Welcome to, she persisted, I'm your host CD son.
Every Friday. I post interviews about mental
health, dialectical behavioral therapy and Teenage life.
These episodes break down my mental health Journey.
Teach skills to help you cope with life and showcase
testimonials from individuals, including teens, just like you.
Whether you've struggled yourself or just want to improve
your mental Fitness. This podcast is your inspiration
to live a life, you love and keep persisting.
Hello, hello and welcome back to she persisted.
I am so excited. You're here today.
I think you guys are really gonna like this episode, because
these skills are the ones that I pull from most frequently when
it comes to maintaining and improving my mental health in
the long term. So if you are new to the
podcast, a little Cliff Notes, version of my story, I went to
intensive treatment when I was 14.
So I went to a residential program where I was there for 14
weeks and then I went to a therapeutic boarding school for
14 months and the residential program that I went to, it's
called three, he's there's information about it on my
website but The program that I went to relied very heavily on
DBT or dialectical behavioral therapy and I love DBT.
It's one of my favorite things. It was what was a game changer
for me? And my mental health recovery.
It's great because it's evidence-based.
It gives you really tangible skills to pull from and use when
you're in crisis, improving relationships, regulating your
emotions, staying mindful Etc, and the guy said, evidence-based
it really works for a variety of things whether that's depression
anxiety, borderline personality disorder on and there's a whole
Lot more to be said about that. I'll link more in the show
notes, but you can read tons of studies about it, but I try and
integrate that into the podcast as much as possible because it
was just such a game changer for me, and I want to share that
with you guys. So today's episode is going to
be all about regulating emotions.
We're going to touch on creating a life worth living and what
that is in DBT, we're going to talk about short-term and
long-term emotion regulation skills to use and really how to
be effective and navigating the up.
And downs of emotions and be really skillful doing so.
So if you haven't already, I didn't episode a couple of
months ago called the emotion education you should have gotten
and that's really a precursor to this.
It talked about the purpose of emotions, why we have them, what
emotions exists, warning signs, how to cope with those.
So I'm going to talk about like broad ways that you can regulate
your emotions. But if you want, really specific
skills ideas and a better explanation about each of the
emotions, I highly recommend you, listen to that one.
And you guys love that, the downloads were really amazing on
that. So I'm so glad it resonated, it
is a denser episode similar to this one where you're learning a
lot. But in my opinion, I think it's
super valuable. So if you haven't listened to
that, I recommend a link it into Today's Show notes.
One more thing to add, I did a crisis survival skill episode, a
couple of weeks ago that episode goes in a lot of depth.
And to what skills you use, when you're in crisis, this is more
just general day-to-day navigating less intense emotions
but just like you don't want to use.
Survival skills for regular emotions because they lose their
effectiveness using day-to-day, emotional coping skills isn't
going to work in crisis because the emotions are just so much
bigger and intense. And overwhelming, so day-to-day
emotions is what we're talking about here.
If you want to learn more about coping with really intense
emotions, like, anger or panic attacks and like being side.
You that goes with that extreme depression sadness, Etc.
I'll link that up. So it in the show notes as well,
but even if that's something that you struggle with, I do
think there's something to be said for.
Or learning the emotion regulation skills and getting
those down. Pat because you are able to
decrease your emotional vulnerability to those crisis
moments and you're really able to increase your Baseline.
So if your Baseline is like extremely depressed all the
time, these emotion, regulation skills can kind of move that up
a bit. So when you do have a crisis and
you do experience those little motions it's less of like this
is what I experienced all the time.
It's exhausting. I don't know what to do and more
like, okay, this too will pass and I will get back to my base
line that I've created and that works.
For me, the last last last thing I'll mention before we really
dive in here is that all the DBT worksheets that I'm working
from, will be in the blog post for this episode also linked in
the show notes. And all of this is not created
by me. This is from the dialectical
behavioral therapy skills handbook and was developed by
Marsha Linehan and her team. So this is not something that
I've just come up with in my free time.
It is a comprehensive book of skills, which also will be
linked in today's show notes. So, That is where the credit
goes there. And again, like I mentioned at
the beginning, it's evidence-based which is amazing.
So one of the very basic parts of DBT is the goal that you are
working towards your life worth living.
So the patients that receive DBT treatment, a lot of times are in
crisis, they're overwhelmed they are super depressed, their
relationships are struggling, a lot of the time suicidality is
at play which was true for me when I did intensive DBT
treatment. And so what this means is that,
before you can start learning any of these Skills, you have to
get the patient the client the individual to have some form of
motivation to want to get better.
A lot of the time there is hopelessness.
You kind of don't understand what the purposes of learning
these skills if you don't even want to be alive which is a
really painful thing to navigate.
And so at the very beginning of your journey, a lot of the time
you will start thinking about, what is your life worth living?
So, when your day-to-day experience is filled with
extreme depression and anxiety, and feeling isolated, and alone
and hopeless, If and that life does not feel worth living.
You ask yourself what would be worth living, what
relationships, what I have in my life, what would my mood be?
Like, when I wake up in the morning?
What activities would I engage in?
What do I look forward to? What are my values?
How do I cope with the emotions that arise?
And once you've been able to establish that, you have a goal
to work towards. Yes, it is vague for me, it felt
extremely unattainable. I didn't even know if I
believed. I would get to that point.
I did, but I didn't believe I was But you at least are not
just working towards this vague abstract goal of getting better,
it's more concrete. You are going to get to the
point where you can regulate your emotions.
You're going to get to the point where you're not suicidal every
day. You are going to get to the
point where you can maintain a healthy relationship and feel
validated, and seen and heard. And then we work backwards and
we use the DBT skills to build that life worth living.
So if you are someone who is struggling with that
hopelessness and not sure kind of where you want to be with
your emotion regulation. Ocean and your life worth living
in general. I definitely recommend doing a
little like journaling activity. You can just write out a list,
you can meditate on it, whatever works for you but think about
what that life worth living would look like.
And what you want to do to get to that point.
And I think that's crucial before we dive into any of the
rest of it and it was really important for me before I
understood what my life worth living was like, there was no
way for me to be emotionally invested in recovery.
There is no way for me to be motivated to change because it
didn't feel like it was Wall. So life worth living is the
first thing we establish. And then the next thing to
really walk through is your values and priorities as they
relate to your emotion regulation.
So this really does build into the life worth living.
And there is a list that is provided in the skills handbook
of some pretty Universal values and priorities in people's
lives, worth living and people's life.
Fourth, livings, I don't know the plural, you know what I'm
saying? So the first is to attend to
relationships. And so there's some subtasks
here, which is to repair old relationships reach out for new
relationships, work on current relationships and end,
destructive relationships. The next thing is to be part of
a group. So having clothes and satisfying
relationship with others, feeling a sense of belonging,
receiving affection, and love being involved in intimate with
others and have and keep close. Friends have a family, stay
close, and spend time with family, members have people to
do things with the next thing is beep.
Powerful and able to influence others.
So have the authority to approve or disapprove of what people do
or to control. How resources are used, be a
leader, make money be respected by others.
Be seen by others as successful become well-known.
Obtain recognition and Status compete successfully with
others, be popular and accepted. The next thing is Achieve things
in life so its Chief significant goals.
Be involved in undertakings believe things are significant,
be productive work towards goals and work.
Hard, and be ambitious. The next thing is to live a life
of pleasure and satisfaction, so having a good time so you can
fun things out. They give you pleasure having
free time and enjoying the work that you do.
The next is to keep a life full of exciting events,
relationships and things. So try new and different things
in life. Be daring, seek adventures and
have an exciting life. The next item is to behave
respectfully. So be humble and modest not draw
attention to yourself, follow traditions, and Customs behave
properly. Treat others.
Well, next is to be self-directed.
So following your own path in life, being Innovative thinking
of new ideas being creative, making your own decisions to be
free, being independent, and taking care of yourself.
And those you're responsible for, and having freedom of
thought and action to be able to act in terms of your own
priorities. The next thing is to be a
spiritual person. So making room in Life or
spirituality living life, according to spiritual
principles, practicing a religion or faith.
Going in understanding of yourself your personal calling
and Life's real purpose and discern.
And do the will of God or higher power and find lasting meaning
in life. The next thing is to be secure.
So living in safe and secure surroundings, being physically
healthy and fit having a steady income that meets your needs and
your family's basic needs. Next is recognizing the
universal good of all things. So being fair treating people
equally and providing equal opportunities, understanding
different people, and being open-minded and Caring for
nature in the environment next is contributing to the larger
community. So helping people in those in
need caring for others, well-being and proving Society.
Being loyal to friends and devoted to close people being
committed to a group that shares your beliefs values and ethical
principles being committed to a cause or to a group that has a
larger purpose beyond your own, making sacrifices to others and
the next item or bucket is working on self development.
So it developing a personal philosophy of Of Life Learning
and doing challenging things, that help you grow and mature as
a human being. And the last category is having
Integrity. So, being honest, acknowledging
and standing up for your personal beliefs, being
responsible person, and keeping your word to others, being
courageous and facing and living life, being a person who pays
debts to others and repairs damage that you've caused.
And lastly, being accepting of yourself, others.
And life is it is without resentment.
So, these values and priorities will be And for every person but
the reason that they're outlined is because when these areas of
life are out of practice or out of alignment, they are really
closely linked to mental health issues.
So we talked about having a income that can support you and
your family's basic needs. The research shows that when you
are below that line, when you are below that line of poverty,
be risk of mental health issues, as a lot higher.
Similarly, when people are not feeling professionally fulfilled
or feeling like they have a purpose at life, suicide and
depression rates are higher. A book that I think explains
these environmental kind of causes if you will really well,
is lost connections by Johann Hari.
I'll link that in today's show notes, but it goes into depth
year and it talked about how this data was gathered.
The studies that were done and the real-life implications which
is super interesting. So like I mentioned, these will
be different for every person, maybe it's not as important for
you to contribute to a community but you're really big on self
development or spirituality isn't your top priority but
having a life of exciting. And is so figure out where your
values lie. Look at those little checklist
items and work to be in alignment with them because when
we're out of alignment, that's when things can start to feel
emotionally off and more stressful.
And our emotional vulnerability is a lot higher.
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So what you're going to do is you're going to go to teen
counseling.com She persisted, you are going to take a quick
survey about what you're hoping to work on in therapy.
And this is that they can match you with a therapist.
That best meets your needs from. There you go ahead and put in a
parent or Guardians email. And this is so that they can
give consent to treatment. They none of your information is
disclosed. Your privacy is protected as it
should be in any therapy relationship.
And so your parent gets a super discreet email, I sent it to
myself, don't worry. And it says, Sadie or whatever
your name is. Is hoping to work with a
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more, give consent for treatment and provide payment.
So what you're going to do is you're going to go to teen
counseling.com, she persisted and find a therapist that meets
your needs today. Again that is teen
counseling.com she persisted. So with that, the first skill
that we're going to learn is the police kill.
So please has an acronym that stands for treat physical
illness and they like capitalize the p and the L and physical
which a little rough, but we go with it eating.
Balanced avoiding, mood-altering substances balance sleep, and
get exercise. So the please acronym, and the
police kill is for taking care of your mind, by taking care of
your body. So, for treating physical
illnesses, you're seeing a doctor would necessary if you
are taking a medication, you are taking that regularly, we know
that mental and physical health are closely linked when you are
physically like super sick or not feeling well, your mental
health takes a toll as well. So we want to minimize that
risk. Of decreasing.
Your emotional vulnerability. Same thing for eating.
So there's a spectrum here. Maybe it's, you just get angry.
If you don't have enough snacks, or maybe you're struggling to
get enough nutrients for your restricting, binging, whatever
that is, and that's taking a big toll on your mental health.
So these are all factors that can have a negative impact when
they're not Captain shock. So for eating don't eat too much
or too little eating regularly and mindfully throughout the day
and staying away from foods. That feel it make you feel
overly emotional one little tidbit to add in here that we
learned about in my normal size. Ecology class this week if you
struggle with binge eating. So a lot of the times when you
struggle with binge eating or restricting, it is really scary
to eat regularly throughout the day.
You think that it will cause you to gain weight?
Which a lot of the times is an individual's, biggest fear, and
the studies show that the the weight that's gained is really
negligible. I think it's like one to two
pounds and that's because you are eliminating.
These binges, which have a huge amount of caloric intake.
And so when you're able to regularly eat, you're not only
having the negligible weight. Gain, but you are no longer
fighting against your body. So we are talking about binge
eating and why binges are so difficult for people to avoid
when they are depriving themselves of food.
And it's because it's that evolutionary me that has been
there from the beginning of humans.
If we are hungry and food deprived people eat as much as
possible so that we don't die. Because at a time when you
didn't know where your next meal was coming from, like caveman
days. If there was a lot of food
available and you were starving, you would eat a lot because you
didn't know when your next meal would be available.
So now that we're In modern day and age, that's not necessarily
relevant but that same principle comes out with binge eating and
restricting. And for me, another tip, that'll
add here is if you struggle with eating regularly, what I did
when I was at McLean which was the residential program is I
came up with a list like two to three breakfast items that
worked really well for me to 23 lunch items to 23 dinner items
and snacks and I would just pull from that list and so I knew
that if I was eating one of those meals, I was going to be
full. I was going to be well-fed, I
would have my nutrition needs met and I was able to To eat
regularly. And like I said, when you're not
starving and you're not ignoring your hunger cues, it's a lot
easier to not binge and to maintain regular, eating the
next category is avoiding, mood-altering substances.
So the description here and staying off of illicit, drugs
and use alcohol in moderation. If at all, there's a couple
things I like to add here. If you want to learn about the
connection between substances and mental health, I did a
really great episode with a doctor named Jay Faber and he's
The aiming clinic and we talked all about the connection between
teen substance use and mental health challenges.
So if you want to learn more, I'll leave that link below.
But like you can imagine it's not great.
Using substances doesn't do anything good for your mental
health. So if you want to learn more in
depth there I will leave that option.
I know that especially for college students.
It's something that's very common and very culturally
normal but it's something to be really mindful of and aware of.
If you are worried about your mental health, then the other
thing that I'll add here is caffeine We don't always think
of caffeine is a mood-altering substance, but it can be,
especially if you struggle with anxiety, drinking, a lot of
coffee or having a lot of caffeine can make you a lot more
emotionally, vulnerable to feeling anxiety and to messing
up your sleep. So I like to add that in that
bucket because it's helpful to be mindful and aware of when
taking care of your physical health.
The S and please is for Sleep balanced.
So trying to get seven to nine hours of sleep a night or at
least the amount of sleep that helps you feel good.
So it's going to be different for everyone.
But again for most people, it's 7:00.
Nine hours. And the next part of this is
keeping a consistent sleep schedule, especially if you have
difficulty sleeping. So, if you struggle with
insomnia, if you struggle with waking up, throughout the night,
you are going to need to be having a very strict sleep
schedule or at least doing consistently, what works for
you, because you will probably be a lot more emotionally
vulnerable to being sleep deprived.
And we know that when we're not getting enough REM sleep, we're
not able to emotionally recharge.
We're a lot more. Emotionally vulnerable me,
especially when I don't sleep. Well, I'm so grumpy.
I'm so irritable. Ville.
And I notice it immediately for anyone who is really into
tracking their sleep and notices, that it has a really
big impact on their mood. A recent recommendation has been
the aura ring. I am obsessed, even though it
every morning, it's like you did not sleep very well.
I'm like, I know, but thank you for giving me the data, but it's
great. It tracks, your steps.
So you can unplug more when you're exercising but tracks
other kinds of exercises. Well, it gives you a sleep score
every single day. You get a Readiness score and
it's just great. I've learned that my base.
Find it being like hey I think I slept pretty well isn't really
that great. Like I'm not getting enough
sleep. I'm not getting enough deep
sleep and so I've been able to make changes in my night routine
in my morning routine and throughout the day to try and
improve that and get the numbers where I want them to be.
So if you were asleep nerd I recommend that it will be linked
in today's show notes and then this is going right into the
next category of getting exercise.
If you are struggling with falling asleep incorporating
movement throughout your day is huge and can help you feel more
tired at night. I also Did a whole episode on
sleep hygiene. That will be linked in today's
show notes to anything and everything you would ever need
to know about having a good sleep routine struggling with
insomnia, what works for me, my sleep routine, the data there,
listen to that episode. So getting exercise.
So the description here is do some sort of exercise every day.
Try to build up to 20 minutes of daily exercise.
I actually went to nutrition appointment this week and they
said that the goal is 150 minutes of exercise per week.
I know that can be very overwhelming what?
Been doing recently trying to do like 30 minutes a day like on
the elliptical or the StairMaster or the treadmill and
I really frame it as like trying to help me sleep better and I
enjoy it. I'll watch a show.
I listen to music and I'm not really worried about, like, how
fast I'm going. I'm just doing my 30 minutes,
it's a nice break from studying. So that is something that I
recommend another note here is that, if you notice that
exercise has a really positive effect on your mood and you are
a morning person. I'm not.
So, a lot of the times I do it later in the day but the Artist
impact on your mood will be when you exercise in the morning
because the data shows that people experience the positive
effects of exercise for like 7 to 8 hours after they have that
period of movement. So if you can try and get that
in the morning, it'll help you be more awake throughout the day
more alert and have more positive emotions.
So that is the police Cal. We are reducing our physical
vulnerabilities to help our emotional vulnerability and when
any of these things are out of whack, your mental health will
Be as well. So it's a really great way to
again. Just decrease that vulnerability
and overall take care of yourself.
So the next skill is the ABC skill, which stands for
accumulate positive emotions, build Mastery, and cope ahead of
time with emotional situations. So the overview of this skill
is, we are reducing vulnerability to emotion mind,
which is your part of your brain, that is really just a
motion. Focus is some motion driven.
It's very hot and you're not really paying attention to logic
at all, so we're reducing that vulnerability to build our life
worth living. So I'm going to give you a quick
overview of the ABC scale and then we'll go into A little bit
more depth than each of the different parts of the scalp.
So for accumulating positives is one of my favorite skills.
I talked about it, a lot in the short term you are doing
Pleasant things that are possible.
Now in this moment, I don't give you some examples in a couple of
minutes and then long term it's making changes in your life.
So that positive events will happen more often in the future.
So you are truly building your life worth living.
If you building Mastery, scale is doing things that help you
feel competent and effective to combat helplessness and
hopelessness and coping ahead. And we are rehearsing and
planning ahead of time so that you are prepared to cope
skillfully with emotional situations.
So accumulating positives in these short-term, you are
increasing Pleasant events that leads to positive emotions.
A great goal is to try and do one thing each day that is a
pleasant event for you. And to just really quickly give
you some ideas, this is a list of 225 different Pleasant
events, which will be on the blog post, but that could be
playing a sport, flying kites sleeping pain.
Ink. Traveling or going on vacations.
There are endless things here and it's just what you enjoy.
For me, it's having my favorite cup of coffee in the morning.
I like going on walks, I love petting and seeing dogs,
especially my dogs, reading a good book watching a show that I
really enjoy calling friends and family members.
All of those kinds of things in addition to building positive
experiences, in the moment, you are also practicing opposite
actions. You were avoiding avoiding
emotions. We will go into a lot of depth
in this in a little bit but that's one of the part of the
accumulating positives. And we are being mindful of
pleasant event. So you are, we're focusing our
attention on positive moments when they're happening.
We are refocusing our attention to when our mind wanders to
negative aspects or other things.
And we are participating and engaged in fully and each
experience we are being unmindful of worries which I bet
you didn't think we're going to recommend that you're not
mindful but we are not going to focus on when the positive
experience will end. We're not going to think about
whether you deserve the positive experience which is something
Gold was for such a long time, not thinking I deserve positive
relationships or things. I enjoyed because I was just so
depressed and I didn't think I just even deserve to be
depressed. And lastly, what might be
expected of you in this moment that you aren't necessarily
doing. So we are avoiding thinking
about those things. We are not being mindful there,
but we are being mindful of the positive experiences.
So in the long term, we're not just having these positive
emotions, but we are really accumulating them and they build
and compile, and compound into a life worth living.
So we're making changes in our life, so that positive events
will occur in the future. So there are six.
So there are seven steps here and I'll read those to you.
And there's like some examples which will also give.
So the first step is to avoid avoiding.
So you're going to start now to do, what is needed to build the
life you want. Step One is avoid avoiding.
So we're going to start now to do, what is needed to build the
life you want Step 2, is identify the values that are
important to you. We just talked about those.
So what values are really important to be in your life?
So examples, which we talked about is being productive.
Being part of a group treating others well be physically fit
whatever that is for you knowing them so that you can stay in
line with them. Step three is to identify one
value to work on right now. So ask yourself what is really
important to me right now to work on in my life, step 4 is
identify a few goals related to this value.
So ask yourself what specific goals, can I work on that?
Will make this value part of my life.
So if your value that you're going to work on is being
productive, some examples is getting a job, where you can, Do
something useful, being more active, keeping up with
important tasks at home and finding a volunteer job that
will use the skills. You already have.
Step five is choosing one goal to work on now so to a pros and
cons and decide what goal you're going to work on in this moment.
So an example is to get that job where you're doing something
useful. Step 6 is identifying small
actions to take towards your goals.
So ask yourself, what are some small actions that I can take
and examples are visiting places to look for job openings?
Things are looking online, submitting applications writing
resumes and checking out benefits of job listings.
And lastly, you are taking one action step.
Now, so an example is to go on the internet and check jobs in
your area. So we talked about all of those
different values and priorities, that might be applicable to you
in the long term. Like I mentioned when you were
out of alignment with those, it feels really yucky.
So these are the immediate steps that you can take to build a
life that it is really in line with those values that are so
important to you. So that is the accumulating
positive skills for both short-term and long-term and is
one of the easier skills. You just do what you enjoy.
But the key is to plan those items.
It's not something that spontaneously happens.
But you are being intentional about doing things that bring
you Joy. You're accumulating them over
time. You're decreasing your emotional
vulnerability and make a list of things that you enjoy doing and
sprinkle them throughout your day and really stay present in
them, enjoy them and accumulate them.
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link in today's show notes. So the next part of the ABC
skills building Mastery. So, there are four steps here.
The first is to plan on doing. One thing, each day to build a
sense of accomplishment to is plan for Success.
Not failure. 3 is gradually. Reese the difficulty over time
and for is looking for a challenge when we get better at
things, when you're good at things, it boosts our
self-esteem that boost your mood and makes us feel fact.
If the podcast has been a really big thing for me with building
Mastery, same thing with social media.
I enjoy it. I love getting better at it, and
it's a challenge. And so, having something in your
life that you are looking to improve, especially something
that you enjoy, can really help increase your emotional
vulnerability, and increase your Baseline over a long period of
time coping after Ed is another really helpful skill.
So there are four steps here. The first is, you are going to
describe the situation that is likely to prompt the problem
Behavior. So, you're going to check the
facts, be specific name. The emotions and actions likely
to interfere with using your skills.
Second, you're going to decide what coping or problem-solving
skills you want to use in the situation and be super specific
here. You're going to write out how
you're going to cope with the situation with your emotions.
And also, any urges, you might have third, you're going to
imagine the situation in your mind is vividly as possible.
So Imagine yourself in the situation, not watching it, but
you are navigating yourself and for your going to rehearse in
your mind, coping effectively. So think about your actions
thoughts, what you say, how you say it?
How do you cope with new problems that might come up?
And then, the key here is to rehearse coping effectively with
your most, feared catastrophe. So, say, you are starting at a
new school and you're like, the worst thing possible would be to
fall on my face down the stairs and everyone laughs or something
like that. Okay.
Walk yourself through that. What are you going to do?
You're going to fall down the stairs and then you're going to
get up or you gonna laugh it up. Our laugh, it off or you going
to do deep breathing, or you can ask someone like help you if
you've broken your legs. Like what exactly are you going
to do? And you no longer in that
headspace of, oh my gosh, I'm not sure what's going to happen
because you've just thought about what's gonna happen,
you're going to cope, you're going to walk yourself through
the situation and you know how you're going to deal with it.
If that problem, arises and the fifth step is to practice
relaxation after rehearsing, so it will probably bring up
anxiety too. To rehearse those worst-case
scenario. So cope with those emotions that
arise in that sin itself like a little in Vivo exposure to the
symptoms of anxiety. Coping ahead is not just used
for anxiety, I think it's really great.
When you're going into a difficult conversation, that
might result in a conflict if you're really angry about
something. Coping ahead with how you're
going to stay calm as good. If you think you're going to be
overwhelmed. I think with stress coping ahead
as a great idea. I love it for anxiety, I think
it's so effective, but any Where you think that an intense
emotion might arise, coping ahead allows you to decrease the
intensity of the emotion. And so you were able to regulate
your emotions more effectively short and long term so that is
the ABC please scale some of my favorites.
Those are probably the core of the emotion regulation.
Module those are the most commonly known.
So we're going to talk about two more things to really round this
out. We're going to talk about
mindfulness of card emotions and changing emotional responses.
So it is important to be able to decrease our emotional
Vulnerability. But it's also important to be
able to regulate our emotions when they arise and so that's
what you're going to do with these two skills.
So with mindfulness of card emotions, we are letting go of
emotional suffering. So the first step is to observe
your emotion, you are stepping back and noticing the emotion.
This is my favorite thing is you are experiencing your emotion is
a way of so it's coming it's going it's increasing and
decreasing and intensity you can try to imagine surfing the
emotional wave. The goal is to not block or
suppress the Don't get rid of push it away.
When we suppress emotions, they come back stronger and more
overwhelming. So we're not blocking your
suppressing but at the same time, a little dialectic here.
We're not trying to keep the emotion around.
We're not holding on or amplifying, the intensity.
We're also going to practice mindfulness of the Body
Sensations. I noticed that sometimes I can
be kind of out of touch with what exactly I'm feeling.
But if you listen to your body and like, okay are like my hand.
Shaking is my heart beating faster.
I am I like frowning? You can kind of be more aware of
What you are experiencing and then figure out how to cope with
that emotion. So notice where you're in your
body, you're feeling emotional, Sensations experiences.
Sensations is fully as you can and observe how long it takes
before the emotion goes down, remember you are not your
emotions, so you don't have to act on the emotion and there are
times that you have felt different.
I think this is a really big thing for depression and
anxiety. People are like I'm depressed.
I'm anxious. I have anxiety.
I have depression and it becomes a really a part of your
identity. And instead, we can think about
It as a wave that comes and goes, we feel depressed.
We feel anxious. But we are not depressed, or
anxious forever. And the last part of this is to
practice loving your emotions. So respected it serves a
purpose. It's kept us alive as we've
evolved. So we're not judging the emotion
but we are practicing willingness and we are radically
accepting the emotion as it comes.
So that is the mindfulness of carne emotions and then if we
are mindful of our emotion and we decide, you know what, I
don't really know if the intensity or duration of this
emotion is active, we can change our emotional response.
So there are three skills here, check the facts, opposite
action, and problem solving. So with the check, the facts
Gil, this is a huge one. It is something that gets used
all the time. I think it was a really big one
in Family Therapy like whenever we start to get into an argument
or B so annoyed, they check the facts, is that accurate?
That's super helpful and interpersonal situations.
It's really helpful with anxiety when you're like, this is
definitely going to happen and it's like is it though?
Is there really going to be a shark attack if you go swimming
in the ocean? What's the statistical
probability? Let's unpack that.
So, check out whether the emotional reaction fits the
facts of the situation and you can change your beliefs and
assumptions to fit the facts and that can also help change your
emotional reaction to the situation.
So it lets go back to the first day at a new school example.
If you are worried you're going to fall down the stairs and it's
going to be so embarrassing and everyone's going to be watching
and laugh at you is that really likely to happen, check the
facts there. R and then because that's not
likely to happen, we can change our beliefs and assumptions
instead of being like I'm definitely going to embarrass
myself and fall down the stairs. We can be like we can go to a
happy medium and back. It is possible that I'll slip
and fall but that's highly unlikely.
The next skill is opposite action.
This is a huge one and one of my all-time favorite skills.
So when your emotions do not fit the facts when the intensity and
duration aren't making sense or when acting on your emotions is
not a Div. So if you're super angry and
like, I don't know, yelling and a teacher is not effective.
We act the opposite 100% to change your emotional reactions.
A huge example. Here is when you're feeling
depressed, if you, your emotion is telling you to stay in bed
and isolate, you're going to get out of bed, you're going to walk
around, you were going to engage with other people, which will
help improve your feelings of depression.
There are so many examples here. If anxiety is telling you to
isolate withdrawal from the threat, do a little bit of
Exposure therapy. Go towards it.
Expose yourself in a healthy way.
There's so many examples and it's one of these skills that I
pull from most frequently and the last part of this is when
the facts themselves are the problem.
So when you've checked the facts and you're like, okay my
emotions do fit the facts but the it just, it's a situation
that sucks. I don't have a lot that I can
control about it. You can try and solve the
problem to reduce the frequency of negative emotion.
So, say that you are in a class and the professor keeps giving
Tests that are just like not even related to what you were
learning in the class and it feels really unfair and you're
not doing well, and your emotion is Justified because you all
your other friends in the class also aren't doing well in the
test. Average is like really bad
whatever the situation is, we can problem solve.
So maybe that means going to office hours and talking to the
teacher. Maybe that means, studying more,
maybe that means dropping the class and taking it with a
different Professor, whatever the situation is, we are solving
the facts and the situation. We are dealt that we can
decrease the negative. Oceans One feeling those and
long-term, it's not effective. So a little bit more on, check
the facts. So many emotions and actions
themselves are brought on by our thoughts and interpretations of
the events, but not actually the events themselves, or event
influences the pots, which influences our emotions, and our
emotions can also have that big thought and our emotions can
also impact our thoughts a lot. There's this debate and
psychology about the different ways that emotional responses.
Arise. Some of it is like, you feel the
emotion and then you, Physically realized that you having this
emotion and then you have thoughts about it, sometimes as
you have the thoughts and then you feel the physical parts of
the emotions. This is kind of what that's
talking about. So we are examining our thoughts
and checking the facts to help us change the emotion.
So there are six questions. You can ask yourself the first
is, what is the emotion I want to change.
What is the event prompting? My emotion, what are my
interpretations thoughts and assumptions about the event in
my assuming a threat. What's the catastrophe?
And does my emotion and or its intensity fit the facts.
So, I know, I just threw a lot of information at you guys, but
really being on top of these skills, can really help you be
more emotionally regulated and on top of things and feeling
good. And I really hope that this was
helpful and educational. If you enjoyed this week's
episode, as always, make sure to leave a review and apple podcast
and Spotify. We are getting towards 100 views
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But this week's episode don't hesitate to DM me, ask me, email
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