How to Not Circle the Drain: Keeping it Together in the 21st Century

Keeping Your Cool: Regulating Emotions

Time to Regulate!  Anger, Frustration, Irritation, Impatience...

Regulating emotions is one of the best things that you can do for yourself and others in your environment.  Emotional regulation is really about the ability to bring yourself back on even keel, to calm yourself down when you are distressed, to lift yourself up when you are feeling dejected, the ability to help yourself feel better.   It is about being able to restrain yourself from destructive actions and point yourself in the direction of constructing, value-creating actions.  Emotions provide us with information, and by acknowledging them and redirecting them as needed, we become less a victim of our thoughts and feelings, and more of a responsible steward of them.

We are affected by the energy field of others, you can feel this for yourself when you are around someone who is in a foul mood, or around someone who is radiating positive energy.  I like to think about practicing emotional regulation as making efforts toward not “polluting my environment.”  Our earth is so full of toxic chemicals and pollutants, so as we focus on trying to clean up our external landscape, let’s also pay attention to keeping our inner landscape non-toxic.  As I will constantly remind you, this is not a stick to beat yourself up with- we all experience negative and toxic emotions.  In fact, part of our tendency to think negatively has helped us to survive as a species, we are wired to be attuned to threats in our environment.  So negative thinking has a place, and is not always a bad thing.  The goal is balance, and if we find ourselves on the repetitive hamster wheel of negative emotion, how do we get off? 

Many clients come into my office requesting anger management.  My premise is that anger comes in many forms and even if you do not have an “anger problem,” such as being violent and aggressive, you do experience anger and it’s lesser forms, such as irritability, impatience, and frustration.  The Roman philosopher Seneca is often quoted to the effect of “the greatest remedy for anger is delay.”  The first thing that I work with anger management clients on is taking a time-out in their mind and body when the signals of anger arrive.  The body provides information that anger is occurring and ramping up, and there are some common physical messengers.  These include an increase in pace of breathing, heart rate, clenched jaw or fists, sweating, tensing in the body, etc.  The body’s signals give the message to go in the opposite direction, by slowing the breathing and arresting the escalating physiological process.  By distracting and focusing on the breath, perhaps breathing and counting or using calming phrases, the mind can take a time-out and you essentially buy yourself time, the delay concept of Seneca.  I like to imagine a big block in between by brain and my mouth, so that I remember to buy myself time in between thoughts and verbal responses/reactions.  Many clients have shared with me that they punch a punching bag or a pillow, and/or scream into a pillow when angry.  This can serve to reinforce aggression and build the muscle of reactive anger.   Redirection to a state of calm seems intuitively wiser and is supported by scientific research. 

Test Drive:  The next time you feel yourself getting angry, notice what is happening in your body.  Use the signal to start your breathing practice.  Count the breaths or use a phrase like “breath coming in, breath going out."  My personal favorite is to think “You are calm,” on the inhale, and “You are relaxed” on the exhale.  Repeat this until you feel your body start to let go of the tension.  Repeat as necessary. 

A common term in anger management is the word “triggers.”  We are not all the same in our response to stimuli, so what causes me to react and get angry may not even register at all for you.  Things that happen in the external world combined with your own internal thought process bring about emotional reactions, or triggers.   It   is important to get familiar with our individual triggers.  I like to use the example of driving, since it is fairly universal for humans to feel irritation in the car and on the road.  So, driving can be a trigger that you may practice with.  We all have deeper triggers that can be explored on this path of feeling better and having a better time in general.   Start small in the beginning, believe me, your triggers will still be there, no need to rush! 

It is also useful to practice with the lesser forms of anger.  Notice throughout the day when you become irritated or frustrated.  Waiting for something or standing in a line is a good place to practice.  Notice the feeling, start the breathing practice, flip the switch on your thoughts with distraction or by formulating new thoughts about the situation.  A measure of acceptance and validation may be helpful in the process, just acknowledging that, “You have a hard time being patient, waiting in this line makes me want to scream.”  Now proceed to skills implementation.  Flipping the switch in these instances has to have a modicum of “realness” in it.  For example if I catch myself ratcheting up in irritation while standing in line, it is not personally helpful to me to “positive think” my way out of it.  If I switch up the thought with “You love standing in line!” the jig is up.  It’s just too fake.  A more viable option for me is to distract by breathing and reading something on  my phone.  A real thought may be: “Maybe you did pick the slowest line.  You are going to breathe through this, and not focus on this woman writing a check right now.  It’s time to practice.”  That feels better and helps me to regain equilibrium. 

All anger is not negative.  Righteous anger has fueled immense social change, such as the civil rights movement,  gay marriage recognition and legalization, and more equal rights for women.  If you are being abused , mistreated, or disrespected it would be normal and functional to feel  anger.   Part of the art of living is discriminating between the anger that fuels change or is motivating, versus the utilization of anger as your #1  go-to emotion, and the incessant toxic dripping of impatience and irritation on your psyche and immune system.   Females and males are socialized differently and it seems that the most  socially acceptable form of emotion for men is anger, and an angry female is frowned upon.  These stereotypes are damaging to our person-hood, as humans we have a right to express a wide range of emotions, as long as we are not destructive to self and others.  Punishing yourself for having feelings is like punishing yourself for being human.  Allowing  emotions to have space and place in your life can dilute their ability to wreck you and others!