3 Ways You Can Improve Emotional Regulation Using DBT

0:00 (soft electronic music) - You can watch the best parts of this series at MedCircle.com. Now, what if you don't have emotions? (laughing together) I need more emotions. - We all have emotions, that's the point. And actually, this is great. This is a great segue into the three goals of emotion regulation modules. So the first goal is understand your emotions, know what they are, know that you have them, understanding what they do for you. Emotions help us to communicate, emotions motivate our actions, and emotions can be self-affirming meaning that sometimes you sort of have that intuition and that's actually your emotional experience. It's your emotions telling you hey, something's right about this, or something's not so right about this particular situation. You should be upset or you shouldn't be upset.

0:47 And so emotions are serving a function for us. It's an adaptive survival list function. If we didn't have emotions, we would not be alive. We would die off as a species. Because for example, the emotion of fear is what leads us to have fight or flight reactions that get us out of sticky situations that could kill us. So the first goal of emotion regulation is understanding your emotions and being able to make contact with them. The second goal is reducing your vulnerability to emotional decision-making and the impulses that might take over us when we're feeling extremely negative emotions. And to reduce your emotional vulnerability, a big part of that is good lifestyle choices. So getting enough sleep, having a good diet,

1:32 having an exercise regimen, having good self-care. All of that helps to reduce our vulnerability to emotion mind. And finally, the last goal of emotion regulation is to decrease emotional suffering. So when we have negative emotions, nobody likes that, what can we do about that. Well, one way is actually to reduce that vulnerability through mindfulness, so we can reduce our suffering through using mindfulness techniques. And obviously, mindfulness is coming back again to visit us in this module. Also, we can really manage how we deal with painful emotions by acting in opposite action. This is a technique that's explored a lot in this module. So it's about when you're scared, do it anyway,

2:20 when you're sad, act like you're not sad. You want to crawl into bed, but do the opposite, go out and take a walk, engage with your community. And that really hearkens back to research that shows that when we behave in a certain way, our emotions sometimes will follow suit. So it really is bi-directional. - It, it, I really believe that. I mean, that is true. It, into the small things and the big things. Even if you're feeling bad, just getting dressed in some nice clothes makes you feel different, you know? If you don't want it because I've suffered from depression my whole life and there are days where you just, you, you want to just lay in bed, just, the whole day. But if you force yourself, that's why I love having a dog

3:05 'cause I gotta take the dog outside. You force yourself to go outside, you immediately feel different. You feel a little better. What about the emotion of denial though? How, how can we be aware of something that in itself is something we're not aware of 'cause it's denial? - That's right. Well, and I think that's why the first goal of this module is so important is really understanding emotions and being able to use emotion words to describe your experience. So there are some people who engage in denial and they've just ignored their emotions completely. They just don't really talk about it, they don't describe anything in emotion words, and in fact, all of their suffering is described in physical words. I have a headache, I have a stomach ache, I don't feel well, tired. Right? Instead of saying, I'm sad, I'm angry, I'm scared.

3:52 And so the first goal of emotion regulation is actually just making contact with your emotion words. I mean, there's literally pages and pages of emotion words that they show you as part of the work in this module. - What are emotion words? - Right, exactly, I mean, well, some of them are like things like sadness, fear, happiness, joy, giddiness. You know, they really show you sort of like the entire gamut of what emotion words are. And maybe you've seen those charts where they're sort of emotion words with like, smiley faces and different kinds of things. So that's actually a tool that we use in the emotion regulation module. A big part of making contact with your emotions really does serve the therapeutic process. There is a large amount of patients who have what we call alexithymia. It means that they can't use emotion words to describe their experience. And when that happens, it's really hard to make progress

4:38 in therapy because you don't have that insight, you might be engaged in that denial in a very pervasive way. And so this really helps them to direct this new part of their vocabulary that they've never developed. - What, what, what do you mean can't explain things using those emotional words? They go watch the movie "Titanic" and they, they don't say that was sad? - They may just say that was interesting or words that are a little bit more cerebral. - Are they feeling emotions? - They probably do, but they have not let themselves accept that. And that's a big piece of this module too, is like, accepting that we all have emotions. Just accepting it, not trying to change it, but just accept that we all have emotions. And you can't say you don't because it's a biological

5:23 fundamental fact that we all have emotions. But if you somehow can't describe it, it really puts a stop on how you can manage your life, and it's such a big part of that. - I can see how detrimental that could be to live and feel, but not being able to explain it. - Oh my gosh, yeah. People just feel so clogged up, they feel like people don't understand them. And I think that's why it's such a big part of the DBT program that we really need to learn first and foremost, to know that emotions are inevitable, that they're a part of every single person, that is actually biological in nature. For some of my most resistant clients, I always bring in biology and medicine into it as much as I can because it removes some of the judgment. It's not about, "Wow, well, I'm just a weak person that "I'm feeling sad all the time."

6:09 It's just, no, that sadness is communicating a need. - Yes. - Some need is not being addressed. - Oo, that is good. - Yeah, that's a good one. - And that sadness is communicating a need. - Yes. - That's really good. So now it's your job to find that need. - Right, and then address it. - Thanks for watching. Your next step is to go to MedCircle.com and finish watching this series. There, you can also access other series and get actionable advice and simple explanations. Continue your mental health journey at MedCircle.com and I'll see you there. (soft electronic music)