxed, you feel happy, you feel energized. When you go into other situations, you feel overwhelmed or depleted in some way. And what I'm talking about here is the dimensions of extrovert versus introvert. For example, extroverts tend to draw energy from being around people. So when they're around a lot of people, they feel happy, they feel energized, they feel excited. When they are by themselves, they have a hard time getting going, they have a hard time getting that battery started. And the other is true for introverts. Introverts, when they go into large crowds, when they go into, you know, they start class for the first time of the semester, it can feel really overwhelming to them. To be in a large group of people doesn't mean one's better or worse. It just means you're different. And by noticing how you feel in these situations, you learn what is in line with your temperament, what is more conducive to your temperament, and you can live more authentically. Emotions function to send you important messages. Remember I said they're like a smoke alarm. And they give you the energy necessary to evaluate the situation. Now, if you're feeling happy, that emotion is like, oh, you're feeling happy, Great, let's relax, let's chill. This is a good thing. So you're probably not dumping a lot of energy because you don't need to fight or flee. But if there's a threat, then your body is probably going to dump a bunch of stress hormones to give you that energy to fight or flee. Not to sit there and nurture the emotion, but to do something about it. It's important to help people start to recognize with emotional intelligence that not all messages are accurate. Just like not every time the smoke alarm goes off. Is there actually a fire? It's important to evaluate in this context this time. Is there a problem? Is there a threat? An emotional awareness also can help you express your emotions assertively to get you closer to your goals in ways that don't infringe on somebody else. What do I mean by that? Well, if you express your emotion, like anger, aggressively, then you're just trampling all over other people's boundaries. You may be pushing them away, you may get your own way, but at what cost? If you express your emotion assertively, you can be angry and not aggressive. So if you express your emotion assertively, then you may be able to get closer to your goals and respect other people's boundaries, which makes everybody feel safer. As I mentioned, emotional intelligence is usually learned through that initial secure attachment. And I've used the mnemonic cares before, so we're going to use that one today. Consistent awareness. And when your caregiver was consistently aware of you, you know, kind of keeping an eye on you, not helicoptering, but keeping an eye and noticing what was going on, that helped teach you mindfulness and present focus. When you started to get upset, your caregiver would respond. You know, your caregiver was mindful of the present moment, noticed it, and would respond to what was going with you at that point in time. And it teaches you that present focus to be aware of what you need right now. Attention, Improve self esteem, authenticity and trust. That caregiver giving you positive attention, spending time with you just because you're you, helped you realize that. I can have a bad day, I can be angry, I can be depressed, or I can be happy and have a good day and I'm still lovable. That encourages people to be more authentic with their feelings instead of trying to suppress them, going, oh, I can't let anybody see this. Letting people express their feelings and accept them and acknowledge, validate their feelings as accurate for or valid for them in the moment. You may not agree that this is a scary thing, but if somebody thinks it's scary based on their experiences, okay, that's their experience right now. And then responsiveness. When caregivers are responsive, they notice that you're feeling a certain way, whether it's happy, sad, scared, angry, whatever, they notice. And then instead of just saying, oh, okay, you know, Jim Bob's happy or Jim Bob's angry, they actually respond and they say, hey, why don't you tell me a little bit about what's going on? And this helps increase feelings of safety. It teaches you to not stuff, ignore or Suppress those emotions. It teaches you to respond to them. When you notice you're feeling a certain way, you respond to it. Imagine that when your caregiver provided empathy and validation, it encouraged awareness. It helped you develop your emotional vocabulary, and again, your authenticity. Empathy is when the caregiver comes over and says, you know, I see that you're feeling really angry right now, or that it seems like that's making you really angry or afraid or whatever word they're using. And that helps you learn how to identify, okay, this feeling, this is called angry. All right, I got it. Or this feeling, this is called curious. Okay, I got it. But that empathy and validation, that verbal validation, helps you develop that emotional vocabulary, helps you learn how to label those internal states, and again, helps you feel authentic and express yourself authentically. Because you're being told that, hey, you're feeling this way, you're curious about this or you're scared about this, all right? That's how you feel. Going to school the first time, going to kindergarten the first time. A lot of kids are scared. As caregivers, we know there's nothing to be scared of. But kids are scared. So we validate how scary it feels to do something new and empathize with them in a way that, so they don't feel like they've got to hide it. We don't say, oh, there's nothing to be scared of. Just get over it. Go do it, you'll be fine. That's invalidating. We want to validate that. Hey, you're feeling scared, and here are some tools to get through it. Or I'll sit with you until your teacher comes or, or whatever the the solution is, but I'm getting ahead of myself. Once you empathize and validate, then you move to safety and solution generation. All right, you feel this way. You feel angry, you feel scared. What is it that needs to happen so you can feel safe? What options do we have? That's one aspect of it. Distress tolerance is another. Sometimes there's nothing you can do. It's just. It's scary, but it's something you got to do. And caregivers can also teach distress tolerance skills like breathing. And that's usually the easiest ones. One for kids to do is to, to slow their breathing or to count to 10 or, or to identify five green things that they see in the room to help them tolerate the distress. They can also develop distress tolerant mantras like, I can do this. This, this is awful now, but it'll be over soon. Whatever mantra works for them. And you may even find one based in their favorite characters from, from television or from books. Okay, that's fine. What would Curious George do? How would he get through this? Anything to help the child figure out or the person figure out ways to tolerate the distress and recognize it will not consume. It may feel awful, but it will not consume them so they don't start adding more layers of dirty discomfort. Mindfulness also serves as an exposure technique through non judgmental observation and description of their current thoughts, wants, feelings and needs. So we want to encourage people to start becoming more mindful, preferably consistently, but at least multiple times a day. What can they do in order to check in with themselves to identify their feelings, their vulnerabilities, their thoughts and and you know, along with that is their needs in the moment. This consistent mindfulness helps prevent vulnerabilities and reduces re reactivity because it helps people recognize something's a problem before it becomes a huge issue and take steps to either mitigate it, to address it or to to prevent it altogether. So those are positive aspects of mindfulness and one of the reasons that they're so essential in emotion regulation is because we need to help people either stay out of their fight or flight panic mind or be able to easily down regulate into their wise mind. People need to be consistently aware of their thoughts, wants, feelings and needs in the moment. What are their present vulnerabilities? What are their trauma triggers? There may not be a threat in the present. However they're going into a situation that reminds them of a traumatic event in the past that is bringing up anxiety from the past. So it's important to recognize the threat is not currently there and acknowledge that it is bringing up stressful memories from the past. We need to maintain mindfulness of select others feelings now. Not to the point of hyper vigilance, again not helicoptering, but being aware, being able to look at people and say okay, this person seems like they're having a good day or a bad day or they seem like they're really scared. We're not trying to get deep down into the weeds, we're not trying to mind read. But you're going to interact with people differently if they're in the a bad mood than than if they're in a wonderful mood. So practice by trying to guess people's emotions or identify people's emotions on television shows or look at kids on the playground. If you're working with kids or go to a shopping center and just people watch and try to guess what people are feeling in general, you know, Keep it in the big categories. Happy, mad, sad, scared. Yeah, that gives you a pretty good range of what's going on without trying to get too deep and trying to. Again, trying to mind read. We need to be aware of our impact on other people's feelings. If we hurt somebody's feelings, we need to recognize that when we say something and they have this look on their face like I can't believe you just said that. Recognizing that and responding appropriately and likewise recognizing others vulnerabilities for distress in general. And it may be all over their face. When you look at it, you can see they're stressed, but it may not be, you know, if they're having car problems or they've got a screaming child and they're in the middle of an airplane or they haven't had enough sleep. And for some reason, you know this, those are three situations that could make somebody a lot more vulnerable to distress. So again, it's probably wise not to add something that's extremely stressful. Same thing for yourself. If you're vulnerable for some reason, now's not the time to start a new project or to do something that's going to be extremely stressful unless you absolutely have to. So let's talk about some activities. Activity 1 use scaled emotion words. Just practice every single day for, well, forever ideally, but for at least a week. Using scaled emotion words. Instead of saying good. When somebody says how's your day going? Instead of saying fine or good, use something that is more representative and other than good such as fabulous or awesome or amazing or adequate in order to get out of that default responding, how are you today? I'm fine. How are you? I'm fine. When both people are probably not fine. You know, that's just what we say in common conversation. But start using those colorful words and it's really, it actually has an effect. At least it does on me when, when I use more colorful words because I feel it. If I say I feel fabulous today, that fundamentally feels different in myself than if I say I feel fine. Fabulous versus fine. Same thing with content, happy or ecstatic. You know, use those scaled words, good and happy. It's kind of like a three on a scale of one to five. You're not always at a three. So what is the word for four? What is the word for five? This can help you note and notice different experiences instead of just kind of everything running together. Activity 2 Make a feeling scrapbook for yourself and your significant other. Now this is a new one I added, but f. First off, start by making A feeling scrapbook for yourself. And on each page, have a feeling. And on each page for that feeling, identify what it looks like when you feel angry. What does that look like on your face, on your, are you clenching your fists? What does it feel like inside? You know what happens? Do you start breathing faster, your heart starts going, you start getting sweaty palms? What does it feel like to you when you feel that feeling? What triggers it for you? What memories is that feeling related to? And if it's a distressful emotion, what things help manage it? You want to do this for positive and, and pleasurable emotions as well as for distressful emotions. Notice I didn't negative. They're not negative, they're distressful, but they serve a purpose. And then another interesting activity that I tried a couple of times and it had some really positive results, is to have people do a feeling scrapbook for their significant other. In the, the situations that I used it. One was in couples counseling, another was with a parent and a child. And by making the feeling scrapbook for the other person, you know, what does anger look like in that person? What does it feel like or seem like it feels like in that person? What seems to trigger it in that person? What memories is it related to in that person? And for distressful feelings, what seems to help manage it for that person? Kind of getting a sense of, you know, what you know about that person, what you've observed about that person, and recognizing emotions in them and, and how those emotions can come from, you know, their stuff. Another way to do it is with couples, for example, to have each person do their own feeling scrapbook and then to share it with each other. So depending on your situation, there are a lot of different ways you can go, but it certainly opens the lines of communication. When I had the person do it for themselves and their significant other, then that became a discussion topic with the significant other. You know, this is what it looks like to me when you get angry and it seems like it feels like this. What does, Am I right? What does it feel like to you? So it encouraged them to really start opening those discussions about those feelings. Now, I mentioned earlier distress tolerance. This is essential. Not all distressful feelings should be made to go away. I know I said the should word or can be made to go away. So what thoughts can you have that will help you tolerate that distress? You can have distress intolerant thoughts like, oh my gosh, this is going to eat me alive, or distress tolerant thoughts, this too shall pass, or this really is awful right now, and I can get through it. Activities square breathing, where you breathe in for four, hold for four, exhale for four, hold for four, and repeat. A lot of people when they do that, may feel like they're dissociating a little bit. So another thing that they can do when they're breathing, they breathe in for four. They notice they find something in the room that is. I use the example green all the time. I don't know why I like green. They find something in the room that is green. They hold. They find something else in the room that's green. They exhale, find something else in the room that's green, and they hold, and they find something else in the room that's green. So it's forcing them to stay in the present moment, but they're also slowing their breathing, which triggers that vagus nerve, which can help trigger the relaxation response. Blowing bubbles also triggers the vagus nerve and the relaxation response because it slows your breathing, whether it is blowing bubble stuff or blowing bubbles with bubble gum, you're going to take a deep breath in and you're going to slowly exhale, and that is going to help trigger the vagus nerve. Guided imagery can be helpful to help people feel like they are in a safe place, like they're empowered. Guided imagery can be used for pain. For example, turning down the volume of the pain, or using guided imagery, seeing pain as red and seeing it become increasingly transparent until it disappears or sensations a hug. Holding something cold or splashing cold water on your face, or a smell, something that sort of jogs you out of the moment, gets you out of your own head. You can even give your own self a hug by putting one arm around your waist and one arm over your shoulder and squeezing. Believe it or not, they found that that actually does help release oxytocin. And some people will have a weighted vest or a weighted blanket that they keep with them because putting that over their shoulders can help them feel safer and calmer. In terms of problem solving, now we've identified the feelings. We've started to learn what they look like, what they feel like, what causes them. We have explored distress tolerance so they can get into their wise mind. Now, problem solving. What do you do to improve the next moment? You've got this energy. Instead of using it to nurture anger or anxiety or something, how can you use it to move toward what's important in your rich and meaningful life? And I use the mnemonic odes for this. Observe the situation. Now that you're in your wise mind, you're a Fly on the wall you've kind of seen stepped back from it a bit. Observe the situation. Describe the facts in context. Examine your options. Is it worth your energy to change the situation that's causing this unpleasant emotion? If so, how you know? Is there something that you actually can do? If it's not worth your energy or if it's not something that you can actually change right now, how can you let it go? And then once you explore your options, choose one and start solving the problem. By reducing your vulnerabilities, by developing more emotional intelligence, you are building mastery and you can reduce your emotional upset and your emotion based reacting through practice. Engage in activities that build a sense of self confidence, self control and competence. Do things that are a little outside your comfort zone that may be a little scary. Engage in things that may trigger you a little bit and master them. Develop the skills to get through it and go, you know what? That wasn't my favorite thing but I did it for me going to the doctor and getting a shot. I know you guys have heard me talk about that a lot or going over a bridge. I have an unra irrational phobia of bridges. But you know, those are two of mine that I've had to master. And I developed the sense of confidence that I can do this. I don't like it but but I can do it. And mental rehearsal is also something that can help build mastery. If you've got to do something that's scary, like giving a speech or having a discussion with somebody or interviewing for a job or whatever it is that's scary. Mentally rehearsing it, seeing yourself going through it, completing it successfully can help reduce that emotional vulnerability. You start pre programming your brain and to expect the positive instead of expect the negative. And take care of your physical body pain and illnesses are vulnerability so try to prevent those. Laugh when you can laugh. Reduce releases endorphins and helps trigger that relaxation response. Eat to support mental and physical health. What you eat is broken down to make those neurotransmitters and help keep you healthy and reduce inflammation. All of those are going to reduce your stress load. Reduce the activation of the HPA axis. Avoid addictive or mood altering drugs or behaviors. Get plenty of sleep and ideally get some exercise in there. It doesn't have to be at the gym. Just move your body, get some oxygen, move around. Some of the obstacles to changing emotions can be organic. People who have bipolar disorder or major depressive disorder, those things have a genetic component and it's sometimes you can't just snap out of it. Change your mind, decide not to be depressed. It's. It doesn't work that way. Even when you are depressed, it doesn't work quite that fast. But with people that are dealing with a chemical imbalance, it's not just a reaction to a situation, it can take longer and it may not be somebody, something that is easily completely controlled. So telling people with major depressive disorder or bipolar disorder or postpartum depression that they can use their emotional intelligence and feel better, that's setting them up for disappointment. It can help them feel somewhat better, but it's not going to do everything. Likewise, physiological problems like sex hormone imbalances or thyroid imbalances can contribute to, can cause feelings of depression or anxiety. And no amount of emotional intelligence and cognitive stuff is going to change that. So we need to recognize when the limits of what we're able to do and what's causing those emotions. Situationally, when people have a dysregulated HPA axis, that their HPA axis is actually changed as a result of chronic stress addiction, sleep deprivation, nutritional deficiencies, the list goes on then until that HPA axis is healed, until it is recalibrated, then regulating their emotions and preventing dysregulation is going to be a lot harder. Not going to be impossible, but it is going to be harder. So we need to recognize that healing the HPA axis, healing the nervous system, is essential to helping people regulate their emotions skills, factors. Once we help people identify their emotions, then we need to help them learn how to restructure their cognitions, how to address their unhelpful thoughts and develop alternative behavioral responses. If they don't have them, they're not just magically going to come up with them. So we need to help people learn these things and an environmental and relationship factors. If people are in unsafe environments that cause stress where they don't feel like they can be authentic, then it's going to be hard to change their emotions because a lot of times they're probably trying to stuff them down. If they are exposed to intergenerational trauma, then it may be difficult to change their emotions, change their reactions because they are being, they are surrounded by people who don't understand or don't share their perspective. They're surrounded by people who are also suffering with trauma and are have might have difficulty supporting behavioral change and just generally a lack of emotional intelligence. If people can't identify an emotion, they can't deal with it. If you don't know what's going on, you're just like I feel ick. Well, I don't know how to treat ich, so let's see if we can find a different label for that. If people can't identify it, or if they don't know what options there are to regulate it, then they're going to have difficulty changing it. Emotional dysregulation is common in many disorders. People with dysregulated emotions have a stronger and longer lasting response to to upset, and we need to be sensitive to that. Emotional disregulation is often punished, invalidated, or just generally criticized because people don't understand, which increases hopelessness and isolation in the person who disregulates. Emotional regulation means using mindfulness to be aware of and reduce vulnerabilities, to identify current emotions and their function, and to respond to distress by checking for facts and problem solving.