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Emotion Regulation Video

Jun 05, 2021
This episode was pre-recorded as part of an on-demand continuing education webinar. CEUs are still available for this submission through the All CEU registration in the All CEU Communications Counselor Toolbox. I want to welcome everyone to today's presentation. We continue the journey to recovery series and today we are going to talk about

emotion

regulation

, so on Tuesday we talked about the biopsychosocial aspects of

emotion

s, so there are many things, including the lack of pain from sleeping sickness , as well as stress. environments and other things. It can affect how we feel in our emotional state, but today we're really going to talk about what's okay, once you activate yourself in some way or if you start regulating, what can you do to deal with it?
emotion regulation video
Today we will talk a lot about some principles of dialectical behavior therapy, so we will review the basic premises of DBT, define emotion

regulation

to determine why it is important and how it can help clients because we are members of adult education . we want clients to understand why they care, why it is important for them to pay attention, and we will explore some emotional regulation techniques, so that dialectical theory says that everything is interconnected, reality is not static and a truth is found that develops constantly. synthesizing different points of view, so I usually don't draw well, so I usually print it out and give it to clients as a brochure and ask them to know what they see, they know what the girl in the white dress sees. what do you know, if she looks at this diagram she probably sees the side of a black shape, you know this person here sees the front and tries to figure out what is white, so we have three different points of You see they all see exactly the same thing, but they all They are very sure that what they see is only one aspect of the whole that you too can do.
emotion regulation video

More Interesting Facts About,

emotion regulation video...

This lets you know if you have a beach ball or something and you have photos on different sides of the beach ball. There are different forms of experience in which you can demonstrate this, but it is important to help people understand that we need to synthesize different points of view. For these people to find the truth about what they see, they need to talk to each other and realize that this shape looks a little different from different perspectives and then they can talk about it, and of course, it's not just one perspective physics, it's about our perspective of learning and how we can go through the exact same thing and one person will think it's more important than another, so these are different points of view, so some assumptions of dialectical behavior therapy to which I really want clients to buy into the fact that people are doing the best they can and because they are people who are doing the best they can, I think they are doing the best they can with the tools they have at any given time.
emotion regulation video
Don't wake up in the morning and say: How can I do this today? You know they are doing the best they can. They may look back. You know, in retrospect, and they leave. It was a bad choice, but whenever they made the decision, they did the best they could. People want to improve and want to be happy. I mean, again, no one says, you know, I'm really miserable if they don't choose recovery and that's something we've talked about a lot in substance abuse, they don't choose recovery. then we want to see why it is more painful to recover than to continue using and therefore we want to understand what is holding them back, what is the obstacle to continuing to do what they are doing now more effectively or more rewarding in some way than getting it. better, you know, because we define it as improving.
emotion regulation video
Clients need to be more motivated to make changes in their lives and it is true that many times many clients are unmotivated because they try and fail or they have been criticized or people have said well, it's just willpower, you just have to absorb it and Depression will pass or you've been grieving about this for six months you just have to get over it or whatever it's not valid, you've been criticized so the motivation isn't there and if you've tried it before and you didn't It's not successful, ya you know, in many cases because you know we go to school because you know billions of years and to understand the nuances of behavior, the average citizen is not fluent in it, so not everyone may know what is causing their depression. , and when they try to improve, when they try to do the right thing, it doesn't work and that's better.
I feel helpless and hopeless, there is nothing I can do. One of our goals is to help clients get motivated to make changes in their lives to help them see small changes that help them develop hope and you can do it. This is really important even if there is some self-help in someone, or if you are doing it. In motivational enhancement therapy, which lasts about four sessions, it is important for clients to motivate themselves. Therefore, it is very important to do motivational improvement exercises regularly, because during change it is important that it is not always possible to feel good about what is happening, it is difficult changes that cause crises, and crises cause changes.
If things get tough, customers need to know why they are motivated. Therefore, we must encourage them to remember why they are motivated. Even if people didn't create their problems, they still have to solve them, and that's unfair. You know the whole fallacy of justice, we can talk about it until the cows come home, but sometimes people do things that create problems in your life that you had. you still have to fix it because that's what you have to do and be happy, so you know maybe you or the client grew up in a home that was dysfunctional and that created all kinds of problems and the client now struggles with anxiety and disorder. of post-traumatic stress and other things that the child didn't choose to be born with, the child didn't choose to experience some of those things, but other people did or under circumstances they did well, they didn't cause it, but you know. what he did to them, and if they want to be happy, they have to fix it, they can't go back and be okay, you know, so-and-so, so-and-so, whoever it was that hurt them. in the past, it's time for you to fix me now.
We have to fix ourselves, that is why it is important that clients realize that we also want to help them in the lives of and I put many roots, not characteristics, but adjectives to this; Dysregulated, suicidal or addicted people are unbearable because emotion regulation is something that can be used and with almost any client with any diagnosis, so we want to understand that for some people life feels unbearable and for most People life feels at least down and when it's unbearable, you know we all feel like life hits us in the gut from time to time, so it's important to realize that people do the best they can with the tools they have.
They have to deal with unbearable emotional and/or survival or physical pain. For that we added that definition, people need to learn to live competently in all areas of life and therefore it is not only about working harder, it is not only about being motivated, but also about acquiring certain skills and they do not exist. many of them, but it's about having a handful of skills that can work for each individual, and when I start groups with people, I tell them that you know if there are ten people in this group, but none of you will probably have the same box of tools, you're done with this group, the breakout session because what works for one person may not work for another and that's okay, but you have to have your own skills and we're going to start with what has worked for you. in the past, so let's go back and say if you've felt depressed in the past, what helped you feel a little better and we can scan the room because everyone has felt depressed at some point in their life and we can talk about what people has used that has worked and we just started brainstorming on the whiteboard and one thing I do while using whiteboards because not everyone likes to take notes, before I erase them I'll take a picture of it, you know, there's no pH I or something like that, I'll take a photo of it and then I can express this so that clients who didn't want to take notes can still have a variety of ideas later in their free time if they want and finally people can.
There is no treatment failure and relapse is often seen as a failure, whether it is a relapse of depression or an addiction or any type of relapse, it is returning to the previous functioning because the previous functioning is more rewarding than what you are already doing, that that's all. , it's to encourage people to really understand that they didn't fail, just something that didn't work, or the fact that there were some weaknesses in their recovery plan, and I always try to call that instead of calling it a relapse. prevention plan. I call it a recovery life plan because I want this plan that they use, yes, I want them to not have symptoms again, but I want it to help them have a rich and meaningful life and a happy life, if they have them, Probably won't have those symptoms so help them work on emotional dysregulation being a result of a combination of high emotional vulnerability and it can start, we talked about this, it can start when someone is born or even you know, maybe it started before they were born. due to exposure to certain chemicals or drugs, but they go from 0 to 240 in about 2.3 seconds, they are very emotional, very sensitive, they can be seen as picky or difficult, so it's important to think about that when talking to parents who have a defiant child, and this is another euphemism used for it.
This is a person with high emotional vulnerability. This is a person who when he was growing up, you knew something was going to happen, and you knew that if you upset him, everything would be ruined. They are often called drama queens, or you know something like that and it is so active and so disempowering because many times the person has no control over the emotional regulation of emotional vulnerability, it is important to realize that being upset can affect and that they are more sensitive than other people, and this applies to men and women who are extended.
The time it takes to return to baseline, once you regain your composure, is not one of the things they can tell you. I tend to have a bit more emotional vulnerability than other people and when I get angry, when I get frustrated about something, I can't just take a deep breath and it all goes away, I don't work like that, I have to get it. and goes for a walk or something, my husband, on the other hand, is very annoying or whatever, he gets frustrated for a little over half a second, but you know what I'm talking about, and then he behaves and he will continue He'll go ahead and do other things and I look at him, how the hell did you do that?
And an inability to regulate or modulate someone, so people who are emotionally dysregulated have problems or don't yet have the skills to be able to modulate. their emotions in such a way that they don't go from okay to ruined, you know, it helps them find that the gray area in their emotional vulnerability refers to the situation in which a person is more sensitive or emotionally reactive than other people or who They usually are, and it's a fun activity to do this with clients is to ask them, you know what? Tell me about some times when you are more emotionally sensitive, if you get angry more easily than other times, and you know that he might just start telling you about situations or something and then you can start talking about what's going on in that situation and what happened before, you know initially, let's think about it, you know my man, you know I can choose him, I have hypoglycemia. .
If his blood sugar goes low, he can become very moody and if we look at emotional vulnerability, I know that if something goes wrong when his blood sugar is low, know that you know for him that that means he could sufferer has a red face or something, but you know he gets very angry, so it's important for him to modulate his vulnerability to make sure he has the little glucose tablets with him, so it's important for clients to start identifying, oh, now that makes sense. I understand why I was so angry on Thursday, but when this happened two months ago, it didn't bother me when people prepare to get sick, sometimes they are more emotionally vulnerable when they are in pain when they don't sleep than when they're in a particularly stressful situation, They've built up a lot of tension, they can be more vulnerable and little things like that can be the last straw, so to speak, so we want to talk about what makes people vulnerable and it will be different for the people in your group.
Differences in the central nervous system and the HPA axis play a role in making people more emotionally vulnerable or reactive, so again you know it's important to be aware of some people who have hypocortisol, which we talked about yesterday. We talk about hypercortisolism, hypocortisolism means that many times the person feels flat, almost depressed, you know that energy is exhausting,but when you get upset when your body perceives a threat, people with hypercortisolism go from zero to 240. really excited, nervous and hypervigilant, which makes them more vulnerable and can make them more reactive, so someone you know comes up behind them and says something that can make them jump out of their skin unlike other people who say yes, second First of all, it is important to pay attention to your surroundings.
It's important to pay attention to your physical health and it's important to pay attention to your trauma history and those are things that I really want clients to take with them because all of those things affect how they interact and behave and react in the present. , the environments of people who are more emotionally reactive are often not valid and we talked about that a little bit earlier because people who don't have problems with emotional dysregulation understand why we can say no just why you can't just let it go. There is a difference between persevering at something for six months and getting angry 30 minutes after a failure.
It happens that you know that both things can be modulated, but we are talking more about the person who needs 20 or 30 minutes to calm down, rather than two or three. According to Linehan, emotional regulation is the ability to control or influence which emotions you have if they are you have and how you experience and express them now, I don't necessarily completely agree with that, because I think our emotions are quite difficult if our brain perceives a threat, then we will react with emotion, but you know the HPA axis will activate and greet you, you may have to fight or flee.
You should investigate it better, like when the fire alarm goes off at home, then we have to accept it if we feel that way, it is important that we accept how we feel and then we can choose how to experience and express it. We can't choose to never be angry, we can't choose to never be depressed, but we can recognize the emotion and it's okay, I say, "I'm not going to choose to hold on to this and make the next moment better, emotion." Regulation can prevent unwanted emotions by reducing vulnerabilities. It changes painful emotions once they start, so like I said, sometimes we can't prevent them and it can teach that emotions themselves are neither good nor bad.
It's the same thing when you get angry again, it's just you, notice and say: I feel angry. Right now your body says there may be a threat if you are depressed, it says your body may be helpless and hopeless. you lost something that was important to you, do you know that there are some things that underlie depression or not having enough glucose in your system? There may be something else going on, but our feelings, our emotions, are simply there to tell us what happens when we feel happy, it is an emotion that we assign to something that produces pleasurable responses, and we will do it again when we feel happy, we don't struggle with it. that emotion, we think: how can I continue with this wonderful moment instead of how can I make the next moment better?
As an emotional regulator learn that suppressing emotions makes things worse if you say I shouldn't feel angry. ? I just need to let it go. I need to ignore it. I need to do something else to prevent the problem from resolving so the amygdala goes away. I'm telling you there's a problem to do and you didn't do anything about it. More emotions. affective you know they're there for the reason we get emotions for a reason and it's effective if you act on the emotion it's best for you if you get angry or scared and you realize there's a threat you know well ya You know, we are not going to try to make it go away, we will try to get away from the threat if we continue with the emotion that is pleasurable;
We generally want it to be effective when emotions bring you closer to your end goals, so you know sometimes you get frustrated about something and you admit that you feel frustrated; that's right, it's not good, it's not bad, it's just what you are going to do to improve the next moment, that could mean expressing that emotion to someone and saying I'm frustrated with this situation, because it will help you approach a less stressful, which is more validating and helps you work towards your rich and meaningful life, the effects of the emotions will affect others in ways that will help you now, this is so little that you know, We have to be careful with this because we don't want that people have good intentions.
I can be angry and I can be a bully because then I can make other people do what I want. When we express our emotions, we confidently communicate how we feel so others can help if they want. When we express our emotions, it is there. We don't expect others to read our minds. When I work with clients we talk a lot about mind reading and the fact that if you don't express your emotions, how can anyone know how you feel and know if you were excited? go to a concert and you didn't express it and you know that your partner decided now to sell the tickets and stay home tonight and then you were disappointed, you know he didn't know that you were excited and he didn't I don't know that you were disappointed and now you felt like he didn't care mattered, but may have no idea how you feel about things, so it's important for clients to help them learn how to assertively communicate their emotions in a helpful way and emotions are Effective when they send you an important message do it again , don't do it again or don't try it here.
Emotion regulation is transdiagnostic, meaning that it is helpful, as I just said, to think about your client with depression if you are experiencing major depression. We want to help them re-regulate what happens with clients who are really depressed, sometimes they can get very sad, and sometimes they need help to regulate it so as not to go deeper, it can also irritate them a lot. Help them understand that depression itself can create a vulnerability to irritability, and for further depression, we want to help them recognize and identify things they can do to improve their mood. This means that we must mitigate any of these vulnerabilities; let's see during sleep, you know, we talked and several you pointed out on Tuesday that many of your clients who are clinically depressed sleep very well, it makes sense because they are tired and they don't sleep well.
It's harder, but if they don't sleep well and sleep all the time, their circadian rhythms aren't good, so their serotonin levels will also be bad, which means they're likely to experience more depression. Emotion regulation helps increase awareness of present-focused emotions. People need to know how I feel, that many of our clients know how they feel, that they've always been told how to feel or that it's not safe to feel or they just felt that way a long time ago because feeling too much pain is important to them. starting to learn how they feel because they can't feel happy if they can't feel something that regulates emotions helped them increase cognitive flexibility so they can see the good and the bad, the fact that you know that something bad happened, but there is also other good things in their life, or they had the strength to survive, or you know, helping them look at positive options and cognitive flexibility is also not just about dialectics, it means identifying how they feel to identify what it is. happening right now and it's okay.
I have options for sleeping I can drink fifty hours of vodka I can, you know, do all these other things I can scream I can scream I can put my fist through the wall, whatever it is, but it's coming to me, it brings happiness and what I define. as a rich and meaningful life probably not. What are some choices that I can make that I can think of that can help me improve the next moment and get back on track to know a rich and meaningful life and when you are in this state of consciousness and accept that you accept the moment as it is , if it's a bad time, you know, sometimes I talk about it like you're on a trip there and they get a flat tire, they have some options here, but what do they need to do it now? with this flat tire so they can return to their destination of a rich and meaningful life that can identify and prevent emotion avoidance patterns.
We don't want people to leave. I don't want to feel it or it hurts too much learning to feel emotions and tolerate them is really important and to prevent emotion driven patterns of behavior when we feel an emotion, if something causes an emotion we have everything we call emotion. and let's fear fear this time, then we have accompanying behavioral impulses and physiological sensations, so if you are afraid, you breathe faster and shallower, then your heart rate increases, then you may start sweating, your impulses probably are too, You I know that somehow it stops and you go crazier and then you will realize that, as you know, at that moment you are afraid, but that emotion-driven behavior is often the impulsive behavior designed to stop it, and we need to help people to learn. that they can tolerate that it is just a feeling and maybe an impulse and it will increase motor regulation, increase awareness and tolerance of emotional physical sensations like "a pounding heart or rapid breathing" and they will recognize when it is happening that if they can recognize it, they probably can decrease when people start breathing quickly and shallowly, they may start to feel dizzy and their heart rate starts beating faster, and then they may know it's wrong if something really devastating is happening.
I can use emotion-focused exposure procedures to help people learn distress tolerance skills so they can think about something and one of the things that you know happened before the terrible ASPCA commercials, I won't watch it, but if I went to do an emotion-focused exposure procedure, maybe I would sit there and watch it and then endure the emotions as I experienced them, knowing that when the ad was over, I know I could know, move on to something else. You don't have to get stuck in the feeling of depression and anger that those ads cause me, to help people recognize the instruments and learn to endure the distress, and you don't want to just throw them away, you know it's a gradual exposure, systematic desensitization, you know, yes, awareness is a non-judgmental observation and description of current emotions and current needs and vulnerabilities.
There are many things to accept and radically improve in the next moment. Five things to keep going and people say when I encourage mindfulness. I encourage people to get off to a good start. In fact, at six o'clock we talk about what is not critical and what is not. You know for many clients that is a foreign concept because I have to feel that way with everything that comes with it. I must make this observation without judgment. It simply is what it is and I encourage you to keep it as your mantra forever. I encourage you, as you are aware, to follow everything you observe so that you can begin to develop radical acceptance.
It's a description of current emotions, so when people do their mindfulness check they say how I feel, you know if they're angry, I feel angry, this is what it is, I'm afraid, this is what it is, which ones? These are my current needs. what I need and they can be biological needs they can be emotional they can be social needs whatever the needs are that encourage people to look around and do well. I feel stressed right now, are my current needs in this situation to improve. the next moment, maybe that means the door for a few minutes, maybe that means going for the walk they needed, it doesn't mean they necessarily have to or have to, but at least becoming aware of what their needs are. it gives them the opportunity to connect with people who could make it better.
The next step is to say: these are my needs. What are my vulnerabilities? Sometimes you can also turn it around. Is there something else going on right now that could be contributing to this if the person says I'm very stressed? These are exactly my current needs. I really need to walk around the complex for a while and clear my head for a moment so I can focus again, and that's partly because I didn't sleep well last night and I forgot to eat breakfast this morning, so my blood sugar blood is low, and I feel more irritated, which also identifies some needs that we can probably address, but I find that the vulnerabilities that happen before this present moment tend to feel cocooned, which helps the person to simply look at the situation objectively and accept it. radically and it's going well, so with all the knowledge in mind, what am I going to do to improve next?
It's a lot easier to say that initially when people feel a dysphoric feeling, especially if it's a dysregulated dysphoric feeling, then it's really intense, it's hard to step back and not perceive without judging, so later we'll talk about some emergency tolerance deaths. which they may have to implement in the meantime until they can come to their senses. Primary and secondary emotions are interesting. . Primary emotions are usually adaptive andappropriate to feel that the first emotion, regardless of whether it is very emotional distress, is the result of your secondary emotions, so that you get angry and then you feel ashamed because you are angry or you are anxious because you know that you are afraid that people will do it. judge and think that you were wrong because you got angry, or that you would get angry because you feel judged.
That people don't think that. You shouldn't have gotten angry, then all these other emotions start to build up when people are depressed, sometimes they feel too depressed to do things, then they start to feel guilty for not having the energy to do things and Then they start to feel angry because they don't have the energy to do things, so they feel guilty, they're angry with themselves, they feel all these other emotions and that makes them more vulnerable because it's more like that. and luckily my kids like martial arts so we watch a lot of martial arts movies and we found out I found a clip of Jackie Chan where he fights several people and you know he can do it because he's Jackie Chan but the setting is when people he's emotionally intrusive and fighting with all these emotions, you know, think about what he's like, and you can find others, like a hero, like four or five bad guys fighting in the noise of a bar or something, but those are things that happen when people struggle with their emotions and act impulsively to stop the onslaught of negativity, they are like make it go away, make it stop, make it stop, make it stop scenario two, when they have a sense of control and a feeling of control. of being able to tolerate your emotions, knowing that you can't necessarily make them go away, but we can tolerate it, it's just a feeling and we'll get there, then they start to be more like that to be here where they have an experience and it's against this primary emotion that you know, and then they can deal with it much more easily, so you can help clients recognize that the familiar onion of their emotion occurs many times and begin to turn it off, so they can focus on the primary emotion, which usually has a purpose of some kind, so we have to figure out what it was, but then it's a much more Zen and controlled experience.
Emotional behavior is functional for the person and to change the behavior, we need to identify it. function and behavioral reinforcers, so if someone has a bad temper, you know there's a serious problem with anger management, you know, maybe you don't like it, maybe it causes this conflict in your relationships, maybe be frustrating. They may find it embarrassing when they lose their temper, but we have to understand what the function of that is. Where does that anger come from? What do you try to achieve when you get angry and often? I'll hear clients say things like I'm trying to get someone to finally listen to me and pay attention, okay, or I'm trying to get someone to do something I want them to do or get my point across or respect me or whatever.
So one thing we can do in this exercise is have clients identify the function of different emotions. Again, you can do the flipcharts around the room if you want and have a different emotion on each one, but have them identify which one it is. function of that emotion for them, you know, when they get angry, what is the end goal, what are they trying to achieve and if people struggle, then we talk, we'll give me an example, when you or when you got angry, you know when was the Last time you got angry and maybe they got angry at someone who was driving too slow or they got angry at their kids for not cleaning their room or they got angry at their boss for doing something nice, what was the function of that anger?
Know? What were you trying to achieve with that anger? Helping them recognize that will help them find alternative ways to meet that need. So you know, my boss, my God, my old boss loved him to death. You know he is a wonderful man. I worked for him for 14 years, but he could just frustrate me out of the ever-loving light of day and instead of getting angry and you know, throwing a tantrum that would have been inappropriate and wouldn't have resolved anything, you know, I've wondered why I'm getting angry. Why do I feel frustrated and the answer was that I need him to listen to what I'm saying and give his opinion on any issue?
So I need some feedback and I'm not getting the communication I need. Well, that tells me you already know. the way to do it is, you know, probably not throwing a tantrum but assertive communication by sending him an email calling his cell phone whatever it takes, but there were other ways to do it, the anger was just telling me that something had to be done and the behavior I chose in response to that anger was what I had control over, you know, I could have thrown a tantrum, I could have pouted, or I could figure out how to assertively communicate with him, you know, when something like this happens, I really need your help. .
The feedback between a movement serves as an alarm or alert that motivates people's behaviors. You know it tells you: do it again or don't do it again. When clients are taught to identify and label emotions, we want them to observe their personal responses in context. You know, I give people these pants as a handout so they can work on them during the week and ideally I ask them to do one every day and that's not too much to ask, but I try to keep the out of session tasks to a minimum because I know They have other things going on, but I want them to recognize what is happening so that when they have an emotion and it may be happy or upsetting, whatever the type of emotion is, they choose what the event was that caused the emotion. your thoughts about that emotion when you felt that emotion what were your physical sensations and what were your impulses because many times when people get angry, for example, they want to put their fist through a wall or they want to hit someone or they want to do something recognize that it is important what expressive behaviors were associated with that emotion what they did they screamed cry hopefully they didn't hit someone what are your interpretations of that event do you know what the event was that provoked the emotion what were the interpretations that made it threatening or made it so urgent what was your story before the event that increased your vulnerability to emotional dysregulation, so this means going back and looking and saying if my blood sugar was low, I didn't get enough sleep If I had had an angry argument with my partner on the phone and then this happened, you know, what happened led to that thing that made you more vulnerable to such a strong reaction and finally, what are the aftereffects of the emotion in other guys? of functioning, so when you get that angry, when you get that angry, how does it affect the rest of your life afterwards?
Because this is one of those motivating factors, because then you know some people will say, "Yeah, I was embarrassed, I was exhausted, I couldn't do it." Not focusing the rest of the day, you know, just threw everything off and that's unfortunate, okay, that helps people start to identify motivating reasons to start working on regulation, so what can they do? and someone asked about this before what the conclusions do in order. to manage their emotions and there are some tools that I give clients the first time we do this group because I want them to start finding their own tools and finding things that work for them when clients come to the group and when they are learning about a topic and When they are learning about tools it is good for them to be able to apply them right away, so ideally when you present this information, ask them to apply it to something that is happening right now or that happened last week, so one of the Methods for dealing with emotions are to check the facts to find out that Sally was home on Thursday and had prepared dinner and her roommate came home late and didn't call and Sally got very angry because she felt it was rude and inconsiderate for her to do so. her roommate I didn't call and yada yada yada you know this is not an unusual scenario to be here so check the facts for and against, what are the facts that support the notion that her roommate was trying to being rude and inconsiderate and that sort of thing and what are the facts to the contrary?
There may not be many facts at this point that would point out that the next thing Sally does is base everything on emotional reasoning because her roommate was late and didn't call; she felt that anguish was expected; therefore, she assumed. that the roommate was disrespecting her, but she has no facts to back it up. You know, it could have been that the roommate got stuck in traffic and her cell phone died and she couldn't call and she was stuck on I-40 for 45 minutes because of a traffic jam or something you know, those are Facts, they are observable things, so it helps clients see the facts for and against and, if they don't have enough data, recognize that they may be using emotional reasoning and then try to get some data. that so they can make a better, more informed decision about how to improve in the next moment problem solving change the situation that is causing the unpleasant emotion imagine, so for example, my boss, you know there were times when it was a busy man, but you know we developed an ability to work together and I knew that if he needed his input on something, I would tell him during my supervision session on Thursday that I needed feedback on it and then I would ask him again on Monday because I needed time to reflect.
He was thoughtful, but I would ask him again on Monday and ask him what he thinks about that. He talked about it on Thursday, so that strengthened me because I was able to say, "he's okay, you know, he's not trying to be disrespectful, he's trying to run away." you know literally 50 different shows and he knows there's a lot going on. Do I need his information and input? Yes, I do it instead of getting angry and feeling picked on or ignored or whatever you know and taking it all personally and very self-centered Lee. yeah, I was able to say okay, this is how we're going to solve the situation, so from then on, once I developed that system, I didn't feel frustrated with it anymore because I knew that's how it would be and you all know I like it. the structure, so Thursdays and Mondays, you know, those were our conversation days to prevent vulnerabilities in order to reduce reactivity by reducing their stress response and helping the person to be aware or able to learn and remember positive experiences when we are upset. we're deregulated what we're focusing on we're focusing on survival we're focusing on fight run away you know keep us protected from whatever we're defenseless against whatever we're not paying attention to the dawn it's just not what's happening So, We have a lot of difficulty learning positive things and noticing positive things when we are in an unpleasant dysregulated state and remember that starting Tuesday it takes five positive experiences to balance out each of the negative ones.
Develop mastery through activities that develop self-efficacy and self-control. and confidence, so encourage clients to begin to develop a sense of control over their environment and a sense of self-esteem and self-pride. Yes, they will not be perfect in everything. They probably won't be perfect at anything. I really don't know. Anyone who is perfect at anything, there are people who are really good at things, but probably none of us are perfect, so encourage them to work on some of those self-esteem building activities and develop a sense of control over their environment. and their emotions can help them feel a lot more secure mentally by rehearsing how to handle stressful situations because there are things we have to do job interviews discussions, you know, arguments with the Big B that can be really stressful or going to a funeral that can be overwhelming. for people mentally Rehearsing what it's going to be like and getting through it is really important for people with dysregulation, so they basically expose themselves a little bit early and desensitize themselves to the situation.
Illness, pain, and illness itself can make us more vulnerable, but medications for pain and illness can also make us more vulnerable. Laughter is so important that it releases endorphins and really helps us release stress, especially good laughs and good laughs also release oxygen. the body, which helps improve cognitive functioning and alertness and relieves fatigue, so laughing is good, even if you laugh at yourself, eat to support physical and mental health, not just because it's the right thing to do. best fried you've ever seen, I'm not saying fried things should I love fried food, but it needs to be moderated.
Avoid addictive or mood-altering drugs or behaviors, because whether it's gambling or cocaine, when you flood your synapses with dopamine, norepinephrine, and glutamate all the time or regularly, you will have changes in your brain that make it difficult for you. harder to feel happy emotions and harder to feel pleasure without participating inthose behaviors sleeping, doing a lot of exercise and this means moving your body, it doesn't necessarily mean running a marathon, it just means going out to play with the dog or weeding the garden or, you know, cleaning your house with the toothbrush, which whatever it does for you and gets you moving, so emotional dysregulation is common in many disorders and it's important for us, especially from a trauma-informed perspective to recognize that most of our clients have probably experienced emotional dysregulation. .
People who have a history of trauma, especially you know as a young child, tend to have more dysregulation issues because they often have hypo cortisol, so it's important to validate that fact. Mind you, you're different, you get it, you're more sensitive than someone else, that's not necessarily a bad thing, you may feel oppressive right now, but there are tools that will help you deal with that and there are probably things you can do to take action. decision. alleviate or mitigate vulnerabilities, but alleviating vulnerabilities is a lot less jargon. People with dysregulated emotions have a stronger, longer lasting response to stimuli unfortunately this tends to just be negative, you know, they don't necessarily have a stronger, longer lasting response to positive things, but we want to recognize that and help them understand that that's part of how you're wired right now, so you'll need to develop some distress tolerance skills to learn to sit with that emotion until it passes, recognizing that feelings come and go in about 20 minutes and you know you can seek impulse. navigation skills or distress tolerance to help clients figure it out right when I feel this feeling when I feel this urge it's painful it's painful it's unpleasant it's uncomfortable I don't feel like I can tolerate it what can I do Well, sitting there thinking about it probably not. be that way, so we want to help clients figure out what my options are when I'm feeling this way.
How can I accept and improve the time when emotional dysregulation is often punished or invalidated, increasing hopelessness and isolation? I know people start to withdraw and no one understands or they start trying not to feel because every time they express their emotions someone tells them they are being too dramatic. Emotional regulation means using mindfulness to be aware of and reduce individual vulnerabilities, and those are emotional, mental, physical. and the environmental vulnerabilities that you know by looking around you if you're in an environment that you know if you think about Myers-briggs and there are certain environments that are more stressful for introverts that you know they don't like to be interrupted, they tend to like to have moments of quiet where they can think before they have to talk, they don't want to have to process on the fly and extroverts tend to be the opposite, they tend to be in active, busy environments and can talk about things.
Environments are also structured or spontaneous. I know that as a structured person, being in an environment where I can't predict what will happen from one day to the next is very stressful for me. I like to have some predictability in things. now seeing clients, if I know that today I'm going to see six clients, you know, it's okay. I don't necessarily have to know what's going to happen with each client, but I like that predictability. My husband, on the other hand, doesn't like to have. different things you get bored very easily that's why you did so well in law enforcement because there was always something new happening so understanding what environments and what situations are most stressful because when you get into stressful situations it increases your initial stress level , okay, full attention.
It also helps identify the function and reinforcers of current emotions, so if someone is feeling happy they probably won't question it, but that's okay, let's get on with it. Why Happy tells you to do something again. This is positive. Let's do this. What does this feeling say? you and what rewards it and obviously it could be dopamine, in this case anger, on the other hand, if you feel angry about something, what is the function of anger? Well, anger is usually identified as a way to gain power of some kind, you feel powerless, so you want that power back, so what is it that reinforces that anger?
What is keeping you angry in this situation? If you recognize that you will be hurt or something is the inability to be heard, it could be contributing. You know, if you're in an environment where you just feel like you don't have a voice, which may be contributing to the anger, so you can find ways to address that issue so you can stop feeling it, check the facts, make sure you have facts and not just action. solely from the emotion, you know this must be disrespectful because I feel disrespected, not necessarily and I use good problem solving because sometimes life just gives you lemons and you feel like what you feel is what it is, but then , how do you improve in the next moment and that is? where problem solving comes in, is there a question and no problem?
You know, you'll hear me. Tell them a lot, but I also talk about things that are as high as a grasshopper's knees, so you know I have these weird things. small colloquialisms that will appear occasionally. Alright everyone, have an amazing weekend. I hope it's great where you are and I'll see you next week. If this podcast helps you or your clients, support us by purchasing your CEUs on all CEUs calm down or get your agency to sponsor an episode a direct link to on-demand CEUs for this podcast they are all CEUs dot com / podcast CEUs that are all CEUs CEU communication podcast to sponsor an episode of the counselor's toolbox and reach over 50,000 doctors per week going to all CEUs dot-com/sponsor.
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