#1: What is Emotional Dysregulation?
Are you highly sensitive? And do you struggle with very intense emotions that sometimes overwhelm you? Today, for the first episode of The Skillful Podcast, Marielle will be talking to Ed Fowler, who works with her at the Bay Area DBT and Couples Counseling Center, providing individual DBT therapy, skills group, ACT, and EMDR for the treatment of trauma. In today’s episode, Ed and Marielle will be discussing the concept of emotional dysregulation. Listen in to find out more.
Today, Ed and Marielle define emotional dysregulation and they talk about what it feels like to live with really intense emotions. They also discuss the bio-social theory of the foundational concept in DBT. Tune in today, to discover ways to reduce your emotional suffering, improve your relationships, and become more present in your life.
Show Highlights:
- Sometimes, our emotions can become so overwhelming that it leads to a sense of numbness.
- Some people who relate to being emotional dysregulated know what they’re feeling all the time, while others are just overwhelmed and go to a place of numbness.
- Some people describe emotional dysregulation as being highly sensitive.
- There are lots of positive aspects to being very sensitive emotionally.
- It’s easy for people who feel their emotions very strongly to become overwhelmed by them.
- Emotional dysregulation can be felt when our emotions become overwhelming and we don’t know what to do with them.
- It can take a really long time for the extreme emotions to go away and this can cause a lot of suffering.
- It can be really difficult to focus on anything or get anything done when you’re feeling these extreme emotions.
- Mood dependent behavior means that your current mood dictates what you’re doing.
- People with strong emotions can tend to get into patterns of procrastination or avoidance and sometimes people can feel really stuck or trapped.
- Life becomes chaotic if your current emotion is dictating what you’re doing, so that creates a challenging life.
- DBT offers really effective ways to express your emotions.
- DBT helps people feel better in a way that they won’t regret the consequences of what they’ve done to make themselves feel better.
- Extreme emotions sometimes feel as if they will never go away.
- Judging yourself and feeling bad about feeling bad just makes things worse.
- With DBT you learn that things can change and you don’t have to be a victim to your strong emotions.
- Other people might not understand the extreme emotional experience of a child and this could lead to the child being invalidated and developing patterns that do not work for them. This can cause confusion and a number of other problems for the child.
- There is almost always a sense of shame associated with either imploding or exploding.
- Ed explains why he really enjoys doing the work in DBT.
- Most people don’t have good language around emotion.
- Any kind of childhood abuse is inherently invalidating and messes with the child’s sense of reality.
- Caregivers who invalidate a child’s intense emotions regularly can actually end up reinforcing more dramatic or explosive behavior in the child.
- A wide range of tools can help people to regulate their intense emotions.
- DBT teaches us that emotions are neither good or bad- they just give us information.
Links:
You can find us online at http://bayareadbtcc.com/
For more information about DBT skills: https://www.guildord.com/author/Marsha-M_Linehan
Would you like to ask a question and have the chance for it to be answered on the podcast? If so, please use this form. Please note that asking a question and this podcast in general is for educational purposes only and is not a substitute for individual mental health treatment.
#1: What is Emotional Dysregulation Transcript
Marielle Berg
Hello and welcome to The Skillful Podcast, where we explore DBT and RO-DBT skills to help you reduce emotional suffering, improve your relationships, and become more present in your life.I’m your host, Marielle Berg, a psychotherapist at the Bay Area DBT and Couples Counseling Center.
Marielle Berg
In this first episode of the skillful podcast, I’ll be joined by Ed Fowler, who works with me at the Bay Area DBT and Couples Counseling Center, providing individual DBT therapy, as well as skills group, a CBT, and EMDR for the treatment of trauma. We’ll be talking about the concept of emotional dysregulation; we’ll define it and talk some about what it feels like to live with really intense emotions. We’ll also talk about the biosocial theory, a foundational concept in DBT.
Marielle Berg
Welcome Ed, we’re going to be talking about emotional dysregulation today, and the biosocial theory. So how do you think about emotional dysregulation, Ed?
Ed Fowler
When I think about emotional dysregulation, I just think about when our emotions can kind of get out of control, where we feel like they fluctuate too fast and kind of going back and forth. They feel like they come up out of the blue and overwhelm us. Or sometimes it feels like numbness like where like for me, sometimes my emotions feel so overwhelming that I just feel totally numb, I don’t have any idea what’s going on.
Marielle Berg
So like it can get to the point where it’s so much that you can’t even make sense of it. And that can lead to a sense of numbness.
Ed Fowler
Exactly.
Marielle Berg
And I feel that some people who relate to being emotionally emotionally dysregulated kind of know exactly what they’re feeling all the time. And other people are just overwhelmed and go more to a place of numbness. And thinking about their emotions is like looking into a fog where they can’t really name what’s going on. So you can be on either end of the spectrum.
Ed Fowler
Yeah, I agree.
Marielle Berg
And then another facet of emotional dysregulation, I think is just general emotional sensitivity. And there’s some overlap with, I don’t know if you’ve heard of the highly sensitive person concept.
Ed Fowler
Yeah, definitely. I think that for people like me, who have always just had strong emotions, I kind of realized after a while that like, oh, other people don’t feel their emotions as profoundly as I feel mine. And so I think there are some of us out there who just were born feeling our emotions more strongly than others. And they–one of the ways people describe it as being highly sensitive, which for me, I don’t like because I was accused of being too sensitive when I was young. And so I have aversion to that word. And I get that, like, there are some people that just feel emotion strongly. And as we’ve talked about before, that’s a good thing. I think that there’s a lot of positive in that. And if we feel our emotions really strongly, I think it is more easy to be overwhelmed by them.
Marielle Berg
Yes, absolutely. And so in when you’re talking about some people just being more sensitive, that’s kind of leading us into the biosocial theory, which we’ll go into more in a little bit. But you’re absolutely right. Some people just kind of are wired to be more sensitive, and that can really get a bad rap in our world.
Ed Fowler
Yeah, definitely. And I think that it does lend itself to feeling like I don’t know what my emotions are my emotions feel overwhelming, I’m not sure what to do with them. And so that’s where we can feel that emotional dysregulation.
Marielle Berg
Right. So if you relate to being highly sensitive, or emotionally dysregulated, you may get really strong emotions, like you can feel really angry or really sad, sort of all of a sudden, or as you were saying, you can feel like it comes out of the blue. And you don’t always know the reason it can feel like your emotions are happening for no reason. And coupled with that, when you feel the strong emotions that can feel like they’re coming out of the blue, they can take a really long time to pass. So it’ll stay with you for while and sometimes kind of settling more into a mood.
Ed Fowler
Yeah, definitely. I think that and I experienced this. And I’ve talked to many, many people who experienced this, where an emotion can kind of come out of nowhere all of a sudden, but then it takes a really long time for it to go away. And kind of feel stuck in some ways. And if it’s a really uncomfortable emotion, like really extreme anger or really extreme fear, that can be excruciating,
Marielle Berg
Right, there’s a lot of suffering in those moments, while the emotion is kind of hanging around for a while.
Ed Fowler
Right.
Marielle Berg
Yeah. Another facet of emotional dysregulation is that when you feel those intense emotions, oftentimes people have a really hard time on focusing on anything else when they’re upset. So that means you get upset or feeling that intense fear or anger, and then it’s super challenging to try to get anything done. So like projects and plans go by the wayside, people might cancel things they had planned to do. And this is where we get into some of that mood dependent behavior, meaning that your current mood sort of dictates what you’re doing.
Ed Fowler
I actually hear that a lot where emotions feel so strong, we feel like we need to act on them. So if I’m feeling really anxious, I need to stay away from what I’m nervous of. And then we can get into this pattern of procrastination or avoiding; avoiding people or places, if I’m feeling really sad, I need to kind of shut down and take care of myself, quote, unquote. But sometimes we can feel really stuck and trapped, and like, we can’t even get out. And so those sometimes that the emotions feel really strong, and we go with it, then we can find ourselves not really acting effectively in our lives and not doing what’s most important for us.
Marielle Berg
Right. And I think it’s a skill. And it’s one of the things that comes over time, in particular, with DBT, which is what we teach, to be able to feel the strong emotions and still be able to focus on other things; to kind of temporarily put that aside.
Ed Fowler
Right.
Marielle Berg
To be able to do whatever you need to do to create the life you want to create.
Ed Fowler
Exactly.
Marielle Berg
Life becomes more chaotic, and haphazard, if our current emotion is dictating what we’re doing or not doing. And it’s really hard to get a core sense of, I think identity when our emotions are sort of like-so Im getting the image of a ship kind of being tossed in term during a storm. So whatever, like the current mood state, it’s affecting which direction the ship is going. And that creates a more challenging life, I think. And then coupled with that is this piece around having a hard time for many people controlling behaviors related to that emotion,
Ed Fowler
Right.
Marielle Berg
So this goes into acting more impulsively. So when you’re upset, maybe saying something that you’re going to later regret or doing something, fighting with the people closest to you, or engaging in any kind of, you know, addictive or compulsive behavior.
Ed Fowler
Right. Again, I think it’s like when an emotion is it feels really overwhelming, we can kind of just go with whatever are the first thing that comes to mind is, and that can sometimes get us into trouble. And so if my instinct, when I’m feeling really angry is to start yelling, some people are not going to be okay with that. And one of the things I appreciate about DBT is the opportunity to learn really effective ways to express our emotions so that we’re not trying to shut them down or ignore them or pretend like they’re not there, we’re acknowledging them, and able to respond effectively, instead of feeling like we are being led by the emotion. The emotion is like a really big dog on a leash that’s dragging us all around. But that, you know, we learn how to be able to control that dog so that it goes where we want it to go. And the dog feels okay. Because for me, when emotions are really overwhelming, I want to feel okay, how do I do that? And if I don’t know how, then I’m going to end up doing things that I regret.
Marielle Berg
Absolutely, I think you’ve said that so well. And I like that imagery of the dog on the leash that’s kind of leading us around and making us go in directions, that might create more problems for ourselves down the road. So I think there’s also a tendency when you’re highly sensitive, and you’re feeling a strong emotion to want to feel better in the moment, whatever that is. So that’s an angry outburst or reaching for a substance that you’ve been trying to avoid. So there’s a desire to kind of fix it quickly. And this leads us into our next point, is that for folks who are emotionally dysregulated, they often don’t know how to make themselves feel better.
Ed Fowler
Right.
Marielle Berg
They don’t have enough kind of in their toolbox. So when they feel really bad or upset, they have a hard time figuring out how to soothe themselves.
Ed Fowler
Right. And I think that happens a lot where the emotion feels painful, and really, really strong. And we want it to go away as quickly as possible. And we do what we know. And so if we know that grabbing a drink, or watching TV for hours on end, or whatever it might be is going to make that emotion go away, then we go to that. But if our life is just watching TV for hours a day, and we’re not doing other things that are important for us, then that’s not really an effective solution. And one of the things that I really appreciate about DBT is the opportunity to learn things that will help more that will bring that emotion down that will soothe us in that moment that will help us to feel better, not good but better, in a way that we don’t regret the consequences of whatever we do to make us feel better.
Marielle Berg
Yeah. And in this place when you’re reaching for something to make you feel better and you’re not sure how to make yourself feel better, there’s also this kind of myopic vision I can happen, where like you sort of forget that maybe you had a different experience yesterday or that tomorrow can be different. So things get very sort of tunnel vision, and you can feel terrible forever, or it’s always going to be this way.
Ed Fowler
I think when emotions are extreme, we can fall into the extremes of the always and never and everyone and no one. And I think that, again, is a trap in a way. And that’s where we can get stuck, where we feel like we’ve reached a dead end. Because if it’s always going to feel this way, then I need to do whatever I can to relieve this right now, instead of being able to have that little bit of space to say, I feel this way right now. And it feels really strong, it will pass eventually, what will help?Iinstead of like, oh, this is never gonna go away, so I better do whatever I can.
Marielle Berg
Which can make it worse.
Ed Fowler
Yeah, often makes it worse.
Marielle Berg
And then, for many people who struggle with emotional dysregulation, there’s like an added piece of judgment or feeling bad about feeling bad. So you’re struggling, you’re feeling a super intense emotion, anger, fear, sadness. And then there’s judgment. So you get frustrated with yourself, Why am I being so emotional? Where you get embarrassed and kind of have those thoughts of like, what’s wrong with me?
Ed Fowler
Right, which I think is a really painful part of having overwhelming emotions, is a sense of like, what is wrong with me? Why am I acting this way? Why is this so hard for me, and this is, again, getting into that kind of extreme thinking of like, no one else has struggles in this way. Everyone else knows how to manage their emotions. And then it’s easy to get self judgmental, which then for me makes the emotion stronger.
Marielle Berg
Right, it doesn’t actually help.
Ed Fowler
No, feel worse, I feel more desperate. And that’s where I think we sometimes lack that little bit of breathing room to be able to say, what’s going on right now, as opposed to always and never?
Marielle Berg
Yeah, well said. So a major premise of the work that we do in DBT, is that emotional dysregulation is not due to a lack of character or strength on the person’s part, people usually just can’t snap out of it. And if they could, they would. So you’re not trying to manipulate anyone, when you’re upset, you may have heard that. And that can be very painful, because often, that’s not your intention. So the, what we teach in DBT, is that if you haven’t learned the skills to manage your intense emotions, you can learn them, things can change, you don’t have to be a victim to your strong emotions,
Ed Fowler
right? I think that that gets into the biology of it, that everyone is built in the way that we’re built. And for some people, we have a propensity towards really strong emotions. And so if we’ve never learned what to do, when we have those strong emotions, we’re going to do what we’ve learned, which sometimes is lashing out, sometimes it’s shutting down. Sometimes it’s becoming really hard on ourselves, and self judgmental. But those don’t really help, actually, because we don’t know better options. And we need better options of what to do when emotions are really strong.
Marielle Berg
Yeah, I’ve heard the analogy of if you come into the world, and you’re more sensitive, or emotional, it’s sort of like being given a racehorse. And if you don’t learn the skills and techniques to effectively ride that race horse, you’re gonna keep getting thrown.
Ed Fowler
Right. And once you learn the skills and techniques, then riding that race horse can be really fun, and really exciting. And so it’s like, yeah, learning the ways to manage kind of actually helped you enjoy this race horse that you’ve been given.
Marielle Berg
Yeah, it can be a really vibrant life. Yeah. So I think this is a good place to segue into some of the things I think we’ve already been talking about. But I want to talk us to talk about it more explicitly. And that is the biosocial theory, which is something we teach in our DBT skills group, when we talk about with our individual DBT clients. And it’s such a great and really non pathologizing way to think about what creates some of the problems with with being more emotional, because being more emotional, in and of itself isn’t problematic if you have the tools and the skills to manage it. But when you couple it with what we call an invalidating environment, then things get really tricky and messy.
Ed Fowler
Yeah, I think that oftentimes when people are just born with a propensity towards stronger emotions, family members, caregivers don’t know how to handle that and don’t know how to help. And I think often what people are taught when they are young, is that’s not really what you’re feeling. You’re feeling that, you’re taking this out of context, you’re feeling that too strongly or overreacting, and because other people may not understand the emotional experience of a child, we take that in, and then start to tell ourselves like, yeah, I’m not really feeling that, or am I feeling that? Or why is this so overwhelming for me, this doesn’t make sense, you I’m being too sensitive, stop it. And so we’re taught that the way to manage emotions is to just shut them down and tell yourself to get over it. And then we start practicing that ourselves. And that’s the combination of the biology of being born with strong emotions, and the socialization of being invalidated in experiencing those emotions. That’s where we start to develop patterns that do not work for us.
Marielle Berg
Right. So when a child is repeatedly invalidated growing up, that means, you know, just to sort of piggyback on some of the things you were saying, repeatedly told that what they’re feeling is wrong, or that they shouldn’t feel what they’re feeling, or they shouldn’t make such a big deal out of it. That’s invalidation. And when that happens regularly, it creates a lot of problems. So not only does it not teach the more sensitive child, or the more emotional child, how to manage their emotions, so right there, we have a problem because they’re not taught what to do when they’re feeling really intense emotion. But it also creates problems in that it makes the child over time really doubt themselves, and doubt their own sense of reality. So if their parent is regularly telling them if they’re feeling really upset, like this isn’t a big deal, or don’t be such a baby, or stop, you know, blowing this out of proportion, and that child is feeling such an intense emotion, it’s very confusing. And so I think people over time learn, I can’t trust myself, I can’t trust my own take on reality. And I think this bleeds into or can create that sense of confusion about identity or sense of self, that we can often see with people who are emotionally dysregulated. Like, who am I?
Ed Fowler
Yeah, I think that repeated message, that what you’re feeling isn’t right, isn’t accurate, isn’t the appropriate response, coupled with this lived experience of I’m feeling what I’m feeling, can create such confusion. Like, I know that I’m feeling something very strongly. And the message that I’ve gotten in the message that then I’ve started to give to myself is, can I really trust this feeling? Is this what I’m feeling? Should I be feeling this? Why am I feeling this so strongly? I should just stop feeling this, as if it’s that easy. For anyone really. Then it creates this real conflict between what our lived emotional experience is and all the messages that we’ve received and that we give to ourselves. And that’s where a lot of paralysis can come in. So impulsive behavior, to just do whatever we can to get out of this moment that’s painful, or feeling really stuck or down, depressed, hopeless about our situation. So either exploding or imploding, because we’re in this trap, where we’re feeling what we’re feeling, but we don’t know what to do with it. And we think maybe it’s not right. We don’t have any options.
Marielle Berg
Well said, and whichever way you go, the imploding or the exploding, there’s almost always a sense of shame on the other side of that. What’s wrong with me? And that can over time can feel really toxic.
Ed Fowler
Yeah. And that’s what I find for me, and why I really enjoy doing this work in DBT, is I find it to be so sad, that there are so many people who are not taught how to manage their emotions, not because of ill will necessarily, sometimes it is ill but but a lot of times I think that parents and caregivers, adults don’t know how to help a child manage their emotions. And they think that the helpful thing is to just try to teach that child to shut those emotions down. And it creates so much confusion. And we have years of suffering, where we don’t know what to do with our lived experience. And we don’t have options and we feel overwhelmed. And then we feel ashamed that we don’t know what to do, even though no one ever taught us.
Marielle Berg
Yeah. And that’s a good point. And this is not to diss parents and caregivers who are usually doing the best they can and may not have been validated themselves growing up, or may have fears that if they validate a child, a child’s emotions, that it’s just gonna make things worse, or they may not be particularly wired to be very sensitive. And here they have this highly sensitive emotional kid and they don’t know what to do with it.
Ed Fowler
Right. I do think in general, we don’t have good language around emotion and managing emotion for anyone. And everyone’s just doing the best that they can. And typically what that means is like, oh, don’t feel that.
Marielle Berg
Right.
Ed Fowler
And for those people who have have strong feelings and can’t just ignore it, then that becomes a really difficult situation.
Marielle Berg
Yeah. And I want to add that any kind of childhood abuse is inherently invalidating.
Ed Fowler
Yeah.
Marielle Berg
So physical, sexual, emotional abuse, it messes with the child’s sense of reality.
Ed Fowler
Right.
Marielle Berg
Because they know something is wrong, but they’re getting the message explicitly or implicitly like that this is okay, or it’s to be tolerated.
Ed Fowler
And I think for people struggling with emotional dysregulation in adulthood, there’s almost always either some sort of invalidation where their lived experience wasn’t mirrored by the people who were helping them grow up, or like active abuse. And either way, like you said that it’s just like my lived experience is so different than what is being reflected back to me. And I’m not being given tools for how to manage what’s going on. And so then we do the best we can. And then we’re adults who don’t know what to do, and feel overwhelmed, and shut down.
Marielle Berg
And then this other tricky dynamic can happen, that I want to talk about, related to this is that this kind of invalidating environment over time can reinforce more dramatic or explosive emotional displays. So if the parent or caregiver is essentially ignoring the child when they’re upset; don’t make such a big deal of it, you know, don’t be such a baby, quit crying. And then the child’s really sort of ups the ante and their emotional display becomes really intense. So a temper tantrum or screaming or something, you know, throwing things or when things get really heightened, and then the parent or caregiver responds, if that happens regularly, it communicates to the child only when I lose it, do I get my needs met.
Ed Fowler
I think that’s a common thing, where people learn pretty quickly that no one really listens to me and takes me seriously when I mildly express the emotions that I’m struggling with, and they do listen and take me seriously and respond, if I express it forcefully and loudly and strongly, why botherwith the quiet asking for help, right?
Marielle Berg
Totally,like the lower level emotional expressions, it doesn’t get me anywhere.
Ed Fowler
Right. But with everything, the more we repeat something, the more of a habit it becomes. And then we can be adults and not recognize that we were taught basically through the behavior of others that just go from zero to 10. And that’s where you will get your response. And so people learn, just go straight to 10. And so some people really struggle, because they have learned that the only way to get my needs met, is to start being extremely forceful, which sometimes can push people away. Sometimes that’s not effective. And so that’s where we need a wider range of tools for how to express what we need emotionally, so that we don’t have one tool, which is explode.
Marielle Berg
Yeah. And with that, thinking about that zero to 10 scale, you were talking about that along the way, if someone’s been regularly emotionally invalidated, is that those children grow up to be adults who emotionally invalidate themselves. So when they’re at a 2, like maybe if we say zero is not upset, and 10 is the most upset, you could be when their irritation or upsetness starts growing at a two or three, they may tend to invalidate themselves. So they may think, okay, like if I say something like, oh, this is bothering me, honey, say in a relationship, they may think, or they may have learned that those lower level expressions don’t get attended to. But I think also they may invalidate themselves by saying, oh, it’s not such a big deal. Why are you getting upset about that, and kind of pushing it down, and then they sort of grow on that upset scale. Now they’re at a five, they’re getting more upset, and they’re still trying to push it down. And it only comes out at a 10.
Ed Fowler
And I think one of the things I appreciate about DBT is our attention to the reality that emotions are not good or bad. They just give us information. And if I’m experiencing an emotion that is giving me information, and I reflexively, say, don’t feel that or that’s not what I’m feeling, or stop, it’s not going to make the emotion go away. And oftentimes, it will intensify the emotion. And so we do kind of get into this cycle of, I’m starting to feel a little bit angry. And I tell myself, no, you’re not angry, you shouldn’t feel angry, there’s no reason to feel angry, stop feeling angry. But if there’s anger there, it probably is going to grow. And I think what happens is we don’t necessarily recognize the connections of how we get from zero all the way up to 10, maximum distress. And what has been happening is a cycle of feeling emotions and validating them feeling them expressing them and validating getting invalidation. And then very quickly, were at 10 out of 10. And feel totally overwhelmed.
Marielle Berg
Yeah, feel totally overwhelmed. It’s damaging to our own self respect when we get to that 10. And we act in ways that are more explosive. And it’s damaging to our relationships.
Ed Fowler
Definitely. And I think that 10 can sometimes be implosive. If that’s a word.
Marielle Berg
Yes, we were talking about that earlier, great point you’re right, so it can look differently in different people.
Ed Fowler
And I think that when the 10 out of 10 of emotion results in shutting down, we can also feel a lot of shame about that.
Marielle Berg
Yes, that’s an excellent point. Okay, thank you, Ed, for joining me today to talk about this whole idea of emotional dysregulation and the biosocial theory in DBT.
Ed Fowler
Yeah, I’m happy to talk about this stuff because I really believe in how much help and healing we can get from paying attention to it.
Marielle Berg
Thanks for joining us and listening to the first episode of The Skillful Podcast. If you can relate to being emotionally dysregulated, join us for future episodes, where we will discuss skills to help you deal with intense emotions. Thanks for listening to today’s episode. To learn more, or if you’re in the Bay Area and want to get started with therapy, you can find us online at Bay Area DBT CC dot com. That’s BayAreaDBTcc.com