Reading Notes
- Most of the time, emotion regulation works pretty well
- Notice that our emotions don’t fit the situation and alter them so that they do
- However, in certain situations, automatic emotion regulation doesn’t kick in, and we have to regulate manually
- Checklist for troubleshooting emotion regulation
- Are you in crisis?
- Signs that you’re in crisis
- Feeling overwhelmed?
- Can’t think about anything except emotion
- Can’t take in new information
- Hard time solving problems
- Self-destructive urges
- If you’re in crisis, use the crisis survival skills until you feel better and can handle the situation
- Are you biologically vulnerable?
- Symptoms
- Sick?
- In pain?
- Hungry?
- Did you sleep enough?
- Drunk/high?
- Did you miss a dose of your medication?
- Miss exercise?
- Temperature: too hot/too cold?
- Have to interact with something you’re sensitive to (bright lights, loud noises, etc)?
- If you can solve these problems relatively quickly, do so
- Eat something
- Put on a sweater
- Take a nap
- Even if you can’t do anything about your vulnerability, acknowledging it and identifying it as the source of your emotion can be helpful
- Can you quickly solve whatever it is you’re upset about?
- Is your problem actually relatively easily solvable?
- Can you muster the willpower to solve your problem now?
- Mindfulness of current emotion
- Step back and notice what you’re feeling
- Treat it like an event
- Don’t act on your feeling - just notice it
- Don’t try to block the emotion
- Don’t try to amplify the emotion
- Notice where in your body you feel the emotion
- Separate yourself from the emotion - instead of thinking “I am x”, think “I’m feeling/experiencing x”
- Don’t judge your emotions
- Your emotions evolved to help keep you safe and happy
- Try to be curious and respectful
- Do you even know which emotion you’re feeling right now?
- Is there anything you need to Radically Accept?
- Are you committed to doing the best you can with the resources you have?
- Or are you angry about how everything seems to be so unfair?
- If the latter, radical acceptance may help
- Are there myths about emotions getting in the way?
- Do you think you should be feeling a different emotion than what you currently are feeling?
- Try to process your emotion nonjudgementally
- Describe your situation as factually as possible
- Think dialectically
- Ask yourself, why should I be feeling a different emotion?
- Then ask yourself why shouldn’t you be feeling that emotion?
- Is there some benefit that you’re getting from this emotion?
- Does your emotion feel good?
- Does it communicate things to others?
- Does your emotion motivate you to do things that you want/need to do?
- Does your emotion legitimate your beliefs or identity?
- It’s important not to regulate emotions that have benefits; at least figure out how you’re going to get your needs met without the emotion
- Finally use emotion regulation skills
- First, actually use the skills
- Knowing about emotion regulation skills won’t help you if you don’t actually put them into practice
- Second, use appropriate skills
- Using distress tolerance on a problem that you can solve just means that you’re avoiding/running-away
- Using opposite action on a feeling of guilt might make you apologize for something where you were actually in the wrong
- Finally, make sure you’re using your skills appropriately
- Make sure to separate facts from interpretation
- Mindfulness is all about slowing down, seeing everything as if it was the first time you saw it, and experiencing all the richness of reality
- Living with awareness of the present moment
- Not suppressing or clinging to the past
- Not overly anticipating any particular future
- Accepting reality as it is
- Letting go of situations that you can’t control
- Approaching situations instead of avoiding them
- Making wise and effective choices
- Mindlessness is like walking a familiar route, thinking about something else, and then realizing that you’re at your destination without knowing how you got there
- Stuck in patterns or habits
- Trapped in counterproductive behavior
- Bored/preoccupied
- Unfocused
- Multitasking
- Treating interpretations of situations as if they were facts
- Avoiding things that are painful or upsetting
- Being overwhelmed by negative emotions
- How do you do mindfulness?
- Meditation
- Spend a few minutes focusing on something or paying attention to awareness itself
- Religion
- Most religious practices have some kind of mindfulness
- Prayer, yoga, etc
- Incorporate mindfulness into exercise
- When you start mindfulness, you’ll be bad at it
- Important to be kind and gentle with yourself
- Beating yourself up about not being able to be mindful will only make it harder to be mindful in the future
- Mindfulness is especially difficult for people with depression
- Depression both leads to rumination and overanalysis and avoidance/suppression
- Many depressed people do things to numb out negative emotion
- The problem is that this doesn’t actually make the negative emotion go away - just pushes it to the background
- This often leads to worse depression in the future
- What’s worse, this numbing makes it difficult to feel joy
- But why should we be mindful? Isn’t being lost in thought how we think of cool things?
- Yes, but a lot of the time, we’re not lost in thought because we’re solving a problem or thinking of a cool thing
- We’re lost in thought, thinking about the same (negative) things we thought about the last time we got lost in thought
- How to switch from mindlessness to mindfulness?
- Switch from thinking to experiencing
- Observe the sensations in your body
- Be aware that your thoughts are just thoughts
- They’re mental events
- Interpretations of events that may be appropriate or inappropriate
- Three stages to unhappiness:
- First we feel unhappy
- Second we have thoughts about our emotions
- Difference between chronically depressed and non-depressed people
- Non-depressed people think, “I’m sad”
- Depressed people think, “I’m worthless”
- This often leads to poor coping mechanisms
- Third we try to deal with emotions: Doing Mind and Being Mind
- Doing mind
- Thinking
- Planning
- Goal-setting
- Problem-solving
- In order to achieve your goals, though, you need to examine your current state
- Sometimes examining your current state is painful - this is where being mind comes in
- Being mind
- Curiosity about your mood
- Acceptance of current situation
- Being in the present moment
- Noticing experience without having an agenda
- Other differences between being mind and doing mind
- Being mind is not about suppressing or invalidating your emotions
- Doing mind is about being goal focused, doing things without even noticing that you’re doing them
- Being mind experiences feelings and sensations directly
- Doing mind treats thoughts about things as if they were the things themselves
- Being mind is in the present moment
- Doing mind is “mental time-travel” - ruminating about the past, or worrying about the future
- Being mind approaches unpleasant experiences with interest, curiosity and respect
- Doing mind avoids or destroys unpleasant experiences
- Being mind doesn’t expect that reality fit with our ideals
- Doing mind is acutely conscious of the flaws in reality and wants to fix them (preferably now)
- Being mind values the quality of the moment
- Doing mind is about pursuing goals and and plans
- We cannot live in being mind or doing mind 100% - we should seek to balance the two in “wise mind”
- Synthesis, rather than compromise
- How do you develop wise mind?
- Strategically posting reminders to stay in wise mind
- Randomly reminding yourself to be mindful
- Select one thing to do every day and try to be mindful about it
- When overwhelmed, do things one at a time
- Notice events in your everyday life
- Staying aware of what needs to be done, even when relaxing
- Practice willingness to do what is needed, even when it’s unpleasant in the moment
- Pausing and asking yourself, “What am I thinking? What am I feeling? What are the sensations in my body?”
- Stopping during unpleasant experiences to notice your feelings and sensations
- Regular meditation practice
- Three “what” skills and three “how” skills
- What skills:
- Observe
- Pay attention, intentionally, to the present moment
- Try to notice all the details of a thing or situation
- Describe
- Put words to your experience
- Describe only the facts, not your interpretations or opinions
- Participate
- Throw yourself into the current experience
- Observing and describing are tools to help participation
- How skills:
- Non-judgementally
- Differentiate between facts about external reality and your judgements about those facts
- “I am bad” is not a fact, it is a judgement
- If you find yourself judging something, notice it and try to extract the facts out of your judgement
- Don’t recursively judge yourself for judging something
- One-mindfully
- Be present in the moment
- Do one thing at a time
- Effectively
- Know what your goals and make sure that what you’re doing is, at the very least, not taking you further away from your goals
- Focus on what works, not what your emotional urges are telling you to do
- Make a list of emotions that consistently cause you to be ineffective
- Whenever you notice those emotions, ask yourself, “Is this effective?”
- Don’t believe everything you think
- You don’t have to believe everything your brain is saying just because it’s your brain
- However, there is a big difference between knowing intellectually that your brain is lying and knowing it emotionally
- You can use meditation to build up this emotional awareness:
- Instead of instantly trying to refocus, pause to recognize what you’re thinking about
- Try focusing on and describing thoughts
- Don’t overexert yourself - three to four minutes is enough
- When you’re upset, try doing nothing
- First stop
- Then carefully take awareness away from thoughts and into bodily sensations
- Notice that thoughts come and go, and that they’re not the same as facts
- Try writing your thoughts down