 Welcome back everyone to happiness isn't brain surgery with Doc Snipes practical tools to improve your mood and quality of life. We're moving on to module three of dialectical behavior therapy techniques emotion regulation. In this section we're going to continue to talk about emotion regulation and why emotion regulation is important and how it can help you reduce the frequency that you get upset and reduce the intensity with which you get upset. Emotional vulnerability refers to situations in which you are more emotionally sensitive or reactive than others that doesn't mean it's bad. And remember in the last segment we talked about how emotions are natural is just how your body is reacting anger and fear tell you there's a threat that you need to do something about happiness and elation and joy that tells you that was good let's do that again. So generally your body is trying to communicate with you what you need to do. Once you realize that then you can choose what to do in the next moment. So what makes people more reactive current vulnerabilities including stress. So think about a time that you were stressed out or you were sick or you were over tired. Were you more reactive were you more irritable were you more likely to be a little bit snitty or snappy with people you just didn't have the energy to deal with anything else. So your vulnerabilities can make you more stress prone and more reactive, reducing those like we talked about in module two is one of the first steps in emotion regulation. The next thing that can make you more reactive is differences in the central nervous system and HPA axis, which is a bunch of garbledy goop which means your stress response system. Your stress response system is basically designed to tell you when there's a threat. But for some people they've encountered so many threats for so long that their body is kind of altered how they react to stress and how they react to threats. So they don't react to everything but when they do react to something they go from zero to 250 in two seconds. So understanding that sometimes your brain has adapted to chronic stress in order to protect you. If it got all that upset over everything you would run too hot you would burn out you'd run out of energy however you want to say it you can't survive with that much stress. So your body's kind of turned down what it responds to and it doesn't isn't quite as aware or noticing or caring of some of the little stuff, but when it is triggered. Oh boy, watch out. We also have different learning experiences. So, if you were taught to suck it up and deal with it. And you were and or you were taught that life throws challenges at you so instead of being fearful of challenges, you know, step back take a moment, figure out what the next step is and then start doing it. You're going to have a different reaction than someone who was taught that the world is a scary place and it's uncontrollable and it's very unsafe. So different learning experiences growing up are going to affect what you perceive as stressful and how stressful or how threatening you perceive it. And the degree to which something conflicts with your beliefs about how the world should be will also make you more reactive so if you hold on just steadfastly to the belief that life should be fair. Well, you know what, you're going to be disappointed a lot, which means that you're going to be emotionally reactive you're going to get angry. You're going to get disappointed a lot, which is going to make your reactions seem overwhelming because it seems like you're constantly getting angry. So we're going to talk about how to address some of these things. We talked about reducing vulnerabilities in module two so we're going to move on to the HPA axis. For your information, HPA stands for hypothalamic pituitary adrenal axis, which is basically your threat response system. When it's activated, the body sends out your stress hormone, which is called cortisol. Cortisol is really cool. If you are in a fight or flight situation, if you are actually in danger, it causes your blood sugar to increase. So you've got immediate energy. It causes wake up excitatory chemicals and hormones to be released, which gets you stimulated. Now stimulated doesn't necessarily mean happy. It can mean like really stressed out or really angry. You are ready to go. It also suppresses sex hormones. Unfortunately, well, I mean the good part is that your body is not thinking about sex at that point. It's saying survival is more important. Unfortunately, sex hormones are really important in making the brain chemicals responsible for calmness, anti-anxiety, sleep, and anti-depression or happiness. Your sex hormones are responsible for helping those neurotransmitters be available. So when they're suppressed, especially if they're suppressed for a long time because you're under chronic stress, you're probably going to start feeling anxious, depressed, and have poor sleep. So when the system is working well, it's really cool because your body devotes all of its energy to fighting or fleeing and protecting yourself and not getting sidetracked with hormones and all that other stuff. Unfortunately, for people with emotional dysregulation or for people who are anxious or depressed or however you want to label yourself, it's likely that you've got a situation going on where you're under chronic stress. So this cortisol has just been staying in your system, which has been suppressing your hormones, your sex hormones, and causing less availability of the happy and the calming neurotransmitters because your body always thinks there's a stress. You're staying on high alert. You can't calm down. You can't sleep well. I mean, you wouldn't sleep well if you thought that somebody was going to break into your house or if you were a soldier in a foxhole. That's kind of what your brain is telling you right now or thinking is going on. It's staying alert for that stress so you never get good sleep. You never are able to balance those neurotransmitters. And when you're all that on alert, your body says, you know, it's not time to be playing games. It's not time to be happy and relaxed. It's time to look out for threats. Part of emotional regulation is recognizing that we have got to reduce our basic stress levels and that means starting to take care of yourself. Basic threats, loss of control and the unknown, rejection, failure and death. So let's think about this. Think about a time in the recent past where you got angry about something. Did it involve a loss of control over someone or something? You didn't get your own way. Something happened that was unexpected. Not surprising. Rejection or failure, whether it's a loss of a relationship or you didn't get a job, if it's something that indicates that you weren't successful, you weren't in control of the situation, you weren't succeeding, which also may contribute to, you know, fear of rejection. We all want to be liked. But if you've got low self-esteem, then you need others to like you because you don't like yourself. So if you've got low self-esteem, then this basic threat of rejection and failure can feel just overwhelming. And death. We all have different thoughts and feelings about death and life and the afterlife and all that kind of stuff. But when something happens that could potentially hurt you, harm your body, harm your personal self, it's natural to get angry or anxious because generally, you know, most of us don't want to die right now. You know, we realize it'll happen eventually, but not today. So when something happens that threatens your safety, it's natural to feel anxious or angry. Thinking back over yesterday and that whatever it was that caused you to get angry or irritable or stressed out or anxious, make a list of all those things. Most people have a minimum of 15 stress situations or anger situations a day. So think back over those things and figure out what threats they were related to and then think, you know, was there really anything to get upset about? You know, was it really a big deal that I didn't have control in this situation? Was it really a big deal that I didn't succeed at this? The next step after reducing your vulnerabilities is starting to address the threats and identifying the ones that are real threats and actual, you know, potentially harmful things versus things your mind tells you this could be a threat. Because your threat response system, all it is, is there to tell you that there's a possibility there's a problem. It's like a fire alarm, a smoke alarm. Now, I love to cook and I'm a decent cook, but every once in a while, I'll get a little sidetracked and the smoke alarm will go off. Now, does that mean that there's a fire in the house? No, it probably means that mom got sidetracked and forgot that she had something in the oven. So there wasn't a huge catastrophe. The fire alarm went off, which freaked everybody out, but then, you know, they realized that there wasn't anything to get that upset about. So this is what I want you to think of when you start to get upset. It is just an alarm system. Now, is your alarm system tuned well or is it faulty? When people experience a chronic threat to safety and are constantly under this low current of anxiety, it can cause problems. Like I said, it tells your brain that you're never safe. So your brain is always on some level of alert, maybe not high alert, but some level of alert. When you are stressed out, just like when you're angry or when you're sad or when you're, however, you tend to pay attention to the things in your environment and the thoughts in your head that correspond with that feeling. So if you're feeling irritable, you're not going to pay attention, most likely, to the cute little squirrel. You're going to see it and think, that little stupid thing is going to run out in the middle of the road in front of me and I'm going to have to slam on my brakes instead of appreciating how cute he is. Your mood will dictate kind of what you see, what you pay attention to, and how you interpret it. Your brain then makes connections from these experiences and prunes away connections that are not used. So if you're not making happy connections, if you're not making happy memories, you're only making unhappy or stressed out memories, then your brain starts to say, you know, this world is kind of a stressful place because there's nothing to balance out the bad. Give you an example, if five out of your last relationships, your friendships ended poorly and one is still going. What is your expectation of that relationship? Probably that it'll end badly. Now you weren't necessarily, the relationships didn't necessarily all end for the same reason. Part of them may have been you, part of them may have been the other person, part of them may have just been circumstance. But your expectation is just kind of based on a global appraisal of, you know, the last five people left so everybody leaves all the time. How does that affect your relationships with other people and your willingness and desire to make new relationships? People who feel a lack of control over their environment are particularly vulnerable to chronic stress. So if you've been in a situation before where you couldn't predict from moment to moment what was going to happen. You didn't feel like you had control, you didn't feel like you were safe, you didn't feel like your needs were being met, emotional or physical. You may be more vulnerable to chronic stress. This is very true with people who come from situations where they've been abused or neglected, whether it's a child or an adult. Those people will tend to feel more anxious and more stressed and on more alert because they couldn't predict their environment. I think this is true though for people with anxiety or depressive disorders. If they don't know where it's coming from and they wake up in the morning and they don't know from moment to moment if it's going to be a good day or if they're going to have a panic attack, it can feel exhausting and it can feel overwhelming until you can start to understand what's causing this stuff and start to form new memories where you're empowered, where you're in control, where you're able to create a situation that helps you feel happy. When you are on alert, when we call this hypervigilance, it disrupts your ability to focus and learn. You're not worried about paying attention to all this stuff is going on. You want to get the heck out of there. So you're not trying to sit back and go, well, let me think, is this something I really need to pay attention to? You're just trying to make it stop. When you're in this state, it also impairs the ability to form new memories and recall information. So think about a time when you were stressed or feeling threatened or whatever the case was. Do you remember as much? Do you remember as many details about that situation? When we deal with crime victims, right after the trauma, we know they're not going to remember squat about what we say to them, which is why we write it down because your brain is not designed to learn and consolidate memories at that point for a whole lot of reasons. But the important part is if you are constantly under stress, constantly feeling like you're on alert, you're going to have more difficulty forming new happy memories, forming new memories that help you feel empowered without really dedicating yourself to it. Hypervigilance being on alert all the time is associated with emotional and behavioral dysregulation. When you're on alert all the time, you are constantly kind of at the precipice of how much you can deal with. So just about anything can kind of send you over the edge into an emotional free fall, which results in or can result in a behavioral free fall because you want to make the pain stop. So you choose the first thing that's going to make that pain stop and make it stop well. When you are in that state, you remember unpleasant things. You have difficulty recalling the pleasant ones because again, you're trying to get out of there and trying to make the pain stop. And you have difficulty exploring alternate possibilities, which just increases your stress level. When people are under chronic stress, the brain may stop getting as stressed about each individual thing to prevent overload, because you can't constantly be going that fast, running that hot, or you're just going to run out of energy. You're going to burn up. You're going to melt down whatever descriptive you want to use. When this happens, it's designed to preserve the excitatory brain chemicals for when there is a true threat to your safety or personal being. So your body says, you know what, I don't have the energy to worry about all that little stuff right now. I can just focus on if there's a big thing, then I'll worry about it. So hold on to those excitatory chemicals. Unfortunately, those excitatory chemicals, the ones that help you get angry or really scared and fight or flee, they're also the ones that help you feel really happy because excitement is excitement. So if your brain's holding onto those, it's going to be hard to feel happy too. When it perceives there's a threat or stress or worth responding to, it responds, but it responds extremely strongly. Again, think about a time when you were stressed out and something that normally would have just been an irritant and you'd be like, really, I'll deal with that later. You just lost your mind over. Well, you see what's happening here. Your brain had started saying, I don't have energy to pay attention to all the little stuff. And then when somebody started poking the bear, you freak the freak out. And this is what we call dysregulation. The survival point in that, and I do want you to see the function. Your brain was going, I need to conserve my energy. I need to protect myself. So whatever you are, Mr. Threat, you need to get the heck away. So it responds strongly to push away the threat with as much force as possible to protect itself. So your reaction is functional in the current state, in the current reality where you are stressed out and running hot and about out of energy. By reducing chronic stress, and easier said than done, but by reducing chronic stress over time, your brain will recover and rebalance and quit staying in that survival mode. So you start noticing the little things and you start being able to feel happy. And one of my old clients called it seeing colors. He said in early recovery, you know, his brain had been running hot for so long. He abused stimulants that he couldn't see colors. It was all gray. You know, nothing got him excited. It was just blah. But over time, he started being able to see colors again. And, you know, that was really poignant for me, helping me to understand a little bit more about his early recovery process and why his first few attempts at recovery hadn't been successful. Because you can only go so long without seeing colors before you start feeling really depressed and needing to make that pain stop. So you need to work with your doctor, work with your clinician, work with your spiritual leader, whoever you choose to figure out how you can help yourself reduce some chronic stress and see colors. Start getting noticing some of the little things that might make you happy. This will help you become more able to access positive memories. And you'll also become more able to tolerate distress and explore stressors from the wise mind, which means you'll be able to feel an unpleasant feeling. And you'll have the energy to accept that it is what it is. And then step back and say, All right, this is my feeling over here and it's really awful right now. This is my logic and this is what I want to do. These are my urges to make it go away. And this is my logical mind that says my ultimate goals are X, Y, and Z. And I need to do these, take these steps in order to deal with whatever's going on. And you combine those two, because sometimes the logical mind may be right, but the pain is intolerable. So you've got to figure out how to get through it in a way that makes the pain tolerable, but also helps you keep moving towards your goals. Emotional dysregulation results from high emotional vulnerability due to long term stress and invalidating environments that never helped you learn how to cope with these feelings that never provided support or encouragement or a sense of safety or security. If you grew up in an invalidating environment, you may never have developed the tools to deal effectively with your emotions, which created a source of constant stress for you, which only intensified your emotional reactions. You stuff down anger long enough and when you start piling anger on top of it, eventually you explode with rage. Under stress, your brain doesn't learn or retrieve memories as effectively. So when you're feeling unpleasant emotions, you notice and remember things that support those feelings. You're not looking for the whole range. You're just noticing the things that are saying, okay, let me assess what the threats are right now. You're not going, all right, what are the threats and supports. Emotional dysregulation activates the threat response system, where disrupts your ability to focus and learn and impairs the ability to form new memories and recall new contradictory positive information. The cure, if you will, or the intervention for this again is to start slowly reducing your chronic stress and reducing your vulnerabilities, helping your brain and body and mind be as strong and healthy as they can. So you can slowly start getting your energy back to deal with stress as it comes and you don't feel like you're constantly being bombarded. Emotion regulation involves eliminating or mitigating vulnerabilities in order to allow the brain to rebalance and get out of survival mode.