I have actually written quite a bit about emotional regulation, mainly because I suck at managing my own. I was not taught this in school, and it was definitely not something we talked about at all at home. In fact, I learned very early on that my emotions were a burden and needed to be put aside. I stuffed them down, only to explode many years later. That is not something that I am terribly proud of, but it is something that I am actively trying to do better.
All those feelings in my stomach were telling me something for all of those years. I didn’t know how to listen to it. Shit! I didn’t even know I was supposed to. I thought those were the bad feelings that I was trying to escape from. Boy was I wrong. That was my intuition speaking to me. She sounds so quiet, but that’s because everyone else is screaming so loudly. I know I can’t stop the shouting, but I can cover my ears so I can hear what that little voice is telling me to do.
This is exactly what emotions do, they tell us things. It’s a constant feedback loop. What we do with that feedback is up to us. We can be productive, and use our emotions to guide us into making better decisions for ourselves. Or we can dump our emotions all over each other. I am sure you can figure out which one is the healthier of the two options.
Kill the Monster While It’s Little
Did you know that you have the ability to change your current emotion? It’s pretty simple actually, although not very easy to do. I am not entirely sure what I thought the point of emotions were, but I do remember asking my therapist what the point of them was. And it was then that I realized exactly how ignorant I was about the whole concept. So I did what any adult would do. I took my ass back to school, and by school I mean Dialectical Behavioral Therapy. I hope you got that.
Here is how this goes: An event occurs. That event immediately causes a thought to pop into your brain, which would then lead to an emotion. Alternatively the event triggers an emotion, and that would follow up with a thought. This can go wonky if the event in question causes an emotional trauma response. Because then the brain can (not always) take you back to that initial trauma headspace. When this happens to me, I automatically feel unsafe and start looking around for exits. This, my friend, is called a trigger.
Sometimes we get so caught up in our own emotional trauma that we forget that we are not in that same place anymore. Those things that happened are in the past, even though it can still feel like it’s happening all over again. (This is the part where I tell you to reach out and find a professional. There is no shame in that, no matter who tries to tell you otherwise.) It all changed for me when I realized that I had been trained into thinking that way. That old saying that you can’t teach an old dog new tricks. It’s a fucking lie. You simply have to want to.
Ask yourself, is what I am feeling right now true? Does it make sense in this situation? Like I’ve said before, correct emotions tell us to do something. But the emotionally unintelligent person will make you spittle-rage all over another person. It’s not a good look on anyone. I promise. That person might want to reconsider their actions, but alas they probably won’t unless they want to. You old dog, you.
Lean into It
I know. What the fuck does that mean? I could not for the life of me figure this phrase out. For the longest time I thought that was like walking across lit coals, just another way to get burned. I wanted to avoid that at all costs. Wrong again kiddo! Unfortunately our super masculine-based society has deliberately schooled the feminine right out of us by deeming our emotions less important than that good old logic brain.
Look. We all lose our shit sometimes. Let’s face it. These times are pretty turbulent, not that they haven’t always been. We humans are not meant to deal with this much at one time. The Technological Revolution really did put us in a tailspin. It made us way more accessible to outside influences, ones that we have never had to deal with throughout the course of human existence. This has also given us access to so much more information (good and bad), how are we expected to filter through all this noise? Back to that whole mindfulness thing again.
Learning how to sit with myself has been one of the most difficult things that I have ever done, and I feel like I have accomplished some difficult tasks in my life. Admitting that you don’t like yourself sucks. I don’t know any other way to say it. But I could see that other people liked themselves. Why couldn’t I? I truly began to like myself when I started admitting to myself (and my therapist) that some fucked up shit happened to me, and those things don’t make me a bad person. And then we began the long journey of loving the person that I was born as. I’m still on the journey. It’s a daily struggle.
Map It Out
Sometimes our emotions are way out of alignment, and in those moments the best course of action to take is to do the opposite of what your brain is telling you to do. (Here’s looking at you Karens of the world.) Drs. Julia and John Gottman have done a ton of research to show that couples who take a 20 minute break during an argument converse much more calmly than those who try to stay in it. Maybe just walk away. Maybe don’t say the thing that just pops into your brain. I say this in all awareness that I do this too. I am a work in progress, as they say.
What if the emotion does make sense in the given situation? This is where problem-solving comes into play. The question then becomes whether or not a person needs to act on said emotion. Tara Brach, my favorite meditation psychologist, calls this practicing RAIN. Marsh Linehan (DBT Skills) calls it checking in with the Wise Mind. It’s the same thing. Do you really need to do something? Do you? Or is your lizard brain just chirping in your ear again? Only you know the answer to that question. It’s that intuition thing again.
This shit is simple, but not easy. That is my new favorite phrase. Well…that and “We can do hard things.” because who isn’t completely enamored with Glennon Doyle. I mean, that book damn near broke me. We have spent our entire lives carving out these pathways into our brains, only to then realize years later that we were going in the wrong direction. (Please don’t tell me it’s just me.) Well Ben bought a machete on a whim because he had to go to the bathroom while he was at Green Top buying fishing supplies. I feel like this is the equivalent of putting chocolate in the tampon aisle at the grocery store. Hook, link, and sinker.
My therapist sent me home with a ‘Pleasant Event List,’ and you bet your sweet ass those little check boxes were calling out to me. One would think with a maiden name like Pleasants this shit would come naturally. Mother Nature or spirit or whatever most have been playing some cruel joke on me. Or maybe, just maybe, this is my dharma. Either way, the whole idea of emotional regulation is to learn how to live. It starts with joy. Joy in the little things happening all around us that we may have forgotten about, or we glossed right over because we were too busy checking off the wrong boxes. Stop and smell the roses, or some shit.
Mad love, Jenna
