May is Mental Health Awareness Month. It is a specific time designated to focus on and bring attention to a particularly important topic. Especially after this last year, I am sure we can all attest to our mental health being affected in one way or another.
In this blog, I want to focus on an aspect of mental health called emotion regulation. Regulating our emotions in a healthy way not only addresses our emotional health, but it then affects all aspects of our self; our physical, mental, psychological, spiritual, relational health. It is vital to our overall well-being that we are aware of emotions (ours and others), accept our emotions, and have the ability to manage them well.
A helpful way I support clients to regulate emotions is to regulate their thought life. A technique I use often with people I am working with is called Cognitive Defusion. The idea is that we fuse together a thought/experience/event with a meaning/judgment that we attribute to it. The goal is to defuse that meaning and look at our thoughts, feelings, memories in an observing rather than an evaluative way. But know, this in no way minimizes, devalues, or dismisses our feelings, thoughts, etc. We just can practice having them without needing to add a negative value meaning to them.
Here are some Cognitive Defusion exercises to get started with your Mental Health:
Distancing
the goal here is to emotionally distance yourself from the meaning and belief attributed to the thoughts, feelings, memories, and bodily sensations that you have. To do that you label your thoughts as they are, not what you think they mean. It is a simple but powerful tool to help your mind simply state what is happening rather than attach meaning, value, or any evaluations to them. To apply a distancing label they can go like this:
- I am having the thought that….(describe your thought)
- I am having the feeling of….(describe your feeling)
- I am having the memory of….(describe the memory)
- I am feeling the body sensation of…(describe the nature and location of your bodily sensation)
- I am noticing the tendency to….(describe your behavioral urge or predisposition)
Descriptions and Evaluations
the goal here is to make distinctions between a description, which is linked directly to the observable aspects or features of objects and events, and an evaluation, which are your reactions to events, thoughts, feelings, memories. We often assign an evaluative label to things (good, bad, likable, ugly, rude, unbearable, right or worng, etc.). This helps your mind recognize when it is noticing an experience and when it is making its own judgment calls on that experience.
For example: “I am anxious, it is unbearable, and I cannot handle it” is an evaluative statement. By adding the evaluation that it is unbearable and I the meaning that you cannot handle it will certainly prove itself true if you believe it is true. This is an evaluative statement. Practice what the descriptive statement only would be. Something like “I am having the feeling of anxiety, and here is what I am going to do next with it.”
Other helpful Cognitive Strategies are:
Socratic Questioning
- State your belief/Write it down.
- What is the proof/evidence you are using to support that belief?
- What is the counter-belief?
- What is the proof/evidence (that you may discounting) for the counter-belief?
For example, if you believe that you are failure, you will only look at “proof” in your life that supports that belief. You will discount any evidence that proves otherwise. I often use the analogy of being a good CSI agent (Remember that show?). You never assume who committed the crime rather you follow the evidence…all the evidence. Be a good CSI in your life and look at all the evidence, not just the evidence that proves what the negative belief wants it to prove.
Cognitive Reappraisal
Imagine a pie chart. We often think that our initial belief/interpretation is the only one that is accurate (100% of the pie), but what if that is not the case?
For example, if you pass a co-worker in the hall and say hello and they do not say anything back to you, your automatic negative thought might be that they are mad at you because you did something wrong, or they do not like you because you are so unlikable.
Is that the only possibility?
Break down your pie into other percentages: Maybe they had earbuds in and you didn’t see them, maybe they just got some really bad news and couldn’t talk, maybe they were running to the bathroom to be sick, maybe they did not hear you, maybe they were distracted or preoccupied by being called into the boss’s office and they were on their way there now…what you end up realizing is that there are many other possibilities/percentages that make up the pie chart percentages, not just the initial negative response that you feel is 100% true.
You are worth it!
Our mental health is worth the time and practice to move towards what is healthy and helpful in our lives. This is but one aspect of it but start here and see where it leads you next. Remember the 3 As from the beginning of this post: Aware, Accept, Ability. Be aware of your mental health and any growth areas you want to implement. Accept your emotions, thoughts, body sensations, etc. as they are without criticism, judgement, or added negative value. Believe in your ability to manage your emotions, thoughts, etc. and start practicing doing so.
The TED Talk below is more on emotion regulation, specifically how not to take on other people’s prickly emotions. This workbook is if you want more information on Cognitive Defusion and other Cognitive, Mindfulness, and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) techniques.
