Emotion regulation tools in your self-care toolbox

In the third part of our five-part series, we’ll discuss the basic tools you should have in your self-care toolbox when coming from relational. trauma With that background in mind, let’s explore another proverb drawer. emotional regulation tool.

What exactly do we mean by emotion regulation tools?

We outlined this in the first article of this series; emotions Regulation refers to the ability to manage and respond to emotional experiences in a positive and adaptive manner.

This includes recognizing, naming, understanding signal values, and managing your emotions in a functional and healthy way to effectively navigate life’s ups and downs.

This skill is very important for maintaining mental and emotional health and will help us all cope. stressmaintain relationships and achieve personal goals the goal.

Emotion regulation tools are therefore practices, interventions, and skills that help achieve this.

Now, let’s add more tools to the proverbial toolbox. Let’s consider some specific strategies for each of the key tasks I listed, such as recognizing and naming, understanding signal value, and managing emotions in an adaptive way.

tools to control emotions

1. Name your emotions

One of the first steps in emotional regulation is to accurately identify and name your emotions. This process, often referred to as “emotional labeling,” can help clarify and bring understanding to your emotions.

Why this is important: By naming your emotions, you can better understand what you’re experiencing and why. This self-awareness is the basis for effectively managing emotional responses.

You can use one of my favorite tools for strengthening emotion naming: an emotion filing cabinet. I’m not talking about real filing cabinets, but imaginary ones. Specifically, it’s a filing cabinet with four main drawers: sad, angry, happy, and scary. The four meta-categories of emotions further include hundreds of specific emotions.

for example, treatment My clients have a hard time guessing or naming their feelings. At that moment, think about which of the four main drawers your emotions are most likely to fall into. This usually helps by giving you a place to start.

Try it next time you have trouble expressing exactly how you’re feeling. If the general feeling of your experience is sadness, joy, madness, or fear. And once you’ve identified the main drawer, pull out more of its files to see what the subfolders are. Is there “frustration” beneath anger? “Irritation”? “rage”?

2. Understanding and respecting “emotional signal values”

Signal value simply means the information it contains. In other words, emotions are not random. They convey important information about our internal states and interactions with the external world. when learning to pay Note What information our emotions hold prepares us to take action.

Why this is important: Understanding what your emotions are trying to tell you can help you address the underlying issues that are causing them. for example, anger Grief can indicate that personal boundaries have been crossed, but grief can also indicate a loss that needs to be mourned. You now have detailed information to take the appropriate next steps.

How to do it: Let’s take the example of anger and flesh it out. First, you need to understand and respect that the signaling value of anger means that your needs are not being met or your boundaries are being crossed. So, for example, if you are walking away from a conversation with your sister-in-law, feeling irritated, irritated, or grumpy, but you don’t quite understand why, check yourself.

Be aware of your anger and be curious about what happened during the interaction. Did she cross your boundaries in some way? Were there any unmet needs in the relationship? Is your anger a sign that you may need to have a follow-up conversation or set boundaries moving forward with her?

3. Allow for “big emotions”

I intentionally capitalized the B and F in Big Feelings because many of us with backgrounds of relationship trauma often feel this way. Capital B. Capital F. Our emotions feel huge due to the intensity of our triggers and our inability (at least for now) to tolerate them.

Why this is important: Learning tools for dealing with (not reacting to) big emotions can help you process and integrate these experiences in a healthy way, reduce the intensity of your emotions, and build on your big emotions. You may be able to reduce the damage that may result from your actions.

How to practice: Introducing highly effective tools derived from DBT (dialectical behavior therapy):

TIPP (Temperature, Intense Exercise, Paced Breathing, Progressive Muscle Relaxation) is a DBT distress tolerance tool designed to quickly reduce intense emotions. Change your body temperature by soaking your face in cold water, do short bursts of intense physical activity like running in place, slow your breathing to a steady pace, and gradually tone your muscles by tensing and relaxing each muscle group. Relax. These steps will help you calm down nervous systemrelease emotional energy and reduce physical and emotional tension.

4. Express emotions appropriately

Expressing emotions appropriately (as opposed to inappropriately lashing out) is essential to maintaining healthy relationships and achieving emotional well-being. This includes communicating your feelings in an honest, respectful, and regulated manner.

Why this is important: Expressing emotions appropriately helps prevent misunderstandings, reduces interpersonal conflict, and promotes emotional feelings. intimate. You can also advocate for your needs. boundary line In effect, it preserves the relationship rather than detracts from it.

Now, these are just a few of the hundreds of emotion regulation techniques you can use in your self-care toolbox. But my hope in sharing this post is for you to understand how multi-dimensional this drawer is. This elicitation is about naming emotions, understanding the information they contain, tolerating them, and from there appropriately expressing needs and desires as needed. around them.