Emotional Regulation – Part 1

Beginning this new year, I spent time reading about intentionality (my chosen WOTY – link here) and resilience as well as listening to a number of sessions on building intuition.  Consistent themes have emerged from this exploration – grounding and breathing tools, continue to work on shifting deeply held beliefs, and focusing energy.  All this relates to Emotional Regulation. [This blog post will be in two parts. It’s a big topic!]

Through my retirement years, I’ve explored traditional psychology approaches of trying to change negative thought patterns, being aware of the shoulds, and releasing self-limiting beliefs. (Link here to one of my many posts on that topic.)  I’ve explored positive psychology practices including practicing gratitude and looking for daily joys/glimmers while being aware of triggers. (Link here to one of my posts on that topic as well). I’ve delved into my past to understand why I am the way I am, learning about my conditioned survival strategy (i.e. flight/fight/fawn) and my long-held belief that I am never good enough. I’ve created my own retirement lifestyle vision and put plans together (intentional choices) to make it happen.

Even though I stated I wanted to move on from surviving, I’m aware I am still in a post-hurricane survival mode, expecting the next setback and with an elevated fight response. The trauma has also heightened my old (deeply held) thought patterns of feeling I’m never good enough. I am on hyper-alert about rejection (you don’t belong) and incompetence (you’re worthless). I’ve become aware I “hear” these things (inner voice) even when they are not there.   

I was brought up to be a good girl, which meant that any angry expressions were unacceptable. I was brought up to not be greedy or wasteful (so don’t ask for what you might really want), to not be disagreeable or cause trouble (don’t be difficult; don’t do any rebellious teenage behaviors; don’t make mistakes).  As a good girl, you don’t inconvenience people; you do what needs to be done if you see something that needs to be done. As a good girl, you don’t take risks, don’t break the rules, don’t curse, don’t do drugs. In my family, I was (am) the smart one, the responsible one, the one you could depend on. But I (still) have low self-worth and look for external validation. And as I never learned how to manage my anger, I hate anger and displays of anger (including yelling, slamming doors, and excessive use of curse words) frighten me. And when I get angry at small stupid things (post hurricane hyper-alert) or get angry that I wasn’t the good girl (any not good enough feeling), I hate myself.

Recently I saw the term meta-awareness. It is the ability to observe your own thoughts, feelings, and sensations, essentially “thinking about your thinking” and creating a mental model of your own thinking. With my over-thinking, over-analyzing mind, I’m an expert at some aspects of meta-awareness! However, meta-awareness is also linked to self-regulation, helping you move from reactive, mind-wandering to conscious, adaptive responses.  I’m definitely not an expert in emotional self-regulation.

I need to grow my emotional regulation tool box, which (not surprisingly) correlates to increasing resilience, dealing with trauma and grief, managing triggers, and being intentional. I said my WOTY was intention, as in live my life with intention. Looking further into this, I read how intentional living is when you become consciously aware of how you are reacting to situations around you and focusing on what is in your circle of control versus what is outside of it.  Emotional regulation!

Some ways to increase emotional regulation:

• Develop Grounding and Breath Skills – For me this means I need to practice the box breathing and the 5 senses grounding techniques so they become more innate skills.
• Conscious Cognitive Reappraisal – I need to use my meta-awareness to reframe situations, see the reality versus hearing the perception of my automatic thoughts, rewrite the story (change the language) of the past, and recognize the wallowing rumination of the present.  An interesting insight I gathered in my recent reading was recognizing that the words of your story reflect your deeply held beliefs. And that you need to stop talking that old message track (as it’s just not helpful). Conscious Cognitive Reappraisal is about interrupting current (negative) thought patterns and shifting them.
• Emotional Awareness and labeling how you are feeling. I’ve used Emotional Awareness before as part of my daily journaling (link to post on that) but have gotten out of the habit.  A build on this tool is to not only label the feeling, but to sense where in the body that feeling resides.
• Trigger Identification – In everything I’ve read, whether managing through grief, loving & accepting yourself, or building intuitive skills, becoming more aware of the toxic elements in your environment is critical. What in your current life/environment is draining your energy? What is building your energy? Identify your toxic or triggering situations (energy draining) in your life.  Identify the toxic or triggering people (energy draining) in your life.  How can you minimize or remove them from your daily environment?
• Live a Lifestyle full of enjoyable, calming activities. And rejoice in how far you’ve come – celebrate the resilience, courage, perseverance.

I will be using these emotional regulation approaches to define some clear next steps (next blog post).  Do you feel you have good emotional regulation?

Picture Credit: Pixabay, reminds me of grounding and breath skills

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