How to calm your inner storm | Psyche Guides

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• In the right amounts, emotions serve a useful purpose.

• Nonetheless, emotions can be painful and distressing. When they arise, we try to manage and cope with them. This process is known as emotion regulation, and can include redirecting our attention away from whatever is causing us distress; changing our thoughts about the situation; or changing how we’re behaving in the situation.

• Trouble arises when emotions become overwhelming and we can’t regulate them in healthy, effective ways. This is known as emotion dysregulation

• Most people learn how to regulate their emotions when they’re growing up. But for some, the strategies they adopt are unhealthy or unhelpful.

• Specifically, some children grow up in an environment in which they experience pervasive invalidation. They regularly receive the message that there’s something wrong with them, and are punished for the emotions, thoughts and physical sensations they experience – or have these experiences ignored.

• This Guide is about using DBT skills to help you navigate and manage strong emotions. There are four sets of skills taught in DBT: core mindfulness skills help people to live more in the present moment and bring an accepting, open attitude to their experience; distress tolerance skills help people to get through crisis situations without making things worse; emotion regulation skills help people learn more about emotions and healthier ways of managing them; and interpersonal effectiveness skills help people to be more effective in their relationships, through such things as assertive communication.

• Here are some fast-acting skills that work by changing your body’s chemistry; it will be most helpful if you first try these before you’re in an emotional situation, so you know how to use them.

• Do a forward bend: this is my favourite re-regulating skill. Bend over as though you’re trying to touch your toes (it doesn’t matter if you can actually touch your toes; you can also do this sitting down if you need to, by sticking your head between your knees). Take some slow, deep breaths, and hang out there for a little while (30 to 60 seconds if you can). Doing a forward bend actually activates our parasympathetic nervous system – our ‘rest and digest’ system – which helps us slow down and feel a little calmer.

• Focus on your exhale with ‘paced breathing’: it might sound like a cliché but breathing truly is one of the best ways to get your emotions to a more manageable level.

• In particular, focus on making your exhale longer than your inhale – this also activates our parasympathetic nervous system

• In order to manage emotions more effectively in the long run, you need to be more aware of your emotions and of all their components; and you need to learn to name your emotions accurately. This might sound strange – of course you know what you’re feeling, right? But how do you know if what you’ve always called ‘anger’ is actually anger, and not anxiety?

• When you’re feeling ‘upset’, ‘bad’ or ‘off’, are you able to identify what emotion you’re actually feeling?

• Once you’ve asked yourself the above questions, you could try asking yourself if your emotion fits into one of these four (almost rhyming) categories: mad, sad, glad, and afraid.

• An important thing to remember is that emotions are not good or bad, right or wrong; they just are.

• Take a moment to think about your own experience with emotions: do you have feelings you believe you ‘shouldn’t’ feel? Make sure you’re not mixing up emotions with behaviours, by the way: feeling angry (emotion), for instance, is very different from yelling when you’re angry (behaviour).

• Validation doesn’t mean you like the emotion, or that you want it to stick around; it just means that you accept what you’re feeling. Try writing out some statements to help you validate the emotion

• Once you’ve been able to get a little calmer, you’ve figured out what emotion you’re feeling and you’ve validated it, the next step is deciding if you want to do something to reduce the emotion.

• In DBT, we have a saying: ‘Emotions love themselves.’ They tend to get us to act in ways that keep them going, or that even make them stronger. So, the idea with this skill is that we interrupt the cycle: by doing the opposite of what the emotion’s telling us to do, we can reduce the intensity of that feeling.

• Like all of the DBT skills, of course, opposite action isn’t about suppressing or just getting rid of emotions; remember, they all serve a purpose. But if the emotion has delivered its message, and now it’s getting in your way, then you can work on reducing the emotion with this skill.

• Emotions are never ‘right or wrong’; what might be accurate or inaccurate are our interpretations.

• One of the first steps in regulating emotions is being able to accurately put a label on your emotion (‘name it to tame it’). This helps to increase your awareness of how you experience your emotions so you get to know them better.