Emotional Regulation Part 1

All posts in this series reference working through DBT® Skills Training Handouts and Worksheets, Second Edition, and all quotes come from that book unless otherwise specified.

The book sets out several goals for the emotion regulation section of the book: to "understand and name your own emotions", "decrease the frequency of unwanted emotions", "decrease emotional vulnerability", and "decrease emotional suffering".

Understanding and Naming Your Emotions:

"Emotions motivate (and organize) us for action." They communicate to ourselves and others. Below, I've listed what each emotion organizes our response to, but I chose to use definitions from therapy, instead of the book because the definitions I learned in therapy were more clear and conscise.

• Anger organizes our response to the blocking of important goals or activities or to an imminent attack on the self or important others. It focuses on self-defense, mastery, and control. 
• Disgust organizes our responses to situations and things that are offensive and contaminating. It focuses on rejecting and distancing ourselves from some object, event, or situation.
• Envy organizes our response to others getting or having things we do not have but want or need. It focuses on working hard to obtain what others have. 
• Fear organizes our response to threats to our life, health, or well-being. It focuses on escape from danger. 
• Happiness organizes our response to optimal functioning of ourselves, others we care about, or the social group that we are a part of. It focuses on continuing activities that enhance pleasure and personal and social value.
• Jealousy organizes our response to others who threaten to take away relationships or things very important to us. It focuses on protecting what we have. 
• Love organizes our response related to reproduction and survival. It focuses on union with and attachment to others. 
• Sadness organizes our response to losses of someone or something important and to goals lost or not attained. It focuses us on what is valued and the pursuit of goals, as well as communicating to others that we need help.
• Shame organizes our response related to personal characteristics or our own behaviors that are dishonoring or sanctioned by our own community. It focuses us on hiding transgressions, and, if these are already public, engaging in appeasement-related behaviors.
• Guilt organizes our response to specific actions that have led to the violation of our own values. It focuses on actions and behaviors that are likely to repair that violation.

Do Your Emotions Fit the Facts?

When deciding how to respond to your emotions, the first thing to figure out is if your emotion fits the facts using the definitions above or from another DBT resource. For example, I often feel afraid to leave the house after dark to take my dog to the bathroom because I fear being attacked by a criminal. Does that fit the facts? Well, there is a slightly higher risk to my life or well-being at night than during the day, and I've been the victim of crime before, so I could say yes.

The next question to ask is whether the intensity and duration of your emotions fit the facts. Ask yourself:

1. "How likely it is that the expected outcomes will occur.
2. How great and/or important the outcomes are.
3. How effective the emotion is in your life right now.

In my case:

1. The expected outcome is less likely to occur here than in my old neighborhood, so the intensity of my fear might be based on my previous circumstances and not my present ones. 
2. The outcomes are very important, as they greatly impact the safety of my dog and me.
3. This emotion is not effective in my life right now. It's not just prompting me to take appropriate precautions, which I am already doing. It is paralyzing me.

 So, my emotional intensity doesn't fit the facts. What should you do if your emotion or its intensity does not fit the facts? Opposite action.

Opposite Action

The book lays out how to do opposite action step-by-step.

1. "Identify and name the emotion you want to change."
2. Check to see if your emotions and their intensity and duration fit the facts.
3. "Identify and describe your action urges."
4. Ask wise mind: Is expressing or acting on this emotion effective in this situation?

If your emotion does not fit the facts or if acting on your emotion is not effective:
     5. Identify opposite actions to your action urges
     6. Act opposite all the way to your action urges
     7. Repeat acting opposite to your action urges until your emotion changes."

There are charts in the book and online with opposite actions for each emotion, and these can be helpful, especially the charts for "all the way opposite action" to an emotion. Unfortunately, the only really helpful charts I've found for this are too long to include in this blog, but I encourage you to look into it. You can find opposite action and all-the-way opposite actions for most emotions here. I am not affiliated with the organization at the link and am just linking to their public resource.

 The next section of the book discusses reducing our vulnerability to emotion mind, so stay tuned for my next blog post.