Neuroscientist: How to Regulate Your Emotions & Save Your Relationships

I learned how to set goals, how to accomplish goals, how to work hard from sports. Like, sports was my playground for learning life skills. I learned how to be coachable, how to get feedback, how to learn, communicate all these different things and work together in teams. I learned all these things in sports, but I didn't learn how to navigate emotions.

Yeah.

So I could work really hard. I could show up early and stay late and do whatever was required of me physically. But mentally and emotionally, when something got under my skin, when someone, like, cheap shotted me, it was like I felt under attack. Yeah, I felt like my life was under attack, even though it wasn't. And I didn't understand how to navigate those emotions. So most of the time I was fine. But sometimes they would get the best of me and I would do stuff that I was, like, not proud of. I'm like, oh, why did I react that way? Why did I scream? Why did I blow up? Why did I get into this fight? I got in multiple fights just reacting to my emotions because I didn't know how to navigate and process them. And thank goodness I never did anything like that. I can't, you know, come back from. You know, it's like it was all okay, but, man, so many people, their emotions get the best of them and they ruin their. Their relationships, their marriages, their careers, their health.

That's right.

And they do things to harm themselves and others because they don't know how to understand emotions.

You're speaking my language, buddy.

I mean, and so when you, when you Covid hit for you, even though you'd been researching and teaching this for a long time, you had to face your emotions at a different level.

Totally.

How did you learn how to process it as the expert? Now that you were faced with this real world experience, how did you learn how to deal with it and not blow up your life?

Well, the one thing I did, I learned every single park in the town that I live in. And it's a pretty big town. I mean, I literally would go every day for a walk because I needed the space. I was not a person who went for walks. But because of being trapped in the house, I'm like, I gotta get out of here. I don't want to look at you and I want to look at you. So it's like I need, like, just downtime to myself. And I'm an introvert.

Yeah.

So it just, I needed quiet time. That really helped a lot. But I think for me, you know, I had spent 25 years of my life teaching this writing about it, you know, I have curriculum in schools around the world, in 5,000 schools. And here I was, you know, like secretly crying in my room, you know, eating really unhealthy foods. I was, you know, just take out. And I was, I'm a martial artist by training. And so I was, I stopped doing that. I stopped going to yoga classes. There's no hot yoga during the pandemic. Imagine breathing.

So all the tools that you were.

Used to were taken away from me.

Yeah.

And so I had to invent new tools. And the night, there was one night. This is, you know, the story of the opening of my book where my mother in law had come to visit us from Panama for two weeks on March 5th of 2020.

Right before.

Right before, right before.

And two weeks turned into two years.

It turned to eight months.

Yeah, yeah.

And so, you know, 81 year old woman doesn't speak English. I'm lucky I speak Spanish. But you know, we weren't used to cohabitating for that long. And just so many things came up in terms of like meals and like making coffee and time, like spending time with someone who's in your house. You know, I'm not used to that. I'm used to like, you know, I go to work and then I, you know, I go to the gym and then I do other things.

You have your routine. Yeah, yeah.

And I'm very, I like routine. Anyhow, one night she looked at me and she says, are you really the director of the center for Emotional Intelligence? And I just look at him like, you know, not tonight I'm not. And it's like I thought that night like the dogs peed on the rugs and it was just sort of like the house was nuts. But I share this story a, because the best of us or the most wisest emotionally of us fail. And I went to bed that night and I said, you know, Mark, you actually are the director of the center for Emotional Intelligence and you do teach this stuff. Like why are you not applying it? Like what has happened to you? And I started reflecting on all this about like, well, my time and my space and you're in, you know, blah, blah, blah. But there's a piece of my work and actually the end of my book, I talk about how we regulate to become the best versions of ourselves. And so I had not actually paused in the few months before the blow up to think about, well, Mark, you know, here's this woman who is like displaced from her house in Panama. She wants to go home.

Yeah.

She doesn't want to be with you and how do you show up tomorrow morning when you come down for breakfast as the best version of yourself? Like, what do you need to think about and what do you need to do differently to be that person for your mother in law? But just that literally, that two minute pause and reflection and reminding myself about the work I do, it transformed everything. Just transformed everything. I'm like, mark, you're a narcissist. Like you don't care about anybody else except you. Like you're not. This 81 year old lady is sitting here like depressed and wanting to go home and you're worrying about that you want to drink coffee by yourself and.

So that your routine is displaced because someone's here when she's out of the country and she's not in her home.

She'S got a dog and a parrot. We had to deal with. It was nuts. And I think for me, something that was a wake up call was having an other orientation.

What does that mean?

It's not just about me. Emotions are not just my emotions. Everybody's got emotions. And yes, I can regulate my own emotions, but guess what? CO regulation is a huge piece of emotional intelligence.

What is CO regulation?

So think about it. In a baby, you know, you're working with your baby and they're crying and you're holding the baby and you're giving them warmth and you're, you know, doing a little cooing. You know, you're talking in a very soft voice to kind of deactivate their nervous system and that makes you feel calm. It's this kind of symbiotic back and forth as adults. It's me asking you good questions. It's me showing up with empathy, with compassion, with good listening skills and saying, you know, hey, Louis, I heard, you know, I heard the news, you know, I'm really sorry about that. What can I do to be supportive? Let's think about it. Let's go for a walk, let's go play a game, let's do something to just get your mind off of it or to problem solve about it, but I'm here for you. That's co regulation.

I guess the challenge is when someone's. If your coffee routine is displaced for months in a row and you just like, I can't take this anymore. And your nervous system is on high alert or even something more extreme, whatever it might be for someone and their nervous system is not calm and they feel like they're in chronic stress because they haven't regulated their own nervous system. How does someone co regulate with someone else's heightened emotions or irrational emotions that might seem irrational in a context of setting? How do you co regulate when you can't even get your own nervous system or relax and you think the other person you're with is already irrational?

Well, two over activated nervous systems is a nightmare. It's a nightmare. And so you got to be the first. And you know, it is our responsibility, your responsibility as a father to be to deactivate. You're the role model, you have to be. And so the self regulation piece comes before the co regulation piece. And ultimately if you're talking about parent child, you're the role model for like daddy can take handle this. Daddy has, you know, Daddy talks to himself in a self compassionate way. Daddy takes care of his body, Daddy breathes properly. And daddy's modeling that for you because daddy eventually wants you to be able to do that for yourself. Yeah.

What about in a partnership though with two grown adults?

Someone's got to take responsibility. I mean this is the thing. It's, you know, it's a oftentimes, you know, in my relationship it's like the battle of who's the strongest person never works. And so sometimes it's like Mark, remember you're the director of the center for emotional impulsive. Because Mark me is like I hate you right now. Like I don't want to be with you anymore. And this is very impulsive crazy stuff. We all say this to ourselves. When you're triggered and activated, the worst of ourselves comes out our automatic, habitual, kind of really poor habits. Just like they come out like there's no tomorrow. And in those moments we have to build the space and no one's going to build the space for you. You've got to learn to again take the breath back up. Maybe you say, you know what, I'm sorry, I cannot do this right now. I've got to go out for a minute. But if you build the space, the distance, you can deactivate the nervous system and then you can access all that cognition that you can use to then have the conversation. Here's the deal. 90% of us report never having had any emotion education. You can't just bury your emotions because they're what make you human. The number one thing that students said to me was that they felt manufactured. They really weren't sure who they were because someone else prescribed burns.