#14: Why Do We Have Emotions?
Many sensitive people have wished at times that they could just get rid of their emotions. They may try to dampen, suppress, or deny emotions. Although these efforts may work partially, at least in the short-term, they never really work in the long term. Plus, often the things sensitive people may turn to in order to lessen the sting of painful emotions, such as addictive or impulsive behaviors, create additional problems.
In this episode, Marielle and Ed talk about the purpose of emotions and things that make it hard to regulate them. They talk about how emotions send a message to ourselves, letting us know that there is something we need to pay attention to. Emotional expression is also a powerful communicator to other people, whether we like it or not. Emotions move us to take action when we need to. Without emotions, we wouldn’t run from tigers, tend to a sick child, or fall in love.
Show Highlights:
- Emotions motivate us to take action quickly when we need to
- Emotions keep us connected to others; they motivate behavior that is good for the “tribe”
- Emotions can be infectious or contagious
- Body language and tone of voice also communicate our emotions to others
- Emotions may be based on assumptions rather than facts
- When anger is really strong, it tells us that someone or something has gone past our limits
- Anger can feel very self-righteous at times
- Anger might fit the facts but expressing it may or may not be effective
- So much of the work with emotions is about slowing down
- Some people feel like they don’t have a right to express anger
- Our relationship to anger can be very gendered
- Anger is one of the few emotions that men are typically allowed to have
- Men are often socialized to not feel fear or sadness
- Women are often socialized to not express or even feel anger
- Class, race, gender, and sexual orientation can influence which emotions are ok to express publicly and how they are expressed
- The different factors that make it hard to regulate emotions
- Some people just feel emotions more strongly than others
- Things like lack of sleep, being sick or not eating enough can make it harder to regulate emotions
- Telling someone to “just get over it” doesn’t help
- Sometimes our expressions of intense emotions get reinforced
- Moodiness also gets in the way of being able to regulate emotions, meaning that your current mood dictates what you do (rather than your wise mind)
- Mood-dependent behavior can take us out of line with our goals and values
- It takes willingness and effort to work on regulating emotions
Links & Resources
To learn more about DBT and therapy in general, read our blog.
DBT Skills Training Handouts and Worksheets, Second Edition
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#14: Why Do We Have Emotions? 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
So welcome, Ed, I am looking forward to us diving a bit more into our Emotion Regulation skills today.
Ed Fowler
Yes, I am too.
Marielle Berg
Let’s talk today about a couple of things. First of all, what emotions actually do for us and why we even have them, and also explore what makes it hard to regulate our emotions. So let’s begin with what emotions do first. Why do we even have emotions in the first place?
Ed Fowler
And I think about this a lot, because I talk about emotions a lot. So it comes up a lot, it’s in my mind. And even when I am not working directly with people, or in group or whatever, like I still am talking to friends and family members and other people about emotions. So, so often we can approach emotions as good or bad. And some emotions feel really nice. And some emotions are really painful. So it makes sense that that’s where we tend to go.
Ed Fowler
And I think a lot about how emotions, just our emotions are a biological human thing that we all do, we all have. And the main thing is emotions give us information. They provide information to ourselves and also to others. And so noticing our emotions help us understand what information is coming to me and what information might need some attention from me. And looking at it that way rather than good or bad, I think can help us be more effective in being with our emotions.
Marielle Berg
Absolutely. I think that particularly for people who feel things a lot and might identify themselves as being sensitive, emotions can feel like this thing that, or the emotions are the problem. Like, if it weren’t for my intense emotions, and my sensitivity, I would be a much happier person. How can I dampen my emotions or get rid of them? Which you and I both know, efforts to do that usually don’t work, or certainly don’t work in the long term.
Ed Fowler
Right. And I also think that I hear a lot of people in that struggle where emotions are really strong. Other people want me to just get rid of my emotions, or I guess I should just get rid of my emotions, if I could, you know, and again, it just doesn’t. That’s not how this works. We have emotions, whether we like it or not. It is what it is.
Marielle Berg
Yeah. And I realized I fell into the trap as we’re talking. I’m thinking about it just this weekend, as I’m dealing with a grieving spouse. And that it was, it was a bit of a challenging weekend, because my spouse was in some pretty intense grieving over some family members who passed away last year. And I said to them, can’t you just try to be less sad? Me, the therapist.
Marielle Berg
I think, you know, she looked at me and she’s sort of like, had this like, expression of like, I’m gonna pull myself up by my bootstraps, like, yes, I’m gonna I’m gonna try. And like it’s yeah, I see your face. I wish people could who are listening, because we’re over video. You’re like incredulous. Like, what did you do? This was coming from, so I have a lot of empathy for family members of you know, our clients who are like, can you please stop being so emotional? It’s hard. It’s hard on the person who isn’t feeling that much. And it’s, you know, I know, I was feeling, after the end of a long weekend with a lot of sadness and tears of like, I’m a little bit drained. And I don’t want to deal with this right now.
Ed Fowler
Right.
Marielle Berg
And of course, that’s how, that does not work. You can, we cannot command ourselves or someone else to not feel something.
Marielle Berg
Yeah, yeah.
Ed Fowler
Right. And I have definitely been in the position of I should stop feeling so much. I should feel less intensely, I should, should, should, should, should. I should feel something, I shouldn’t be afraid, I shouldn’t be anxious, I shouldn’t be angry. And you know, we talked so much about nonjudgmentalness in DBT as like a helpful approach to things. Like there’s no such thing as should. Should according to who?
Ed Fowler
It just is, you know, people if we have a loss, we’re going to feel sad. There’s no way to know how long that’s going to last. If we’re scared, we’re going to be scared. There’s no way to know.
Marielle Berg
Yeah, yeah. And so and we teach all these skills in DBT, that holds this dialectical tension of this beautiful openness you’re talking about. We can’t just will ourselves to change our emotions. And if we’re sad, we’re going to be sad, if we’re fearful, we’re going to be fearful. And we also teach skills that can help people shift those things, which are, shift those emotions that are not effective, which is different than telling someone can you just be less sad.
Ed Fowler
Right. And again, there is this like, dialectical approach of your sadness is no longer effective, potentially.
Marielle Berg
Yes.
Ed Fowler
And so yes, you’re feeling sad, and what are some options? And for me, and as we get deeper into our discussion of Emotion Regulation, one of the things that has helped me so much be more okay with my emotions, is knowing if an emotion is no longer effective, an emotion is not working for me, if if I don’t want that emotion, I have options for changing it. I’m not stuck with it indefinitely.
Marielle Berg
Totally, which is really different than suppressing it or just willing it away.
Ed Fowler
Right.
Marielle Berg
Or doing some kind of behavior to temporarily make it stop that works against us in the long term.
Ed Fowler
Right.
Marielle Berg
Let’s circle back to what you said. When we first began our conversation about the purpose of emotions, in terms of how they really motivate us for action, they communicate to others, and to ourselves. And let’s, let’s unpack it a bit.
Ed Fowler
Right. And I think that that, you know, the that kind of the DBT approach that you’ll see in our literature, of like, emotions do three things, right? They motivate us to do something, they give us information, they give information to others. So understanding what is an emotion? When it comes up, hat is it? And one of the key aspects of emotions is that they do motivate us to action, in ways that our thoughts, our kind of Reasonable, Reasonable Mind can’t by itself.
Ed Fowler
The example that I will use a lot is, if a lion jumped into the room right now, it’s not going to be helpful for me to say, a lion, that’s very strange. I wonder where that lion came from. This, wow, that is weird. I need to act, I need to have that fear kick in, I need to get the hell out of here. Or roll up into a ball, or whatever my fear motivates me to do to keep me alive from this random lion. That emotions motivate us to do something in a way that our Reasonable Mind can’t. It’s quicker, we get the information in a split second.
Marielle Berg
Yeah. And that way, we really need those emotions, they help keep us alive, they help keep us safe. Of course, they can get a little wonky, which we’ll talk about. But ideally, they’re –
Ed Fowler
I never have a lion in the room. I often have fear that’s motivating me to like curl up into a ball.
Marielle Berg
Right, that’s about something –
Ed Fowler
That doesn’t always fit.
Marielle Berg
Yes, but it can feel that intense. But their line example is great, because it talks about how we need them, they’re really, you know, hardwired into us to keep us alive. And to keep us connected.
Ed Fowler
Right.
Marielle Berg
Because if we didn’t have those emotions of love and tenderness, we wouldn’t connect to others, we wouldn’t help others in need, we wouldn’t tend to that crying baby, or that elderly person who needs help. And we’re pretty tribal animals, we need each other, we don’t survive on our own.
Ed Fowler
Right.
Ed Fowler
And so part of what does keep us connected to each other is the emotional side of things.
Marielle Berg
Yes.
Ed Fowler
And, and that’s where I think that our emotions, as we experience them, do communicate to us. They give us information. So as I’m feeling sad, and we have this physical response of, you know, tightness in my throat, and feeling like I want to cry, it’s communicating to me that I’ve lost something, I’m going to lose something, there’s something that is moving me in that way.
Ed Fowler
And so they do communicate to me. Oftentimes, our emotions will motivate us to do something. So if I’m feeling really sad, typically with sadness, we do want to be away from others, we want to tend to those wounds within ourselves. And so I’m motivated to kind of be on my own. And how many of us have had the experience of being really sad for a very long time and needing to be away from others and it isn’t effective? We’ve gone too far, it’s too long, right? So sadness also communicates to others so that when others see my tears, for instance, they are motivated to do something to be there to help me so that while I tend to my wounds, I’m not totally cutting myself off from others. That combination of emotions motivating us, giving us information, and also communicating to others is such a, like an interesting dance that happens.
Marielle Berg
Yes, and I’m thinking about a positive or an emotion that often feels much better to experience, such as joy or excitement. And that those emotions also give us information. If we are on a bike ride on a beautiful Sunday morning, and are feeling really joyful. That’s something to pay attention to. Maybe I need more of this in my life, this is something that makes me feel alive. And then we might greet others with a big smile, there might be more lightness about us and more up energy, and that’s also communicating to others, right? There’s a way I think emotions can be a little infectious or contagious. For better or for worse. If we’re feeling up, that influences the people around us. They might be irritated as all heck if we’re super up, and they’re not, but it can, it can have a positive influence. And it can also have the more negative influence if you know, folks around us are feeling really down or anxious.
Ed Fowler
Right, right. And again, because I think emotions are key for us having information that we need, that we can’t get other ways. And they’re also key for communicating to others, which is why there is this contagious effect that’s so hardwired, that we do feel others’ emotions, in certain ways we respond to those.
Ed Fowler
We’ve used this example in group of like, if, you know, I gasp and jump up, people get really nervous, like what just happened, what’s happening, right? Because again, there’s this social element of like, if I see something, if I see a lion, and I gasp, then everybody else wants to be on alert at the same time, right? But I think that there’s also, for instance, in the example of your spouse, and grieving and having the grieving last for a long time, communicating sadness, for you, who has been there, throughout this, the sadness may be going on to a point where it’s no longer effective, there may need to be some movement with the sadness.
Ed Fowler
And because you’ve seen so much sadness, you’re saying, there’s a message of like this, maybe this is too much, maybe this is going on longer than is effective, maybe you need something different, right? So that there is a communication that is happening now. It may be that something different is needed, it may be that you need to be more okay with someone’s sadness, right? So that’s where I what I appreciate in DBT, is we take all this information, we take these messages, and then we mindfully check it out. Rather than making assumptions of like, oh, well, it must be time for you to get over this. Or, Oh, it must be time for me to work on myself, because I’m not okay with sadness at all. It’s like there’s, you know, lots of communications that are happening, and we need to pay attention, notice, mindfully be aware, and then decide what kind of action we might take.
Marielle Berg
Yeah, so lots of room for gray. And related to this, how emotions communicate both for ourselves and to others. I think about body language and voice tone, that that communicates a lot. Even if we’re not saying words, like I’m sad, or I’m angry, for example, people pick up on that, right? How we’re holding ourselves how we’re speaking.
Ed Fowler
How many times have we been in the situation where the you know, for me, I’m feeling really angry, trying to suppress it, and someone says, Are you mad? I’m like, no, no, I’m not mad. Right? Or being on the other end of that of like, are you upset about something? And someone’s like, no, no, but all their body language is tight and tense.
Marielle Berg
Yeah.
Ed Fowler
I think you’re upset about something, right? So so often, we can’t hide those emotional expressions, even if we try.
Marielle Berg
And even if we’re trying consciously to hide them from others, but even from ourselves that kind of this idea of like, I’m just not going to feel this emotion, and it seeps through.
Ed Fowler
Right, yeah, I’m fine. I’m fine. Right?
Marielle Berg
If I say that enough, it will be true.
Ed Fowler
It’s mostly, we’re communicating to ourselves often, when we say that right? And, and again, like, if I’m feeling emotions that are giving me important information, no matter how much I’m trying to suppress them within myself, they will communicate out. I can’t totally suppress it.
Marielle Berg
And so another important point, when we’re talking about emotions, communicating to ourselves, is that we have to be aware, just as we don’t want to suppress emotions or make ourselves not feel them, or emotions aren’t necessarily always based on facts, facts about the world. Sometimes our emotions are based on interpretations, assumptions, myths, which we talked about in a previous episode, and are not necessarily based on facts.
Ed Fowler
And we do need to pay attention. So again, we have emotions as human beings, they come up, even if we don’t want them to, right, we need to notice what they are and not necessarily act on them until we’re clear about what the communication is. Because if my emotions are being fueled by my own assumptions, or interpretations, I may not be getting accurate information.
Ed Fowler
For example, this comes up a lot like, I know, she’s mad at me. And I need to tell her off, because how dare she be mad at me? It’s like, how do you know she’s mad at you? And I’ve certainly been in the situation of like, I know, you’re mad at me, and I whatever. And somebody’s like, I’m not mad at you, what are you talking about? My emotions were based in assumptions. And I jumped to act on them without necessarily really checking, okay, how much of this is what this other person is communicating to me? How much of this is facts about the situation? And how much is my assumptions based on my past experiences, my assumptions on other times I felt this emotion? So that I’m not necessarily jumping to conclusions based on for instance, past experience, rather than based on what’s happening in the present moment.
Marielle Berg
Yeah, and especially with the example you gave about anger, I feel like the stronger our emotion, the more certain we can be that it’s factual, and that we’re right, especially with anger, because it has such a self righteous kind of energy to it.
Ed Fowler
Right. And, and I think that oftentimes, if we are feeling a lot of anger, which again, anger tells us that someone has gone past our limits, that we are, there’s a risk of harm from someone encroaching on us. Anger is really important and really valuable, and does very much motivate us to push back. So anger gives clear, like very physical response, to push back. And when anger is really high, we can have very, very reasonable thoughts about the anger that are all based in emotion, and not based on the facts of the situation. So we can find justification for our anger that seems very real, but it’s not actually factual.
Ed Fowler
And when we talk about, for instance, being able to sort out our emotions in a Wise Mind place that’s balancing both the Emotion as well as our Reasonable Mind, the facts of the situation. That’s where we want to make decisions rather than Oh, I feel so angry. Yes, I, she did say that, she always says that she, then all of a sudden, I’m justifying this anger strictly out of emotion.
Marielle Berg
Yes. And just to complicate this further, or to add an additional nuance. Sometimes our anger really is, you know, justified, it is based on the facts. And that’s language we use a lot in DBT, especially when we’re going to be talking about skills that we’ll get into in later episodes, like, Check the Facts and Opposite Action. So your anger might actually really fit the facts, but expressing it isn’t necessarily effective.
Ed Fowler
In that moment, yeah.
Marielle Berg
Yeah. I know, I shared the story with you, but I want to talk about a little bit here, so I think it illustrates this point, that I was coming out of a grocery store, recently in an area where there’s a lot of homeless people. And someone asked me for money, and I politely or at least I thought so, said no. And as I was walking by, they screamed at me F you. And so I immediately felt a surge of anger, and wanted to yell back and wanted to defend myself against how good a person I think I am. And in that moment, so I would say my anger in in some ways was justified, and that I was, you know, verbally attacked in that moment, but expressing my anger wasn’t going to be effective. And the way to gauge what’s effective is, do I want to start a fight with this person? Or do I want to like, you know, go on my way and continue with my day and be safe and not escalate?
Ed Fowler
And that is such a good example where that anger communicated immediately to you. And just because you got the communication didn’t mean you needed to act on it immediately. And I think when we are working with people in DBT, and for me as I’ve applied these skills myself, so much of the work is slowing down. I’m not just going with the emotion as it happens, because sometimes we can be getting misinformation. Sometimes it’s just not effective to act on that emotion in that moment.
Marielle Berg
Yeah.
Ed Fowler
And we want to be able to be thoughtful and deliberate about it. Because that’s more effective in the long run, for achieving our goals for ourselves. Whereas just taking an emotion and having the feeling and the motivation to do something, and going with it, so often results in, I wish I wouldn’t have acted so quickly.
Marielle Berg
Yeah, it’s not a hair trigger, I don’t have to react immediately. And when folks can feel that, that they get to pause, they get to check in with their Wise Mind, it is incredibly empowering. All of a sudden, you have choice over what you do, what you say, and how you live your life.
Ed Fowler
And on the other end, I have certainly dealt with this. And I hear this a lot, especially for instance, with anger. People who are not allowed to be angry, not allowed to express anger, have trouble expressing anger, right? So they’re getting the communication. And then like, we have a habit of suppressing it. And so we’re not effectively for instance, pushing back when push back is needed. And so taking a step back, and paying attention to our Wise Mind, helps us to determine, okay, in fact, here, I do need to speak up. I do need to say something or do something, I’m not going to reflexively say I shouldn’t be angry, or yes, I’m angry, but I shouldn’t yell, right?
Marielle Berg
Yeah.
Ed Fowler
And the example that you gave, if somebody gets up in your face, right, you probably want to yell, you probably want to literally push back because you don’t want, that’s that’s dangerous. And if we have taught ourselves, which so often with emotions, we’ve taught ourselves responses that aren’t always effective. And sometimes it’s to suppress it, just suppress that you shouldn’t be angry or don’t, yelling never helps, right? And sometimes yelling does help.
Marielle Berg
Yes.
Ed Fowler
And being able to like be thoughtful and deliberate about it, and not just go with our initial responses, but to notice what our emotions are, pay attention to the communication, and think about how to effectively communicate.
Marielle Berg
I’m so happy you brought that in, because anger is one of those really tricky ones. And we certainly don’t want to give folks the message that, you know, anger needs to be quashed or is ineffective all the time. Because you’re absolutely right. Sometimes yelling is the the most effective response. And I think there’s a way that people’s relationships to anger is very gendered in that the bar can be so much lower for women and folks socialized as girls and women in terms of what’s acceptable with their anger.
Ed Fowler
Right. Yeah, I do think that, like emotions do tend to have a high gender correlation. So for instance, anger is one of the few emotions that men are allowed to have, been encouraged to have. Men are socialized very much not to express sadness, not to express fear.
Marielle Berg
Yes.
Ed Fowler
Right? I think that the dynamics around sexual orientation can come into that, right. And so women are definitely not allowed to be angry. Class race, all of this stuff can play into what emotions are allowed to be expressed and publicly sanctioned, and which ones are not.
Marielle Berg
Yes. And in, in what way.
Ed Fowler
In what way?
Marielle Berg
Yes.
Ed Fowler
And so being able to notice, again, like this is all very Reasonable Minded discussion and awareness, right. And then when we are feeling whatever the emotion is, we need to respond to that. So developing this practice of kind of noticing, paying attention to what, what am I feeling? What is this, not just going with the first response, but to take a step back to kind of see, do I need to be speaking up more? Maybe be more quiet about this? Do I need to hold back? Do I need to go off and try to deal with this on my own before I bring it to others? Do I need to take risks of expressing this emotion as soon as I feel it, rather than being so thoughtful and reflective and standing back and not always expressing the emotion that I’m feeling? It’s different for each of us.
Marielle Berg
Yeah. So what we’re saying here, I think, in a nutshell, is that this is complicated stuff. This is pretty complex.
Ed Fowler
The whole podcast summed up in one sentence.
Marielle Berg
Our emotions, our stress, our relationships,
Ed Fowler
All you need to know.
Marielle Berg
all we’re talking about here. And it’s, man it is pretty complicated.
Ed Fowler
Yeah. And so like, we do two things, right? So we try to, break it down and understand it, right? In all the complexities, get to some of the parts of it, while keeping in mind that like, there is no one way, there is no one answer. There’s so many nuances in what we feel, how we feel it, how we express it, what our options are.
Marielle Berg
Yeah. And let’s, let’s pivot a little bit and talk about the different factors that go into making it challenging to regulate emotions.
Ed Fowler
Yeah. And I do think that it can be like, being aware of emotions, and knowing how to manage them can be so hard at times.
Marielle Berg
Yeah.
Ed Fowler
And I think that there are so many factors that go into that. Certainly biology, we’ve talked many times about, like how some people feel emotions more strongly than others. And so it’s harder to regulate emotions when you’re feeling them extremely strongly.
Marielle Berg
And I with that, I also think about if we’re sick, or we haven’t had enough sleep, or we’ve missed meals, all those things are like physiologically, is that a word physiologically, or, okay? All those all those things that affect our bodies, ourphysiology, can make us more prone to feeling intense emotions and feeling that we are not in control of them.
Ed Fowler
Right.
Marielle Berg
And then, general lack of skill, you, and that’s what we teach in DBT. You actually don’t really know what to do to regulate your emotions.
Ed Fowler
And that again, if you don’t, if you’re feeling the emotions, and you’re not sure how to manage them, then of course, you’re going to have trouble regulating until you learn some of those skills.
Marielle Berg
Yeah, and that’s a big stumbling block, I think, for a lot of people who come to see us because they’ve been told throughout their life to like, just get over to just not feel that to control themselves to calm down. But they don’t actually know how to do that. So if you have it, that hasn’t been modeled for you, you haven’t learned in one way or another, you, due to no fault of your own, you just don’t actually know how to do that. It’s like if you grew up in a country where you only spoke English, and you don’t know how to speak French, you can’t just will yourself to do it. You have to learn the skills. How do I pronounce this? What are the letters, how do they go together?
Ed Fowler
Right, exactly. And we hear so much from people that oh, DBT This is so common sense. This is so great. They should teach this in school. And the reality is, we do not in this country, and in most countries, we don’t have good skill teaching around managing emotions.
Marielle Berg
Yeah.
Ed Fowler
And so most people don’t know how and don’t know what their options are, don’t know what some possibilities are for regulating emotions.
Marielle Berg
Yeah, and it can go to either of these two places, we talked about sort of like the shutdown, I’m not going to feel, I’m going to push this down, I’m going to pretend it’s not there. I’m going to minimize or they’ll like, explode.
Ed Fowler
Right.
Marielle Berg
I’m over the top with it. My emotions are everywhere.
Ed Fowler
Right.
Marielle Berg
I’m totally out of control, which is, you know, to not very fun places to live.
Ed Fowler
Right, exactly. So having some skills does help. Another aspect of difficulties regulating emotions is if our expression of emotion gets reinforced. So for instance, if we learned and we talked about this early on in our DBT course, if we learn that the only way people are going to give attention to our emotions is if we are yelling, or crying, or really loud and big about it, then we’re going to learn to bypass the quiet like, I think I’m feeling sad, to like sobbing, right? So that we can get the emotional support that we want.
Ed Fowler
In the same way, like if we are taught that if you express emotion, you’re gonna get shut down, you’re not going to express that emotion.
Marielle Berg
Yes.
Ed Fowler
So regulating our emotions, noticing what they are and what knowing what to do with it can be very hard if our environment is reinforcing something that prevents regulation.
Marielle Berg
Yeah, there’s little motivation to regulate. Or kind of, sort of, in the back of your head, you might be thinking, Well, why am I going to regulate this? Why do I want to have more sort of say over my emotions? Because when I lose it in one way or another, then I get tended to, which is a very human need.
Marielle Berg
And then the next thing that can make it challenging to regulate your emotions is general moodiness. And so to differentiate our moods from our emotions. So I think about mood as a longer term, emotional state versus emotions, which are usually more time concentrated.
Ed Fowler
Right.
Marielle Berg
And so, with moodiness, it means that your current mood dictates what you do instead of your most wise self. So you’re just, this is when we hear things like I’m just, just didn’t feel like it. I had plans to meet friends which is related to values I have about having more social connection. But then when the time came, I wasn’t in the mood, I didn’t feel like it. So I didn’t go. And so if your moods are dictating your actions, it makes it really hard to live the kind of life you want to live.
Ed Fowler
Right. Yeah, we and we talk a lot about being careful of mood dependent behavior, where what we do is based on our mood, because that’s where people often find they’re out of line with what’s important to them, what their goals are, what their values are. Because I really wanted to get involved in something, but I just felt too down, and I didn’t do it. And that can get extended. And so we want to be careful about noticing moods, that we have extended periods of emotion. And not necessarily just going with that. But being able to think about, okay, is there a way that I can still do what’s important to me, regardless of what mood I’m in right now?
Marielle Berg
And related to that is that it takes effort, especially in the beginning with our skills that we teach, it takes some time and patience, and some effort to, like, even have the willingness to try out something different, to put skills into place, to go against what your mood is telling you to do to regulate your emotions. And that can be a part of the moodiness when you you feel like you don’t you don’t really want to do that.
Ed Fowler
Right. I think another factor that makes it hard to regulate emotions is like just being emotionally overloaded, just being completely overwhelmed. And this can happen, especially for those of us who have strong emotions, biologically, just feel emotions very strongly, we can get to that point where our emotions just feel totally overwhelming. They’re too powerful. And this is where we talk in DBT, about the idea of Distress Tolerance, that it is hard to regulate emotions, if they’re overwhelming,which is where we would use our full set of Distress Tolerance skills to bring that emotional intensity down. Because it’s a biological factor. If our emotions are overwhelming, it’s going to be hard to think, it’s going to be hard to act. And so noticing I’m emotionally overloaded, I need to use some Distress Tolerance, bring that back down, and then I can figure out how to regulate this emotion, act on it, what’s going to be effective?
Marielle Berg
Yeah. So another thing with emotional overload I think about, is that it’s much harder to regulate emotions when there’s a lot of stressful things happening all at once. Maybe you have a sick family member, there’s problems happening at your, in your job, there’s world events, or local things happening in your community, that are incredibly stressful. These are times when you’re much more prone to not be able to rein in some of those emotions, because there’s just so much going on. And this is related to what you said a moment ago in terms of, that’s when we want to think about okay, if if our distress is super high, how can we bring it down? I’m vulnerable to having my emotions be really out of control, how can I take care of myself?
Ed Fowler
So yeah, I think that, you know, like, there are emotions, to kind of sum up everything we’ve been talking about, emotions just are. They’re a biological fact of life for human beings. They are giving us information about what’s going on within us, about what we need to do to respond to that. And they do communicate to other people, even if we’re trying not to let that show, right? And emotions come and go. They can be hard to manage. And so slowing down, noticing, paying attention, thinking about what what am I experiencing? What’s it telling me? What are my options? That’s what the entire Emotion Regulation module in DBT is about.
Marielle Berg
Yes, thank you. I think that’s a great note to end, and we’ll pick up in subsequent episodes with what some of those skills actually are.
Ed Fowler
Yeah, sounds good.
Marielle Berg
Thank you.
Marielle Berg
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 bayareadbtcc.com. That’s bayareadbtcc.com.