May 2021 - Kate Gegg, AM, LCSW

May 31, 2021March 27, 2023

Emotional Blocking

Our emotions continue to effect us even if we don’t perceive them
Even if we don’t feel or notice our feelings they can still have a major impact on how we process the world around us
Some of us believe our emotions don’t influence us, and we are ruled only by logic or reason
Some of us know we have feelings, but they slip away and escape us before we can really make sense of them
This post is for those of you who feel like your emotions are far away or hard to hold on to. There will be posts to come to help you sustainably get in touch with your inner world
To get better at noticing, feeling, and making sense of our emotions we need to learn how to turn the volume up on our feelings in a way that doesn’t overwhelm us, but has emotions stick around long enough for us to make use of them.
Emotions are complex, but they involve brain and body changes in a feedback loop. We can learn to tap into that feedback loop to help us be in better touch with our feelings
For those of us that have a hard time registering what we are feeling starting with our bodies is often the more accessible entry point.
Each feeling has combination of body sensations and brain changes that make it distinct. We can learn to pay attention to those body changes and stay present with them as a way to help us connect more to our emotional world.
Remember: if something feels like too much, return to grounding skills.

Thus far I have written a lot about feeling overwhelmed by emotion, the times when we are filled to the brim or feel like we are bursting. For many of us, however, we have the opposite relationship with our emotions, we struggle with not being able to hold on to our feelings; they slip our of reach, or just aren’t there.

At times, it’s not an intentional pushing down or away, it’s just what happens, like the feelings don’t ever really seem to bubble up. Other times it may be more intentional. Some of us have come to believe that emotions are a waste of time, or we we’ve trained ourselves “not to have them” and consider ourselves to be ruled solely by logic and reasoning.

As Daniel Seigel writes, there are consequences to this non-experience of emotions too, “When we block our awareness of our feelings, they continue to affect us anyway. Research has repeatedly shown that neural input from the internal world of the body and emotion influences our reasoning and our decision making. Even facial expressions we’re not aware of…directly affect how we feel and so how we perceive the world.”

In short, what Dr. Seigel writes is that even if we don’t notice our feelings are there, they are. Even though we aren’t conscious of them, they impact us, our decision making, and how we perceive what’s going on around us.

So, for these folks, we want to help you learn how to turn the volume up on emotions in a sustainable way. For that to happen, we need to help you tolerate the experience of your emotions, which have probably been whittled down because at one point they were too painful, or perhaps you came from an environment where they were not welcome.

We can help you increase your ability to notice your internal world by helping you work to be more connected to your body. Emotions are complex, but they involve brain and body changes in a type of feedback loop. We want to help you plug into that feedback loop by being more present with your body. That way we can help you work to notice and gradually hold on to the emotional signals within you.

There will be more on how to do this, but keep your eyes peeled for mindfulness and body based posts to come.

Notes:

The Daniel Siegel quote comes from his book, Mindsight. (page 125). Full Citation: Siegel, Daniel J., Mindsight : The New Science of Personal Transformation. New York: Bantam Books, 2010.
The theory of emotions (the part about emotions being a feedback loop that involve brain and body changes) is a brief summary of what is laid out on pages 87 – 88 and page 137 of Marsha Linehan’s DBT manual. Full Citation: Linehan, M. (1993). Skills training manual for treating borderline personality disorder. New York: Guilford Press.
If you are eager to start working on increasing your awareness of your emotional world run yourself through the exercise of taking some core emotions (anger, sadness, fear, joy, confusion), and sit quietly. Work to pay attention to what happens in your body as you bring up a memory that includes each emotion. Each emotion has a distinct feeling experience in our bodies, and we want to become aware of how those feelings manifest in each of us. Knowing “what” they feel like and “how” it feels in our bodies, and being able to tolerate that feeling helps us become more able to identify and tolerate emotions as they come up naturally in our lives. Be sure you have mastered grounding skills before trying this, it may be overwhelming to start “turning up the volume”. If so, consider starting only with emotions that are more tolerable to feel and get to the more difficult ones once you’re comfortable there.
Wondering why on earth you’d want to feel your feelings – especially your negative ones? Read this post about how are emotions are like “traffic signals” in our inner world .

May 26, 2021March 27, 2023

How to Ground

Grounding skills are the “reset” button for our brain
Many of us avoid our feelings because they are too overwhelming for us to handle
When feelings are too much they can overload us (fill us to the brim and consume us), or numb us (leaving us with nothingness, tired, unable to focus)
When we can effectively use grounding skills we know how to bring ourselves back from those moments
Having this ability to bring ourselves back makes our emotions much less scary – because we know we can always hit “reset” if needed.
These can be done ANYTIME, including when you are around other people and they don’t ever have to know you’re doing it. They can take as little as 20-60 seconds.
For grounding skills to work it is ESSENTIAL that you 1) Engage your senses 2) Engage your whole self (which means no thinking about the thing that’s going on while doing it!) and 3) are mindful of keeping yourself and others safe
Nearly every time I introduce these to a client they roll their eyes at me and ask me if I’m kidding. I am not kidding. This really works. Try it and see for yourself.
The skill I have seen that is most effective is counting a particular classification of objects in a room (i.e. how many circular objects do you see, how many green items are in the room, how many places where you could set something down)
I consider grounding skills to be essential prerequisites for intensive psychotherapy. For us to face our painful emotions we need to have the skills (and to confidence) to come back from them.
There are thousands of grounding skills. Learn more in today’s post.

Grounding skills are essential “bail out tools” for the mind. These are the life raft, oxygen mask, parachute of the brain – essential for helping us “come back to the ground” when our internal world is more intense than we know how to handle (when we are outside our window of tolerance.

These are skills we want to keep in our back pocket at all times, and I encourage my clients to use them in low stress scenarios before relying on them in high stress scenarios so that they get used to what it feels like to “bring themselves back online”.

There are thousands of grounding skills, and you can even make them up can work as long as they meets some basic criteria: 1. Engages your senses 2. You commit yourself with ALL your attention and capacity at that moment 3. Does not have the potential to cause harm to you or others 4. is done at a time when your safety is not threatened. If your physical safety is threatened you need to get to a safe place first. Grounding can help you find emotional safety.

Despite being simple (almost laughably simple) these exercises are often powerful IF we follow the criteria listed above. I find the biggest pitfall is not following criteria 2 – it is essential that we not multi-task and think about something else, we have to bring our brain back to exercise again and again if it veers away. It will be natural for it to veer away, just keep coming back to the task. I also find it helps to keep it simple – if counting works for you (it’s my favorite), rely on counting, and keep counting different types of things in the space around you until the intensity has dissipated.

Grounding exercises work because they engage a different part of our brain AWAY from our emotional center (which is overloaded prior to grounding). These exercises also force us to come back to the present, which is often not as threatening as our internal world.
Examples of other grounding exercises in the comments, you can also search the internet for lists of these.

Notes:

Grounding Exercise: Visual. Counting a particular classification of objects in a room: How many circular objects do you see, how many green items are in the room, how many metallic items, how many places where you could set something down, how many soft items, how many hard items. The list goes on and on. This one is excellent for doing discreetly.
Grounding Exercise: Touch based: While in place, scan through your body and notice every part of your body that is touching something other than air. Notice how it all feels on your skin. Notice the pressure of where your weight is, the feeling of fabric on your skin etc. Experiment with pressing into what you are touching. Count how many different items your body is in contact with. This one is excellent for doing discreetly. This grounding skill might be challenging for someone struggling with body image concerns.
Grounding exercise: Touch, smell, sight, sound. Shower with fragrant (and different than usual) scented cleansing products. Notice the temperature difference between the water and your body. Showers can be very powerful, but this is obviously not one you can do in place.
Grounding exercise: Smell. Put on a lotion or perfume. Smell it and see if you can pick out the different scents in it. How many can you identify. This can be done discreetly, but does require keeping something scented with you which might be a barrier for some.
Grounding Exercise: Taste and touch If you have a liquid with you put it in your mouth and hold it before swallowing (be mindful of not doing something that causes pain – aka – make sure it’s not too hot!). Notice the temperature change. Notice any tastes. See if you can classify them.
Grounding exercise: Hold an ice cube. This one is awesome because it is very hard to think about anything else while you are holding an ice cube. What I don’t like about it is that it a) requires you have access to ice b) requires you move from where you are – which you may not feel motivated to do in the throes of emotion and c) leaves you wet which can be annoying and something that deters you from doing it. I like to think about this one as one to try when you’ve tried some internal ones as those aren’t working as well as you’d like
Grounding exercise: If you search the internet you’ll find this one: identify 5 things you see, 4 things you feel, 3 things you hear, 2 things you smell and 1 thing you taste. This is great because it really engages all your sense and is very powerful at bringing you back because of how much focus it requires of your brain. What I don’t like about it is that it might be hard to remember in the moment, and it might be frustrating if you can’t smell or hear anything at the moment.
All of this sound totally ridiculous? Check out why we need Distress Tolerance skills.
See more about how to gradually incorporate a skill in my post on How Change Happens.
Are you finding you need to ground often? I’d encourage you to consider one on one therapy to help.

May 26, 2021March 27, 2023

Controlling our Attention

We can’t control what happens to us. What happens to us includes events, but it also includes our thoughts and our feelings
Many of us experience inner anguish because we have trouble accepting that what we think and feel is not actually within our control.
We feel what we feel, we think what we think and the best way to insulate ourselves from tough times is work to build coping skills that help us live in harmony with our inability to have the inner world we believe (or have been told) we “should” have.
We can use meditation and mindfulness based skills to help us detach from the intensity of our thoughts and feelings. While we can’t control what happens, these skills help us increase our control over what we pay attention to.
We can use emotion regulation skills that help us to “turn down the dial” on emotions when they are intense, but not at their most powerful.
When emotions are their most intense we can use distress tolerance skills to help us get through a situation without responding to them in a way that will create a problem for us further down the road.
This account will help you learn skills in all three of these categories, and work to help you build awareness of when it makes sense to use which kind of skill.
These skills help us manage pain when it arises in a way that won’t create further suffering for us, and will help protect our relationships and get us through with as little suffering as possible.
No one manages their thoughts and feelings ideally 100% of the time. That is not possible. We are all human. The goal is to help you have the skills so that you know what to do, aren’t so lost in those moments, and can get through them with as little suffering as possible.

One of the things we therapists know, and we work to help our clients accept, is that coping is about learning and accepting what we can and can’t control. We can’t completely control what happens to us, our thoughts and our feelings.

Many of us have luck for sometime pushing thoughts and feelings down or away. We also can organize our lives in such a way that we can have some control over what happens in it, though that’s more often possible when we have more resources. Regardless, at best we only have some control, and we don’t have the level of control many of us wish we did.

I want to be clear: pushing feelings or thoughts down or away isn’t bad. It’s a skill. A skill that works some of the time. However, if we only rely on that particular skill for coping with our internal world we are not equipped for very difficult times, or for when a tidal wave of thoughts or feelings comes in. Further, we lose our ability to learn from our feelings if we rely too heavily on pushing them away.

So, we all need to have a broad array of coping skills. Think of them like tools in a tool belt, different skills for different scenarios.

Instead of trying to control what happens to us, our thoughts, or our feeling we can work to increase our ability to control what we pay attention to and to detach from the intensity of what we may be feeling or thinking. This can be done through meditation and mindfulness based work.

Sometimes we need to learn how to lower intense feelings, that’s called emotion regulation. We use emotion regulation skills when we feel emotions on a level where they “need some wrangling” (i.e. they aren’t dissipating on their own), but not when they are at their most powerful.

When our feelings are really intense, and emotion regulation skills don’t work we can learn to ride them out, let them peter off, distract, or soothe ourselves through distress tolerance skills. With these skills we are working on introducing new and different focal points to divert our attention for a period of time. We are not solving or changing, we are getting through and in doing so helping our brains “reset” so we can tackle the issue when our feelings are not as intense.

Notes:

This post outlines three of the fours modules in Dialectical Behavior Therapy’s skill’s training program. For more information Full Citation: Linehan, M. (1993). Skills training manual for treating borderline personality disorder. New York: Guilford Press.
Pushing thoughts and feelings down or away, as mentioned in the post, is a distress tolerance skill. It is a powerful tool to use when our emotions are too overwhelming for us to face, or when the scenario we are in requires we move forward rather than address our experience. For more on why we need distress tolerance skills see the argument for distress tolerance. As with ANY distress tolerance skill we want to return to the topic at hand once we are available to face it (i.e. the scenario allows it, and our internal world feels more balanced).
We use emotion regulation skills when we are still in our window of tolerance, but nearing the edges of it, or perhaps just outside of it. For information on what our window of tolerance is and what it feels like to be outside of it, see “window of tolerance”.
Another reason it is difficult to control our thoughts and feelings is outlined in the post “your brain as an association machine“.
Post covering how we can learn from our emotions is called “emotions as traffic signals” .
Unsure if your emotion is dissipating on its own, or if you need to intervene to help? See Emotions are brief.
One thing that feels important to acknowledge: While these skills can help us manage pain they are not the be all end all and it’s not as though these replace the need for therapy or support from others at times. These skills do not turn us into a one person “cope with anything and everything” machine. These skills help us manage pain when it arises in a way that won’t create further suffering for us, and will help protect our relationships and get us through with as little suffering as possible.

May 18, 2021March 27, 2023

The Argument for Distress Tolerance

Often times when we feel intense negative emotion our drive will be to pull towards, so we can do something / say something / solve something to “release” the emotion
Blood actually starts flowing differently in our brains when we are in high distress – it flows away from the parts of our brain that are best at problem solving, and thinking through consequences, pros, cons, priorities, and values.
This means despite that intense desire to lean it, in those moments we actually want to lean away.
Part of coping well is knowing where that line is in ourselves, when we need to step away rather than step towards. Sometimes we can’t problem solve right away, we just have to get through.
When we are feeling our negative feelings very intensely (like an 8 or a 9 out of 10) we need a different set of strategies. In those times we need to work on distracting, calming, soothing, and diverting attention
Distress tolerance skills teach us to try and shift our attention away instead of trying to manage the problem at hand
For these skills to work we *really* need to shift our attention completely and allow ourselves to be completely engaged in something else. This helps the brain “reset”. Sometimes this means we have to shift our attention again and again until our brains cooperate.
Learn more about why we need distress tolerance skills in today’s post. Specific skills to follow another day.

One of the big gripes I hear about distress tolerance skills – skills and techniques that help you get through the moment (like focusing on your breathing, going for a walk, watching a show) – is that we’re not problem solving. These types of skills don’t actually make the situation better or address the problem at hand. They just divert your attention from whatever the problem is.

All of that is true. Those types of coping mechanisms don’t make the situation better or solve the issue at hand.

That is not their purpose.

Distress tolerance skills help YOU feel better so YOU can (eventually) effectively tackle the situation at hand. They help YOU come back “online” so that you can problem solve, think clearly about solutions, consequences, pros, cons, priorities, and values. They help YOU be in the mindset to tackle a concern with all of your facilities – which we have less access to when we are in a panic, or when we are overwhelmed with emotion.

Think about it. Have you ever quickly addressed what felt like a pressing issue at the time only to reflect later (in a less intense state of mind) to realize you could’ve handled it better? When our emotions are running high (and I mean we’re feeling them at an 8 or a 9 on a scale of 1-10) our brains don’t work the same as they do when we are calmer.*

Often, when we feel strong emotions we feel them with urgency and we believe we need to act NOW. But usually that desire to act NOW is more about making the feeling “go away” than it is a response to any true urgency from the situation at hand.

When we use distress tolerance skills we are not trying to change how we feel or the situation we are in. Instead, we are changing where we focus our attention. This gives us a break from a very intense situation so we can return to it later with our full attention and our facilities intact.

The key with distress tolerance skills is to let things settle and then return to the problem or situation at hand when the external circumstances permit and when your internal state of mind is more balanced. If we don’t return to the problem at hand we’re engaging in avoidance, and that creates a whole host of other issues in our life.

Notes:

* Blood flows differently in our brains when we are experiencing intense negative emotion. This is our brain’s way of trying to protect us when we experience a signal of “alarm” from our emotions, so that our bodies can be ready to handle what our emotions are telling us is a major issue. Your frontal lobe (a section of your brain just behind your forehead) has many functions, but one of them is to help you process the signals from your emotional world and weave those with logical decision making and discerning judgment. As Bessel Van Der Kolk describes in his book, “The Body Keeps the Score”, our frontal lobes have less blood flowing to them when we are in intense emotional states, “As long as you are not too upset, your frontal lobes can restore your balance…Neuroimaging Studies of human beings in highly emotional states reveal that intense fear, sadness, and anger, all increase the activation of subcortical brain regions involved in emotions and significantly reduce the activity in various areas in the frontal lobe” (Pages 62-63) (The Subcortical regions of the brain he refers to are the areas of the brain under the frontal lobe). Full citation for the book: Van, . K. B. A. (2014). The body keeps the score: Brain, mind, and body in the healing of trauma.

Unsure how to identify if your brain may not be “online”? See post dated May 11th called The Window of Tolerance. This post covers what it can feel like when we’re in a place where we want to consider using distress tolerance skills.
Sometimes it can take practice, trial, and error to come to recognize when we’re “not really here”. It will get easier with time.
Much of what I pull from in this post regarding classification of “what” a distress tolerance skill is comes from Marsha Linehan’s Skills Training Manual for Treating Borderline Personality Disorder. Full Citation: Linehan, M. (1993). Skills training manual for treating borderline personality disorder. New York: Guilford Press.

May 18, 2021March 27, 2023

The Brain as an “Association Machine”

Think of your brain like one giant association machine
It is constantly looking to learn, make connections from prior experiences, keep you safe, and make sure your needs are met
The majority of associations and connections are made when we are kids, when most development happens
Those associations are our brain trying to make sense of the world in a way that protects us, our relationships, and gets our emotional, physical, and relational needs met.
Sometimes the associations from one phase of life serve us very well in that phase, but then don’t serve us as universally well in others.
If you are stuck and unsure what to do, or if you (or someone in your life) is having reactions that don’t quite make sense consider that your brain may be trying to solve a new problem in the “old” way
We can learn new ways, build new associations, and make genuine changes, but first we have to come to recognize what is hard wired in us from the environments we developed in
It is easier to do that if we can have compassion for our past selves, and accept that what we are doing may have made sense before, but may not (as universally) make sense now
See examples in comments for illustrations which show how our patterns can both serve us and hold us back
The good news is we are working on EXPANDING patterns, not abandoning parts of ourselves. What worked in the past may work again so we can ADD new tools and ways of being.

Think of your brain like a giant association machine that at all times is working on learning and making connections. It’s developing a sense of cause and effect, right and wrong, should and shouldn’t – rules for living and operating; the dos and don’ts of life so you can learn from your mistakes and optimize your successes. Your brain makes the most connections in childhood when most development happens, but throughout adulthood your brain still actively works to keep you safe and protected.

If you grew up in an ideal environment (and there’s really actually no such thing) your brain would have all the ideal associations. Instead, each of us starts to make connections based on our own personal experiences, our family norms, and lessons from what we see and experience in our culture and community.

These patterns – regardless of how effective they are in a diversity of situations – get hard wired in and become second nature. They are our automatic go-to solutions and ways of thinking about things, responding to ourselves, and responding to others.

Some of those associations serve us forever, and in a diversity of scenarios (like knowing smiling is a signal of friendliness). Some of those associations served us at one point in our life and in one environment (like with the folks that raised us) but then maybe don’t quite make so much sense in other environments (examples in comments).

So, when we have reactions that don’t quite make sense to us, it’s likely your brain is associating the current situation with one from the past. Your brain is trying to apply the old rules to a new situation, and sometimes it doesn’t work out in our favor.

We can learn be more discerning and less automatic with these associations through building insight into what our automatic patterns are, and challenging that automated way of being through the use of mindful and intentional responses, choices, and actions. We can also learn to add in responses that may have been “off limits” in our early environment by observing what works for others that we may not feel is accessible for us (yet). And of course – therapy can help too.

Notes:

Season 1 of the HBO show WestWorld explores this concept through its use of humans and robots. The show explores how humans, like robots, can build such strong associations and patterns that they lose their ability to think critically and respond to individual moments and situations.
Wondering how this applies to you? Ask yourself what feel like your hard and fast rules for how you handle: your feelings, your friendships, saying yes to something, saying no to something, making plans, handling conflict. Bring as much curiosity as you can to what feels “normal” to you and the environment you came from – and then – think about if you’ve seen other examples of how those same scenarios are handled by others. What’s a “rule” or “norm” for you, may not be as universal as you may believe.
I talk about themes related to this in my post from April 15th, “for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction”.
Examples of relational and emotional health related associations made in childhood that may have protected us as children but may not serve us as well as adults are numbered below.
Example 1: Imagine you grew up in a home where you were a pretty emotional kid, and your parents were less emotional people. Or maybe they were emotional, but often preoccupied and not very plugged into you. Once they knew you were upset they would be very comforting and supportive, but it was hard for them to see early (or even mid – cues) that you were in distress and needed support. To get the help you might learn you needed to have BIG reactions. Yelling, crying, screaming – expressing emotions at a high level. We can understand then the association your brain would build – if i need emotional help, I have to be LOUD for the people around me to plug into me. So as an adult you might have BIG reactions, and yes – people would know how you felt, but, it might also be hard for others to tolerate such big reactions. While your sensitive and emotional nature might be very appreciated by others (because empathy may come very naturally to you) your way of handling your big feelings might not work in an environment where people are more plugged into you.
Example 2: Imagine you grew up in a home where you had a parent that needed a lost of positivity from you. Whenever you shared your frustrations or sadness they would find a positive spin to it. If you pushed on expressing your sadness, anger, jealousy etc they would tell you you had a bad attitude and you learned that if you brought your negative emotions to the relationship the parent would push you away. You would probably learn to push away your negative emotions too, and keep things light and positive around yourself and others (because what you’ve learned is these negative emotions just cause issues). In many scenarios in your life having that optimistic attitude would probably serve you – you’d always find a way to see the upside of things. People would probably really like your positive energy and spirit. But, not all situations in life HAVE a positive spin, and part of getting through life is being able to get through the rough times – some of which there just won’t be an upside to. So, some people may think of you as a bit of a “pollyanna’ and people may not talk to you about the REALLY hard stuff, because it could feel dismissive to have you try and find the positive when they are really hurting or struggling with something. Also, you may be more vulnerable to experiencing depression at some point in your life because your most heavily relied upon coping mechanism is to “find the positive’. This is a GREAT coping mechanism, and one we want you to keep, AND we’d want you to learn more ways to manage negative feelings beyond trying to “find the positive”. This would help you build resilience and likely help you connect better and more meaningfully with others in your life.
Example 3: Imagine you lived in a home where your parent became very angry with you when you made a mistake. Maybe you were punished, or shamed, or told you should know better. The parent never acknowledged they might have over-reacted, and so what you learned was that your relationships suffer (and you feel overwhelming feelings you can’t really handle) when you make mistakes. You might become an adult who is very high functioning and proficient (because you rarely make mistakes), but you might carry with you a lot of anxiety about making mistakes for fear of it hurting relationships, or for fear of how it makes you feel. You also might become an adult who hides their mistakes from those around them (for fear that finding out about the mistake would harm the relationship, or bring up those feelings). You might have a hard time with vulnerability. People “catching” you in mistakes might make you defensive (because your brain will go to all kinds of extremes to do what it thinks will protect you from having a problem in your relationship or from feeling those feelings that feel way too big to manage). As you can imagine, though, this might actually CREATE problems in your relationship because a) you have a hard time admitting when you’re wrong and taking accountability and b) you might be spending a lot of time preoccupied with not making mistakes instead of focusing on the big picture. You will also become more avoidant of your feelings which may leave you more vulnerable to anxiety and or depression.
Example 4: Imagine you grew up in a home where your parent would shut down if you challenged them, regardless of whether you were right or wrong. You’d probably learn that it’s best not to be direct with people, regardless of the circumstances. Being more indirect would serve you with your parents, and perhaps in other relationships too. People might see you as non-abrasive and approachable. However, if we don’t EVER feel it’s acceptable to be direct then there are situations where it will be called for (like with someone who may not have strong intuitive skills, or who may need things really laid out for them to “get it”). Because that “directness” feels inaccessible, we’ll be stuck in those moments in part because indirectness feels so essential to us.
Interested in trying to build up that capacity for mindfulness? See this post, “Foundations of Meditation“.
What I discuss in this post is backed by neuroscience. David Wallin’s Attachment in Psychotherapy explains how the work of Daniel Siegel and others shows the associational nature of brain development: “Siegel explains that what registers in the mind and body as ‘experience’ corresponds at the neural level to patterns in the firing or activation of brain cells. These pattern of neuronal firing establish synaptic connections in the brain that determine the nature of its structure and functioning…the architecture of the brain is associational” – Page 69: Wallin, D. J. (2007). Attachment in Psychotherapy. Guilford Press.

May 18, 2021March 27, 2023

Emotions Are Brief

Often, when we feel difficult feelings for extended periods time it’s because we don’t know how to release them
Our emotions are brief – often times only seconds to minutes
Many of us, however, get stuck in emotional states for far longer periods of time.
This happens because we re-expose ourselves to what sets off our feelings either with our thoughts, our memories, or the moment we are in
As a result, the emotional signal from our brain re-fires again and again stringing together one long experience of feeling an emotion
When this happens it can be time consuming, exhausting, and overwhelming.
We can get wiped out from these experiences of having such lengthy emotional states.
We can start to feel like our feelings are too much, too hard, too disruptive, and we can start to cope by just cutting them off or pushing them away
Or some of us lose hours of our time stuck in feeling states with little ability to truly be present in our lives at those times
We want to feel our emotions long enough to process through them and learn from them. But then we want to be able to move on from them and get on with our lives

Marsha’s Linehan’s research backed treatment, Dialectal Behavior Therapy (DBT) teaches: “Emotions come and go. They are like waves in the sea. Most emotions last from several seconds to minutes”.

When I share this with my clients I hear a lot of “Not mine. Mine last for hours”.
For many of us this is true, we can feel sad, scared, lonely, angry, upset – you name it – for extended periods of time, far beyond a few minutes.

So what’s happening?

DBT addresses this too, “Emotions are also self-perpetuating. Once an emotion starts, it keeps restarting itself”.

This means that when feelings go on and on it’s actually the same brief emotional signal being fired in the brain repeatedly (until something stops the signal). It all connects to feel like one big long feeling, but it’s not. It’s a bunch of very brief emotional signals from our brain strung together.

So why does the signal keep re-firing?

Often it’s because of how we RESPOND to the experience of having the emotion.

Sometimes our thoughts trigger the re-firing: “I can’t believe I did it again”, “I hate it when he does this, “I’m going to put her in her place and tell her…”.

Sometimes our memories trigger the re-firing, like when we play the scene over and over in our heads.

Sometimes the conversation or event that’s triggering the feeling goes on and on (like when you’re sad throughout an entire funeral or angry throughout an entire fight).

Why does this matter?

The crux of being able to cope productively with negative feelings is being able to interrupt that firing process at the appropriate time. When our emotions stick around for extended periods of time it’s because something (internally or externally) repeatedly sets off the emotion. Emotions themselves don’t necessarily HAVE to last so long, and we can learn how to interrupt the re-firing process with coping skills and with processing through the feelings.

There will be more on that to come (look out for distress tolerance and emotion regulation skills) so we can increase our ability to keep emotions with us long enough to make use of them, and then release them (rather than re-start them) once that process is done.

Notes:
1. The DBT quote comes from page 87 of Marsha Linehan’s Skills Training Manual for Treating Borderline Personality Disorder. Full Citation: Linehan, M., M., (1993). Skills Training Manual for Treating Borderline Personality Disorder. New York, NY: The Guilford Press.
2. We can feel more than one feeling at once, and we can have multiple feeling signals firing from the brain around the same topic.
3. Some people struggle to hold on to feelings rather than feel like they stick around too long. There will be another post on the impact of that relationship with your emotional world.
4. See post called Emotions as Traffic Signals for more about why it’s important to be able to feel our whole range of emotions, positive and negative.

May 11, 2021March 27, 2023

The Window of Tolerance

We all have a sweet spot in our ability to cope, manage, process, think, feel, and communicate.
When we are in that sweet spot (also called the window of tolerance) we generally feel calm, able to take on what comes, and able to think and feel at the same time.
When we are outside of that spot we can feel very intense anxiety, rage, or feelings so big we can’t even really identify them – they just fill us to the brim
We may be more likely to ruminate (i.e. not be able to stop thinking about something), become hyper focused on the topic at hand, or lash out our feelings at others.
We may also feel a tremendous degree of urgency to “fix” whatever has pushed us outside of our window.
We can also fall outside of that window in the other direction, to a place of more emptiness, depression, numbness, or avoidance
When we’re on that side of the window we may get sleepy or have a hard time paying attention
Parts of our ability to function are “offline” when we are pushed to either side of this window of tolerance
For us to be successful in our relationships, at work, and in managing our mental health it is essential that we recognize this window exists, and that we respond to it constructively
More to come in a future post about how to widen your window of tolerance, but the first step is recognizing it exists and to identify how it manifests in you.
We can all work to widen our windows of tolerance through therapy, meditation (more on this to come) and learning (and using) coping skills. One of the reasons your therapist can be effective in treatment is because they (likely) have done some work widening their own window to be able to tolerate what their clients bring to treatment.

In the DBT world we would say we know we’re in our window when our “rational” (i.e. thinking or logical) mind and our emotional mind are accessible. As Daniel Siegal says, “If an experience pushes us outside our window…we may fall into rigidity [depression, cut offs, numbness, avoidance] or into chaos [agitation, anxiety, rage, emotions that feel so big we can’t even identify them they just consume us with intensity]”.

He explains, “We [each] have multiple windows of tolerance. And for each of us those windows are different, often specific to certain topics or emotional states. I may have a high tolerance for sadness, continuing to function fairly well even when I or those around me are in deep distress. But even a lesser degree of sadness…may cause you to fall apart. In contrast anger may be relatively intolerable for me…but for you, anger may not be such a big deal”.

Acceptance of the fact that this window exists, and there are limits in our ability to function based on our presence (or not) in it are crucial to success in managing your mental health, relationships, feelings, and thoughts. We are more likely to be pushed out of our window of tolerance at times when our safety is threatened; we are hungry, in pain, or tired. Some of us may be more inclined to fall to the rigid side (with less emotion) and others may be more inclined to the chaos side (with more emotion).

Daniel goes on to say, “Within our window of tolerance we remain receptive” (this means able to integrate information from our bodies, thinking selves, and feeling selves), “outside of it we become reactive” (this means we’re highly emotionally charged and less able to thoughtfully think through and respond to something with our full capacity to consider consequences, values, and priorities).

Many of us have spent a good chunk of our lives outside our personal windows without awareness that we CAN get to that middle ground place. When we are outside our window of tolerance it is not the time to make important decisions, or have important conversations. It is instead a time to work on coping and “coming back online” so we are out of the reactive place and back that receptive place.

Notes:

This posts combines a mix of the “wise mind” skill from Dialectical Behavioral Therapy, developed by Marsha Linehan with information from Daniel Siegal’s book, Mindsight (pages 137-138). Full Citation: Siegel, Daniel J., Mindsight : The New Science of Personal Transformation. New York: Bantam Books, 2010.
It’s not always obvious when we’re outside our window of tolerance. For some of us it just is our sense of “normal” or “how we’re supposed to feel”. If you often feel the way I’ve described suspect you may regularly be outside of your personal window.
We can learn to recognize when we’re outside our window and we can develop coping and grounding skills to bring us back within our window so we can function and manage well. Those coping skills to follow in another post, try to work on knowing when you’re in and outside of your personal windows based on the cues I described. If you have a partner – heads up – they may have a sense of when this occurs for you better than you do!

May 5, 2021March 27, 2023

Introduction to Relational Trauma

Trauma is more common and varied than most of us realize
Often, when we think of something traumatic we think of a concrete event – a war, a shooting, a life threatening situation, or a situation in which pain was endured
Yes. Those are absolutely traumatic events, we in the therapist world call those “Capital “T” traumatic events”
There is another kind of trauma that is quite common, highly impactful, incredibly painful, and (in my opinion) under-acknowledged
We therapists call that “lower case ’t’ trauma”
That kind of trauma is also called complex, cumulative, or (what I will call it) relational trauma
In short, this trauma occurs when a child is repeatedly left with big overwhelming feelings that make them feel at fault, unsafe, scared, or inadequate without the ability to manage the feelings or recover from the experience
It may not threaten our lives, but it threatens our emotional safety and that has huge effects on our emotions and relationships moving forward
Relational trauma can sometimes only be discovered by the imprints it leaves behind
Effects of relational trauma can include: trouble managing feelings / in relationships / with trust; and chronic anxiety, depression, feelings of inadequacy, or struggles with self-worth.

If there is one thing that I wish was more widely known and understood about trauma, it’s that it is far more common and varied than we give it credit for.

Most of us can intuitively understand Capital T Trauma. If you get in a car accident and it was terrifying, we understand and can offer empathy to you if you’re scared to get in a car again; your terror and discomfort is understandable to us.

Many of us have a more difficult time understanding and offering empathy for relational trauma and its impact. Unlike the accident described above, we don’t have that concrete experience to reference of “where the trauma came from” which can make it confusing to all parties when someone is triggered and responding to prior relational trauma. Instead, we often just think someone is being “crazy” or “ridiculous”*(6).

Usually, we know if we’ve experienced Capital T trauma, but sometimes we don’t know if we’ve experienced relational trauma. It can feel like how problems or feelings are managed or what we known to be normal.

As David Wallin puts it (full citation in comments(7)): relational trauma develops after repeated experiences in childhood of “fear, helplessness, humiliation, shame, and/or [emotional or physical] abandonment” from primary care givers (often parents) who did not help a child recover from intense emotional experiences or manage their overwhelming feelings.

That repeated experience of being alone with big overwhelming feelings without help managing or recovering can leave us scared of our feelings because we don’t know how to manage or recover from them. As a result we can learn to bury or hide feelings away. This inability to be in touch with and process our feelings limits our ability to know ourselves, develop priorities, and can lead to chronic anxiety and / or depression(5)**.

Experiencing relational trauma can also leave us with conflicting feelings about close relationships – we may want relationships but also feel scared or untrusting of them. Intimacy, closeness, connection, trust, and vulnerability can become inaccessible – until we recover from the trauma (which can be done in therapy, or in a series of safe, trusting, and healing relationships).

Notes:

Trauma is an incredibly complex, sensitive, and important topic. Quite frankly, I’m intimidated taking it on in a post because I know I cannot succinctly discuss it in a way that truly represents its scope, impact, and complexity – even over multiple posts. There are incredible books, researchers, therapists, and talks on this topic and I will do my best to be a bridge to those resources so you can learn more about this. If you are interested in getting started now “The Body Keeps the Score” by Bessel Van Der Kolk is an excellent introduction. Though he focuses on Capital T trauma much of what he writes about applies to relational trauma as well.
Sometimes we endure relational trauma from care givers who love us deeply and who we love, and who we may otherwise have good relationships with except for those difficult moments. Those caregivers are often trying their best and well meaning, but are not sure how to handle big feelings or big problems themselves. These are not necessarily “bad” parents or caregivers, though they may not have been able to give us what we needed developmentally in some of these more intense moments. They can be incredibly loving and effective parents in other moments. Sometimes these are caregivers who THEMSELVES experienced relational trauma and have not recovered from it, so are unable to help themselves (or the kids around them) effectively manage these difficult moments. If you endured relational trauma it doesn’t mean your parents were bad parents. If you think you may have inflicted some relational trauma it doesn’t mean you are a bad parent AND there is an opportunity to change patterns and work to heal all involved parties.
For help on parenting in ways that will not create relational trauma look into Big Little Feelings. They offer a $99 course, as well as free tips on their instagram page for parents and caregivers (friendly reminder, I am in no way connected to them or profiting off their course – it’s just plain old helpful material).
Like most everything else in this world relational trauma exists on a spectrum, meaning just a little can effect us a little and more frequent or intense experiences can effect us a lot.
Chronically burying or hiding away feelings can limit our ability to find long term happiness. See “Emotions as Traffic Signals” for more information.
For tips on how to deconstruct moments in which relational trauma may have been stirred up see “for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction”.
The David Wallin book I reference is called “attachment in psychotherapy”. It was published in 2007 by the Guilford Press (NY, NY). The quote is from page 245 and is in reference to chapter five of the book Healing Trauma: attachment, mind, body, and brain”. That chapter was authored by Francine Shapiro and Louise Mayfield, and the book was edited by Marion Solomon and Daniel Seigel and published by Norton (of NY) in 2003. Formal Citation: Wallin, D. J. (2007). Attachment in psychotherapy. New York, NY: Guilford Press.