4 Steps to Increase Your Emotional Agility

Hey, Love, this is Dr. Nicole. Today I want to talk with you about how to increase emotional agility. Have you heard that term yet? There are four key steps, and today we're going to talk about what emotional agility is. And what are the four most quick and effective steps to help you increase your emotional agility. I was going to say the word hacks, and I feel like that might be appropriate too. So let's dive in. The first step to increase emotional agility is to know what it is. And emotional agility is all about how we navigate our world. And this includes our thoughts, our choices, our perspectives, and our behaviors. And we've seen that people who are more emotionally agile are able to embrace change and they're able to get unstuck and they're able to tell themselves a story of life and resiliency as opposed to telling the stories about fear or shame or self doubt. What is your emotional resiliency like? Do you find that you deal a lot with what I call the sticky factor? If something happens, do you feel like it's hard to get out of it? Do you catch yourself ever getting in a thought loop where you're just being hard on yourself, self critical self, negative thoughts? Or do you find that your brain is telling you a narrative of fear or is it telling you a narrative of disaster? Is it telling you narratives about your ultimate failure or is there shame? Is there? How do you bounce back when things happen if you're emotionally resilient? On the other hand, if something occurs, the sticky factor isn't so sticky. You may have an experience and you can bounce back and move on that. If your brain is expressing something to you that you could do better, it will express that and then you can move on. The way that you think, the way that you make choices, your perspectives and your behaviors are flexible and agile. Depending on the situation, you're able to kind of go with the flow and you're able to be at your best self even if you're highly stressed. That's what we're going to talk about today. And I'm going to give you four tips on how to be more emotionally agile. And we're also going to have all of this posted in the blog and I have a podcast about it. So if you want to read more, then we'll make sure to include a link so that you can do that in the show notes. So there are four key steps to increasing your emotional agility, and number one is to recognize thoughts, patterns, triggers, and where you are in the stoplight. And this is the first step in the ACT method. The ACT method will allow us to create a structure, to create a stop for getting the results that we want in a way that is systematic and reproducible. And it works every single time. And so that first step is all about acknowledge. So you start to look at what are my patterns, what am I doing? Am I self sabotaging? Do I get irritable? Do I tend to have self critical thoughts? What is it like when I'm green and I'm good and I'm calm and I'm relaxed as opposed to what are those thoughts and what are those patterns and what are those triggers when I'm more in the yellow zone? And then what are those thoughts, patterns and triggers when I'm in the red zone? The red zone is that crisis zone, whether it's anger or panic or mania or depression. So we want to start to recognize patterns. And one of the ways that you can do that is to simply just journal every single day. You can rate what is my level of irritability, how sticky is the sticky factor, what kinds of behaviors have I seen myself doing today? To give you an example of this, I have somebody that I'm working with and he's dealing with a lot of loss right now. He lost his job and his family is going through a lot of loss. He is just feeling completely empty, completely drained. And one of his patterns when that happens is he wants to push everybody away. And what we were talking about this week is that he was actively pushing people away by picking fights with them. And he wasn't really aware that this was happening, but it's a normal pattern for him. And so when he starts to notice that he's nitpicking and then he feels more lonely because people aren't calling him and it makes him want to nitpick more. He goes into this vicious cycle and the cycle gets really sticky. And so today we were talking about just straight up acknowledging what is, what is his behavior, what is his pattern? And is he in this rigid pattern or is he more able to be emotionally agile? And he realized that he has this yellow zone pattern and he just shifted right into it automatically. And we're working on increasing his emotional agility so that he can be flexible and make sure his needs are being met without jumping to self sabotage. The second step of increasing emotional agility is to directly address how you're feeling. And so one thing that my client was talking about is that he just wanted to dissociate. He wanted to push Everyone away. He didn't want to deal with the emotions he was feeling really abandoned, really scared, really upset. And he wanted to just start to dissociate and play video games. And so we started to talk about how he can directly address the anxiety. So he's been journaling, he's noticing these patterns and he's actually starting to address his anxiety. And there's a couple ways that he's doing that. And in the act method we talk about your cast of characters. And so he's thinking about, okay, I'm feeling anxious because of some interactions with relationships that are troubling for me. And so he's looking at the relationship or the social cast of characters and then he's looking at how he's feeling himself. So he's feeling very emotionally triggered. This is a pattern that's been going on for years with him. And so he has an emotional cast of characters, his part that's feeling very irritable and triggered. And then there's a biological cast of characters where he's been quarantining and he hasn't been going out. And every time that he sits at home and just plays video games, he gets more lethargic and irritable. So he's looking at his biological cast of characters, so he's acknowledging he's looking at his cast of characters. And then we create strategies to directly address his anxiety. So a couple of things that he's doing to address his anxiety is he's made a commitment to go for a walk every single day. He has a dog, he's gonna walk his dog every single day for at least an hour. The other thing that he's going to do is he's going to set up a counseling session between him and his mom and that's his main trigger. And he feels like she makes him incredibly anxious and she makes him feel self doubt. And then he gets really critical and irritable and then that push away pattern. So he's going to have a counseling session with his mom. And then in terms of his parts is he's actually doing some parts work, which I've talked about in a lot of other videos. And so if you're learning more about that, you can check out the work of ego state therapy or you can look at our other videos on parts work. The fourth thing that you can do in increasing your emotional agility is to pay attention to your left nostril breathing. So this has the ability to actually change your nervous system. And it's interesting because the research has shown that breathing through your nose can increase your oxygenation, reduce your level of stress. But there's a lot of extra studies that have been coming out more recently in recent years showing the left nostril in particular has the clinical ability to decrease stress and increase your sense of well being. So he's been working on four count box breathing, where he covers his right nostril. He breathes in for four counts, holds at the top for four counts, and then he exhales for four counts, holds at the bottom for four counts and then repeats. And so he's doing that several times a day, which he can do when he's playing video games. He can do it when he's doing the dishes. He can do it at any time. And then the last thing in terms of improving emotional agility is to work on the 4S model, which is a model that I created for the ACT method that talks about how to activate your brainstem, that biological cast of characters. Right. And the brainstem pays more attention to scenes, scents, sips, and stimuli. And so the scene is, what's going on around you? What are you seeing? Are you in an environment that's triggering? Like he's been just sitting in his apartment, playing video games and sipping. The brainstem likes temperatures, it likes textures, it likes hydration. And so he's been switching to more bubble water and tea instead of just drinking coffee. And then send is, I just saw that Francis got on. Hi, honey. I'm so glad that you're here. We're talking about emotional agility right now and how to know if you have emotional agility and the four key steps to increase emotional agility. So welcome. And then we were talking about seen, sent, sip, and stimuli. And so we're using the example of if you're in a triggering environment, change it up, leave, relocate yourself, go to a different room, go to the bathroom, take a walk outside, whatever you can do to change it up. And then scent is, if you've been smelling the same old smells all day long is maybe use a different smell, light a candle, go outside, smell something that you love, or maybe cook some food that has some really nice scents. Essential oils are really good for that. And then sipping, we talked about maybe he could switch from coffee to something cool or whatever he's sipping. It could be a therapeutic benefit. And then stimuli is changing what kind of stimuli are going into the body. I have a woman that I'm working with right now. She's one of my anxiety warriors, and we're talking about how to get her out of her anxious thought loops and to get it moving through and out of her body. And so we talked about fidget spinners, kinetic sand floor mats for her feet. So today, just to quickly recap, we've been talking about emotional agility. Emotional agility, again, is about how we navigate the world, including our thoughts, our choices, our perspectives and our behaviors. And we talked about how if you're more emotionally agile, you'll be able to embrace change, get unstuck, and then write a story of life the way that you want it to be. We talked about what are the signs that you're struggling with emotional agility and you might be getting into rigidity. And then we went over four steps to increase your emotional agility so that you can write your life the way that you want it to be. So if there's any questions, I'm going to jump into the anxiety warriors group and so we can have a direct Q and A. And so I'd love to see you there. Otherwise, I will be back to visit you guys on Wednesday, 1:00 Eastern. It was so good to see you. I'm Dr. Nicole Cain. If you haven't seen it yet, by the way, I created an anxiety Breakthrough Wellness springboard. And this is because I've been getting feedback from people that while doing the work and the anxiety freedom one week challenge has been game changing and helpful. And sometimes you need an answer. Yesterday you need something that works really fast. And that's what the springboard is all about, is getting you some quick results, quick solutions. And so if you haven't seen it, it's totally free. Check it out. We'll make sure to include a link in the show notes. And I will be back next week and we'll talk about more amazing topics. And for now, I'm going to jump in the warriors group. And so I will see you later, my loves. Take care. Bye.