Emotion Regulation

So now we’re out of Wise Mind (though I don’t imagine it will ever be far away) and on to Emotion Regulation.

“If you feel like your emotions aren’t helpful, you’re not alone. A lot of cultures and people have come to view emotions as weakness, but we’re here to tell you that they can be a superpower. We can only harness that power, however, if we can understand our emotions and actually utilize them.”

My task here is to understand my emotions. Good luck to me.

“Emotions are…complex, multifaceted reactions that involve numerous systems in our minds and bodies.”

Every emotion has what’s called a prompting event. I start to wonder if there is ever an emotion not prompted by an event. But I can’t work on that now because it’s time for a diagram –

Prompting events can be external, like being chased through a forest by a bear, or internal – a feeling of dread.

If we take the example of the bear – here’s one I found in Romania a few years ago…

Well, if this bear had got cross, I would have reacted with extreme fear (biological changes) and looked very scared (expressions). I would have tried to flee (action urges & behaviours).

We add interpretations to what we think about prompting events. With our bear, I could think ‘this bear has chosen me, and only me, to attack today. Why do I have such bad luck with bears?’ But it would be more useful to think ‘bears are wild animals, and dangerous unless stuffed.”

Emotional processes occur within “a larger system of vulnerability factors, things that make you more vulnerable to certain emotional experiences.”

And so our diagram now looks like this –

“Vulnerability factors influence your emotions by making it more likely that you have certain types of interpretations, or by making you more biologically reactive or psychologically sensitive in a given moment.”

Emotions create aftereffects. I often feel  badly misunderstood ( a group analyst once shouted at me “You always feel misunderstood!’). I then tend to then go into a depressive spiral where I berate myself either for not making myself understood, or for choosing to take my issue (sometimes repeatedly) to the wrong person. This then sets off an anxiety, or maybe lots of anxious questions -where is the right place to take my issues, does such a place exist, what if it doesn’t? Oh god, what then? And so on.

Here's a diagram of the resulting cycle, one which the authors suggest can be broken by “knowing how you feel and why you feel it.”

What I need to learn is how to recognise my emotional cycles in real time. If can do this, I will be able to make positive changes to problematic habits and, in doing so, give my mental health a revamp. Note the ‘if’ in this sentence.

Diagram below of what the authors call the full Model of Emotions -

This will help with the exercises in this new chapter which are all about observing, sitting with, and understanding our emotions.