Hello, everybody, and welcome to another episode of The Meaningful Sh!t Show, hosted by me, Vincent. And today we're going to talk about emotion regulation. As usual, I'd like to start with a quote, and they're both going to be, start with two quotes, they're both going to be by Marsha Linehan, which who that is will become relevant a little bit later. First quote is, acceptance is the only way out of hell.

And the second quote is, somehow I lost all ability to regulate not only my emotions, but my behavior as well. It was an alarming and rampant, complete descent into hell. All right, so it sets the stage already. I mean, the two parts, the very essential part of emotion regulation is actually experiencing the emotion and accepting them, but we'll dive into that. And the second part I find really interesting as well.

If you do not have the ability to regulate your emotions, you do not really have the ability to regulate your behavior. So let's step into that. So I would like to start this episode with a personal story of what starting to learn to regulate my emotions did for me. And just as you guys, I'm still on the journey. I'm not perfect. I wouldn't even say that I'm...

I would say I'm any good at it. But, you know, I wouldn't be in the state championships yet. I do, however, have some tools that I would want to share. All right. Those who can't, teach. Tools that I think that should be taught in high school, really, and maybe, you know, I have a 14-year-old nephew, and I am a little blown away by what they get taught in high school these days.

Like, it seems more relevant than some of the stuff I did, but hey. I do still find it shockingly bad. No, I do find it shocking how bad people often are at regulation of their emotion. Why that is, we'll go into that later. So a lot of people are actually more caught in the bind of trying to avoid a lot of stuff. So, I grew up in a household where people were not really emotionally available.

And for good reason or for reasons, I do not even necessarily look back at my parents and have harsh judgements on why that was. We had death in a nuclear family, my mother, really, really early on. So I was raised by my stepmother. And, of course, such an event, such a traumatic event of losing your wife for my dad, losing the mother for myself and my sister, creates something that's really hard.

And raising children that are not your own and having your own trauma from the past is also really, really hard. So if I look back, I'm not as upset of, like, how the fuck would they, what were they doing? Were they, like, drinking, doing drugs, partying all night? No, it wasn't a situation like that. It was just a raw deal. And stuff like that just happens. Bad stuff happens to good people.

But it did leave some marks. I didn't have great role models on emotion regulation, right? And that has something to do with my childhood. Very probably has some genetic factors as well. And I do feel like my emotions are a bit more raw and intensive than for the average bear, but that's an external experience, so you can't really even say that. I do tend to react more emotionally, especially on the masculine spectrum.

So, but over the years, and actually a little later than I ideally would have, I build up more and more of a toolbox so I could handle these things. I don't want to preface this by something. I mean, it's fun to watch a YouTube video about that, and actually it's as much about you as it is about me. For me, this is a great way to embody the work, to really, the research that I do allows me to really think about this in a deep way.

But this shit is work. So things often start by listening or reading a book or something like that, but it won't just do it for you, even if on a theoretical level it makes sense if you intellectually understand it. So the only thing that I'm hoping for is an insight, and the story is to inspire you to dive into this more. But it will be work. There will be exercises.

You will have to become very well in tuning your awareness. It's a part of people just don't really like. It's like everybody wants to eat healthy, and we want to have the end result and shortcut, but we don't want to deal with prepping it, planning it, and before we know it, we're just ordering whatever crap online, because we haven't really thought about what we're going to eat.

But even if you pay someone to do it, get a meal kit, that's a good place to start. But it's not always personal. You do need a personal approach. What works for you with your personality, etc. The same, I mean, is if you compare this to running a marathon. You can read everything you want online on how to prep for running a marathon, and that is essential.

And that can be the inspiration for you actually starting on that journey. So there's something really positive about that. But there is something beyond it. So if you will be aware, it's going to be work for you. Let's go into a couple of definitions. I like to do that, just set the stage. What the fuck is an emotion? It's a natural, instinctive state of mind, deriving from one's circumstances, mood, or relationships with others.

So this is from Oxford Dictionary. I would... Well, there's a couple of things going on here. A natural, instinctive state. So comes up from sort of below. It's not a rational process. Deriving from one's circumstances, mood, or relationship with others. It's an interesting choice of enumeration. Circumstances, actual events that happen to you, mood doesn't really necessarily have to do with what is happening to you. It's your state of mind.

Relationships with others. Interesting that that's mentioned specifically. And we'll dive into that, why that is. Why are emotions particularly defined or derived from that relationship with others? I have another definition. This is from the skills training, handouts and worksheets from DBT, Marsha Linehan's DBT, more about that later, page 209. So emotions motivate our behavior. Emotions prepare us for action. The action urge of specific emotions is often hardwired in biology.

Second part, save time. Emotions save us time in getting us to act in important situations. Emotions can be especially important when we don't have time to think things through. Part three, strong emotions help us overcome obstacles in our minds and in the environment. So, in this, it's less of a definition. It's more like, why do emotions exist? Right? And there's a couple of interesting nuggets here. Motivate our behavior, right?

So they create an incentive, positive being negative, to act in a certain way. And it prepares our body biologically for action. The moment we're angry, we start gearing up for battle, right? The moment we're afraid, we start gearing up to run away. There's emotional responses to, or sorry, biological responses to these emotions. And if you look where these emotions come from, some of these emotions are kind of like lower level.

You can imagine if you're like a tiny, barely aware creature or not aware creature. Fear isn't important. Before it is something that does the thing to us emotionally. It's something that would live in our body, even if we don't have any mental recognition of that. Something happens in reaction to sudden movements. A body gets prepared to fight or flight. It makes sense that that was there in our bodies.

It's still regulated by the mind, but in our bodies before really us experiencing in the way that we're experiencing it on an intellectual level. Do they save us time to get to act in important situations? I really spoke to that because it gears up our biology. It makes it easier for us to go into a certain direction. We're already ready for battle, whatever it is, to yell, to run away.

And it can be especially important when we don't have time to think things through. This is the part where you also emotionally can get stuck in a loop, because we're emotionally dysregulated. We're not really thinking about very well what we're doing or what we can do. But the emotion already prepared us for certain directions that we're going to run away. We're going to yell, all right? Strong emotions help us overcome obstacles.

So it seems in the previous points where I talked about is that emotions like sort of drag you down in a direction, but it's also like stepping up to the plate. Although there is a deterrent in your emotions to not do a certain thing, they do create the necessary incentive to get something done. What is emotion regulation? Simply the ability to exert control over one's emotional state.

So instead of just being a slave to it, being like able to regulate, able to get to a state that we want to go. And there is a little bit of a double edged sword here. More about that later. I'm going to touch on that in the context of DBT as well. But there is something sneaky about changing emotions. Because emotions, sort of like per definitions, are not wrong.

It's not an effective way to look at it. Like I shouldn't be angry now. You're fucking angry. You should be angry. After checking the facts, it might not be justified that that's something else, right? So there is a little bit of tricky situation going, where you have to step out of your own perspective and look at it from different points of view, which can be really, really hard, right?

So in order to control your emotional state, there is a certain openness required, and not like this blinders on going forward. We'll get to that. Wonderful. So a couple of other things on emotions, what they do for us. I already spoke about the hardwired in biology, some of the things we just simply have to do. It's involuntary. But emotions also serve to communicate.

And influence, I like to say, at the speed of light. Because if we have to wait for the spoken word to reach us, or even if we're in a dangerous situation, to formulate these things, right? And I have an example that comes to mind when my partner and I were just moving into this apartment, and then we have this huge standing mirror that we were sort of positioning a place where we wanted it.

And we're sort of leaning against the wall until we were in a position that we could actually put it up, you know, mount it to the wall. And as part of that, at one point, I tried to set it up in such a way that we could really see how it would look. And then in that way, like when you angle something against the wall, you know, stay stable.

And I put it up a little bit too upright. So as I turned around, it was starting to fall on our dog was under that. And although my partner was ultimately yelling, yelling out something, I don't even remember what. It was already so clear on our face that like something was going on. I could see where her gaze was towards. There was, you know, the words were not really necessary.

Like, by that time, there was already, you know, I was already moving. So that's an example of the shock that leads to facial expressions, that leads me to recognize those facial suspensions, puts me into action, right? Some of the other things that are just hardwired across cultures, I find interesting as well. Supposedly, like things like disgust is a really good one, that even if you go into a village, a small village in the Amazon, that doesn't have contact with the outside world, disgust is disgust.

It looks in the same way. These are hardwired. And therefore, really easy to recognize when that happens. And it can be, of course, really advantageous. It's not just facial expression, body language, tone of voice, same situation. And it just skips a lot of symbolic interpretation, language processing, stuff like that. Makes sense. But it's also a way to communicate to ourselves. This is where like sort of that awareness part comes in.

Because how do we communicate to ourselves? We can feel our facial expressions, and we can feel biological changes. Heart rate increasing, starting to sweat, weak knees, things like that. So it gives a cue about a situation that our rational self might not have spotted. Right? You have an amygdala in there, and all it does is in a very efficient way, scan for threats. Not in a way that your rational mind can.

But you do become aware of the emotional change of the amygdala have flagged something that you find scary or dangerous. So since these brain structures that are dedicated to it, like the amygdala, it's just going to outpace your other brain factors. So no matter how hard-nosed, rational, etc. you are, the entire emotional response system, although you can sort of numb or train yourself in a way that you are not really conscious of them, they're still going to outpace your brain functions.

And this is the cute thing about emotions as well. Even if you're not aware of them, maybe especially when you're not aware of them, they are going to affect your behavior anyway. And I have good examples of people in my surroundings that I just feel are sort of susceptible for that. And I get it, because the whole thing about being aware and listening to your body and where's the emotion in your body, it sounds so woo-woo, so new agey and stuff like that.

Especially if you're really into a masculine side of the house, where you're also were raised, men ought to behave as men and stuff like that. All this touchy-feely stuff doesn't really have a place there. And that's fine, but it hamstrings you. It allows you to do certain things fine, but it makes you a little bit of like a puppet of your emotional system, because you're not aware of it.

And what you're not aware of, you can't change, you can't influence. It drives you, right? So you have to have to be mindful. So why is this important? We've been in the other episodes so far talking about happiness, decision to make happiness, and this is a little bit of a different topic. But at the same time, why it is important is kind of, duh. I felt like it was really important to talk about this, because without having these basics under control, it's really hard to make the decisions that make you happy, because there's a lot of things that your emotional systems will throw you off track.

Every episode, I tend to talk about, how does your environment interpret that? Because that's a thing that's particularly hard for me. And I think being able to reduce your emotional suffering makes some of these things easier. Difference being between emotional distress and emotional suffering. Like pain is unavoidable. You know, emotional distress is unavoidable. You're going to get angry, like whatever. All of that is going to happen.

Suffering is when you don't accept that. So when you occupy a space where it ought not to be, that's what turns into suffering. So you might be looking or watching this and wondering, okay, what's my level or mastery of emotion regulation? How much does this apply to you? So chances are, if you've clicked on an episode about emotion regulation, you at least struggle somewhat, or you're interested in the topic.

So there's a couple of points to this question, some of the things I've already alluded to. First of all, are there severe consequences that you suffer from? Do you often get into bar fights? Do you have DUIs? Do you stay in your apartment for days on end? Do you find it hard to stay in a relationship, to keep a job, to find a relationship that you want?

Or other things where you have goals in life, or intentions in life that don't seem to pan out for you? Do you self-sabotage? Are you prone to victim thinking? Like the victim thinking versus owner thinking, right? Oh, this is happening to me. Oh, oh, woe is me. Versus, well, well, well, if it isn't the consequences of my own damn actions, right? There is a difference. There is a difference.

And victim thinking generally doesn't really help. It shirks the responsibility that you actually have. Do you self-medicate? Do you find it important to hide and calm down with compulsive activities that can be drinking, pornography, masturbation, not leaving the house, checking your stock portfolio, playing games, doing work? Any of these things that grab you, record YouTube videos, anything that takes you out of your real life, and or are activities that don't really build up to something that you want, right?

Take the example of the video games, like playing video games. Of course, it's a way to relax, so I'm not playing video games. I've played a bunch of video games, but are you using it to escape something? This is the question. Whenever these behavior patterns tend to be present, that's an indication for you that there is some lacking there, and that there's a lack of mastery. So getting in trouble is not mastery, avoiding is not mastery, exposure leads to mastery.

So the question is, can you handle difficult emotions in a skillful, deliberate way? Wow. Okay. Deliberate way. Because difficult emotions are going to happen, you can avoid them a lot of the time, right? And that's like sort of our knee-jerk reaction to just not have them there. But what is really important is to be ready for these difficult emotions, to welcome them. Because that's kind of how life is.

That's, you know, if you're ready for it. It's still something. Don't immediately start doing it tomorrow, opening yourself up to difficult situations. This preparation is required, right? So I have a personal example. I once got so emotionally dysregulated that at a traffic light, I got out of the passenger side of the car and started walking back, which would have been a miles walk. Kind of great. As a kid, I would scream and yell and smash my Legos at the door of my room so that they'd explode in a million pieces.

I would regularly start packing to leave when getting into an argument with my partners without really the attention of leaving. Hanging with other people's emotions, I find that really, really hard. I'm empathic, and I can only hang with that about for 15 minutes, like being supportive before it osmosis into me, and I can't anymore. At least, that's where I am right now. Worst time I lost my shit was when I was on the phone with my partner while she was on I-70, busy interstate in Colorado, a snowstorm without proper winter tires, and skidding all over the place while there was cars going around it.

And mind you, this was after she'd been stuck for hours in traffic. This was one of the situations where I know I-70 better, I go skiing there, she doesn't. And I unsuccessfully first tried, she was on a longer trip driving back to Colorado. My intention was to get her to stop in a hotel because I knew that it was going to be bad for multiple reasons. So I was a little frustrated about that.

She can be like kind of like blinders on, I just want to get home. So I was trying to stay regulated, but at one point things started going south because you don't really have control at that moment anywhere. So I just started screaming myself over the phone, and I very angrily got into my car, which did have winter tires and stuff like that. And I had no problems driving sort of the opposite direction.

And I got her to stop somewhere at like a Starbucks or something like that, that I knew only like basically an hour and a half, or maybe even less away from home. But while driving that, I was very distraught. I was full of self-harm thoughts, because I was so ashamed of losing it in such a way. Like it's someone who is in a hard situation. I mean, it was an interesting thing because it was a perfect storm of multiple things going wrong.

And I don't know if emotion regulation per se would have saved me, but there is like an action which it would have been very important to have noticed that moment of getting too dysregulated and attaching an action to that. Of course, I've spent some time thinking about it since. In this situation, I should at one point not have been on the phone. It's a terrifying situation, but I can't really add that much at that point being on the phone.

And it's better for me to regulate myself so that I can actually problem solve and be supportive of the moment that that is actually necessary. But this is a hard situation regardless. But it's good to be able to regulate to a certain level and also know your boundaries as far as I'm concerned. That's part of it. So having said these things, some of the things obviously I've overcome.

But there, the last story that I told you, you can clearly see that I'm still, if I would walk into a situation like that again, that would still be a struggle. So I'm not done. So let's talk about how to regulate your emotions. First of all, in these topics, often I hear people thinking that they are unique, and it doesn't work for them because of X or Y, and they don't work like that, and that's this or that.

And that's shirking your responsibility. This does apply to you. Don't be lazy. Or just be fucking honest with yourselves. Like, I don't want to do the work. I don't find it important enough. That's fine. But don't try to like weasel out because you feel like it doesn't apply to you. It fucking does apply to you. I have news for you. So I'm going to talk a lot about DBT.

It's a therapy modality that I am rather fond of because it's very skills focused versus specifically processing events and going back into childhood and whatnot. So DBT stands for Dialectical Behavioral Therapy, and it dialectical means composing, combining, composing, also find opposite ideas. So it helps people accept reality of their lives and their behaviors as well as helping them to change their lives, including their unhelpful behaviors. And this immediately reminds me of being very helpful in if you're stuck in addictive or compulsive behavior, which I definitely have.

How, like, those are big words and stuff like that. And even with people that have been in DBT, if you would just like pull them out of the group and ask them to describe what dialectical is, they'd probably be like, I don't know. The way that I just really easily like to remember it, it's just about walking, walking the middle path, right? Often you get stuck in this pattern between acting in and acting out.

And that's like a little bit more like addiction recovery terminology. But from this perspective of like, I'm doing everything right. I'm on the straight and narrow. I'm like overly buttoned down to like, fuck it, let go of everything, and just do whatever the fuck you want. Right? So some of these extremes and the middle path, for example, reasonable mind and emotion mind, right? You can't just be reasonable all the time or emotional.

Like all that. These are these are extremes. And there is something in the middle, which in DBT is called wise mind. So both regulate actions and make decisions based on reason and take into account values and experience even strong emotions as they come and go, right? It's not just cutting everything up. You got to do both. You got to do both. Another example is the doing mind and the nothing to do mind, right?

And this comes a little bit more into, for me, like Buddhist practices and spiritual practices and stuff like that. There's nothing to do. You're already like blah, blah, blah. You both need to do what is needed in the moment, including reviewing the past or planning the future, and experience fully the uniqueness of each moment in the moment. Not necessarily simultaneous. You can't do these things simultaneous, but you got to address them both.

Reminds me of the... I think it's a Buddhist proverb, and it's after ecstasy, the laundry. Great example where you just... You haven't had an intense spiritual moment where you have a major insight, and now it's time to do the fucking laundry. Exactly, exactly that. It's both. It's both. It's not just doing the laundry, although another Buddhist proverb is chop wood, carry water, just focusing on the mundane.

But there is something else, right? Like it's not just doing the mundane. That's not going to do it for you. So another one, and this is generally, is when we're talking about regulating our emotions. We want some kind of like change. There's a middle path for the intense desire for change of the moment. This completely sucks. It cannot go on this way, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

And radical acceptance of the moment. I fucking love radical acceptance, which is deeper. It's a specific skill by itself. But these two extremes here that I'm talking about, so you both want to allow yourself to have that intense desire and to have something else than what is now. Don't be a doormat. But you also have to radically accept that you live in your life in the present moment.

You can't just like sweep it on and on and get rid of it, right? Like you can't. You have to make very deep peace and friends with that situation. If it's something larger, like if you got dirt or shit stuck to your hand, you don't have to radically accept that because you can go wash your hands unless your water is out. Right? So it's recognizing the situation where you need to use these skills.

And when you have a behavior change that you want to go through, that is not something that you can just easily do. So there's a middle path. The same principle applies for self-denial and self-indulgence. You want to both practice moderation and satisfy the senses. That is so important for doing something sustainably. And you can think of your own favorite ones. I have some financial hangups, so I often think about, on the one side, have a budget, have a good budget, and be flexible.

You got to have both. You got to roll with the punches and be disciplined. So why is this hard? Why is this something that requires talking about in the first place? So there's biological factors, and it's actually one of the most important ones, sleep. So I've learned that over time, for sure. There's certain situations where I just don't even try anymore, because for me, it's like I can have two nights of bad sleep, and I have one of those fitbits that track it, but you know it yourself as well.

But the moment that I get to that third night of sleep, like I don't really, a third night of bad sleep, I don't really allow myself to do anything emotional anymore, because I know that I'm going to get into trouble. Some situations, you do get to that fourth night, and the fourth night is a hard stop for me. That's when I would call in sick. That's when I would just stay in bad, like no matter what the things are, of course.

There is limits. But if I'm in that state, I just know that I'm not going to do anything emotional anymore. So I would just, at that point, just avoid. I'm not going to have hard conversations. It's just not going to happen. Lack of skills is another reason that it's hard. And this is a really interesting thing, because it's fixable. Because if you have skills, and you use them deliberately, you can get success.

Also, what often happens is that we were reinforced to behave in a certain way. And I'm thinking a little bit more of the feminine, right? Where if you act out emotionally, you get something. So if your environment rewarded that, which was definitely the case for me, because that was one of the major ways that I got attention in my family situation. If you get rewarded, that stays with you as a tool.

And I sometimes still see that in me, that I use that acting out emotionally just because that had been successful for me in the past. Right? Moodiness is another one. You... it's being willful. You don't really feel like it. You feel like it's the other person's responsibility. It's just... And this is where mindfulness and awareness comes into play as well. Because that's fine. We are all moody at times.

But it is good to flag that and then opt out of certain things. Right. This is again that balance. You don't have to be... I wanted to say a Dalai Lama the whole time, but the entire time, but... Clearly, he's not completely even keeled and being canceled and stuff like that. But like, let's say a Buddhist monk then or something like that. That's not the state that you have to have all the time.

That's not the state that this Buddhist monk has all the time, right? There's also myths like CBT, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, would, I believe, call it limiting beliefs. And here it's called myths, in this case, about emotions. And there's like a laundry list of them. There's some ones that I have personal experience with that I would want to call out. One of them is having feelings or emotions means being out of control.

Like this is really the stoic, stiff upper lip. Think of masculine cultures, you know, where men don't feel emotions until they're drunk. In these situations, often, you can imagine the cultures, where you're either really, really buttoned down, or you use the fact that you're imbibe as an excuse to, I will actually, I do have feelings, but then you don't really understand that because level of awareness is low, right?

But that is a myth. It's something that we all have, and we can be in control. This can be true. It can be true to have an emotion and be out of control. That is true, but it doesn't have to be that way. All right. Extreme emotions can get you a lot further than trying to regulate. This is also personal for me, because that has been true for me in the past.

Both extreme emotions in getting something done, right? Like if I would have an extreme emotion, an extreme fear about not achieving a goal, that would whip me into shape to actually trying to get it done. So I would almost lean into that nervousness. Oh, now I really got to be nervous, because if I don't, I'm going to get in trouble, right? So this myth that it's better to just fucking be scared of something like that than actually trying to regulate it.

Now, again, these myths from certain perspectives, a few certain situations can be true, but by and large, it's not a way to live life. By and large, if you know how to regulate something, and we're going to talk about what that exactly means, it's better. Another one is drama is cool, or interesting, or required, or something like that. I am definitely prone to drama. Drama puts me in a state that I know, like the state in the cycle that I know, and distracts me from doing the actual thing that needs to be done, because I'm just over here being theatrical and creating some kind of drama.

And drama can be cool. That's why we go to movies, and that's why we go to the theater and watch plays and stuff like that. So again, there is an aspect of it, that's cool or required or human experience or stuff like that. But it is only skillful to an extent, and it distracts from what's actually going on. So let's talk about models of describing emotions. The thing with emotions is that we're all supposed to know what they are, where they come from.

It's what we learn growing up, right? This is not complicated. Well, it depends, right? It is not something that's currently taught in school, as far as I'm aware of. At the basics, yes, I do remember having these drawings, and then writing under that what kind of emotion that was. There are some level of these baked-in simple emotions, disgust, stuff like that, anger. And problematic behavior such as violence, lying, they were addressed.

But if you didn't escalate into something really serious, or the wrong thing got even encouraged, that's not something that was taught deeply. So maybe you do not have as good of a model of what happens when emotions come up and what emotions are in the first place. I do find it useful to think about it as a circular system. It's not that an emotion starts and ends.

It's a messy feedback loop. It's a massively messy feedback loop. You can get stuck into an interference pattern, right? When you turn a camera up on the monitor or a microphone to the speaker, right? You can get stuck in an interference pattern. That's what anxiety is, at least. That's how Alan Watts describes it. I like that description. I have a visualization for you as well. You know those NASCAR Speedways, which are just like a long loop, an oval?

Just a loop, but it has on-ramps and off-ramps. It had maybe a few options, a pit stop, etc. And there's things that can take the on-ramp and the circuit representing sort of the stage of what's happening for you, right? So you can be in quiet contemplation, and then maybe there's a toddler on the tricycle going around the track, and it's real peaceful or a deer or whatever.

But an event can take the on-ramp, like something happens, and in DBT it's called a prompting event. Depending on what the event is, if it's a car, if we use the speedway analogy, we have certain interpretations about that. Like for example, a red car means a thing, or a car with driver X means that thing, right? We have certain interpretations about that, and we could be in situations that we immediately dislike something.

If a car enters with a certain sponsor on there, we're just like, oh, he's a piece of shit, or they're a piece of shit, or whatever. So we have vulnerability factors, as in there are certain things that we know that we just don't like or don't dislike. Like whatever, that's the same thing. So going back from an analogy, like that's just a situation that something happens, that for person A can be not important at all, and person B can have a large problem with that.

Like for example, if you've had some kind of trauma where your freedom has been restricted by someone, the moment that you get in a room where you don't have a clear way out or someone is standing in front of the door, for person A that hasn't experienced that can be like sort of aware of that being like slightly threatening, but okay. The moment that you've actually been in a situation where that's the case, you can flip the fuck up, right?

Vulnerability factors. So, you can see biological changes that happen in your body. And there's an analogy with the track. It's just like on whatever is going on on the track, like cars go faster, slower, shift up, shift down, warm up, cool down. Drivers say things on the radio. Maybe one car slams into another car, right? And the more cars that we get on the circuit, the busier our brains get, like because all kinds of events can keep happening.

And if we don't process that event through, it might not leave the track, it keeps circling, like it stays in our awareness, and only so much fits in our awareness. So we can see these cars as emotions in a way. I know that's a bit like the Pixar movie Inside Out, but it works as an analogy. And certain cars slash emotions can have certain tendencies to them.

Like the red car might have a nitro booster, and ram into other cars, and the driver is just a total dick. So, you know, we can... Just the presence of something like that can be a really large problem for us. Now, the feedback loop comes into play as we become aware that there's many cars on the track, and it's wreaking havoc on everything that's happening, right? Instead of just a quiet deer walking around the track and everything being nice and quiet, it's a fucking shit show, and you're running out of fuel because there's this red car, you know, redlining around that track with the nitro booster on, and it's just sucking up all the fuel.

So you can't, at one point, everything just comes to a stop there, and you can't do anything anymore. Or what we really wanted to do is to take the off ramp, to process through, that the emotion exits stage, right? We might call that another prompting event, like the moment that that happens, that something leaves or another event happens. Right. So these analogies can be helpful, but they can also make things more confusing, because a car here is both an event and an emotion.

But the key here is to think about that there's something that enters your awareness. There's changes that happen like sort of on the stage, right? Your heart rate increases, you start to sweat, or these kind of biological changes that gives you another like secondary indication that something is going on at that scene, that red car, the equivalent there is that it might be like super noisy, and your equivalent in your body might be like you get warm and you start to sweat.

Because remember, these emotions, a lot of them, especially like sort of the more basic ones, they live in your body and your nervous system first before your brain. I don't know if that's exactly scientifically accurate, but you can just like feel them in your body stronger, then it's really like a thought sensation. At least that's how it is for me. So what we're trying to manage here is like sort of the state of the track.

We want to be skillful in like, we can't control what enters our track, right? Things show up. That's just how it is. But we want to be skillful in being able to somewhat control what that car is going to do on our track and getting it to exit at one point, take the off ramp. And that requires skill and it requires awareness, and it requires not really getting lost in that in that situation.

The personal example for me is anxiety, right? I feel like every other car that enters my track represents anxiety in some way. And often the prompting event is that I become aware or I think that I'm aware that there's some kind of expectation of me by someone, usually my partner. I interpret that as someone needing me to do something. And if I don't, I should give a good reason for that, such as I have work to do or I want to exercise or I'm stressed.

But my needs do come second, right? If someone needs something, it feels for me, which is probably part of like appeasing my mother, that that's just like immediately, priority number one. But the downside is if you live that way, you can get resentful over time. So for me, it gets to like a messy situation where it's not just the fact that I'm aware of the situation that there's an expectation, and that I want to do, and by itself is doing something for someone can be a very pleasant experience.

But for me, there's a lot of secondary things happening. So the moment that that starts happening, there's other cars popping in as well that try to compensate for that. Where it's just like, oh no, I just don't want to just do what my dad did. I want to make sure that I'm not being taken advantage of, and that I'm making sure that I'm taking care of my needs and et cetera, et cetera, right?

So I feel like I need to defend my position, but I'm not even sure what my position is, right? So it becomes awkward, and I'm just like nervous about that situation. I don't know what to do. Because maybe I'm doing too much of a good thing, and maybe I don't. So that's really a major thing for me, knowing exactly where my needs stand. And this can apply to work situations as well, where I can very quickly forget about the fact that I had my personal plans, and then something for work pops up, and I want to be a good employee.

And I enjoy that. It is part of my love language with the universe or something like that to be helpful. I like that. That's just in my core. But I have to be careful of that. So I have a lot of anxiety cars running around that I need to manage and allow to leave the track. So, before we go in to actually, so this is a model of, was a model of describing emotions, right?

Biological changes that happen, our vulnerability factors, how we interpret those emotions, or interpret the events that then lead to emotions, and the feedback loop that can then happen, right? In order to really effectively do that, you need to be able to describe the emotions, and describing emotions is a skill. So if you might be good at that, you might not be good at that. And I've seen a lot with people that I've worked with, is that especially men tend to not be super good at recognizing emotion.

And there's like these emotion wheels. I will include one in the show notes. That for a lot of guys, they don't even exactly know how to recognize specific emotions, right? And so a couple of ones that are maybe more straightforward is like fear and subsets of that, right? You have fear, but you have also anxiety, apprehension, dread, edginess, fright, horror, hysteria, jumpiness, nervousness, overwhelmness, panic, shock, tenseness, terror, uneasiness, and worry.

Those are all slightly different, right? I remember a story of a guy that I talked to who was going through a rough thing, and he thought that he was getting really anxious at one point. But then he kind of stopped and thought about it, and he was like, no, actually, I'm hungry. That's what I kind of mean. Sometimes recognizing emotions, because you recognize them in your body, you can have a misdirect, and actually, I feel something in my stomach.

It's just because I'm fucking hungry. So I found that funny. So the question is, if you recognize these emotions in yourself and you look at an emotion, well, and I read out the ones for fear, but we can go into envy or disgust or anger as well, right? So the different emotions and distinguishing between them is important. Is it fear or is it anger? Is there anger under the fear, like relationships between that?

And like I said, the feeling them in your body, which sounds woo woo, but it's a helpful signpost. Let's see. Other interesting things that I've read about, there's a lot of examples that I find important or found interesting, is about men who didn't really feel emotions at all. At least that's what they said. And then often it lives somewhere in your body, like a locked jaw, TMJ, can be an example of, especially in military men that are not really brought up to feel a lot of emotion and stuff like that.

You have examples of some somatic therapists that feel that they just have everything stored in their jaw and sort of prevents them from feeling anything else. That's why there is something like somatic therapy that really focuses on where in your body something is. So it gives you an indication of how to address it. So by watching your biological changes, you can trace what the emotion is. So disgust and fear are probably very hardwired.

Those are not really hard to spot. But jealousy, for example, is less. So jealousy, of course, entered the stage later because you need a social system. You need a concept of self before you can really be jealous. I can imagine that if you're lower on the consciousness, totem pole, if you don't have that much of it, is a bird going to be jealous of another bird? Of course, I don't know.

We don't know what their experience are, but you can see that fear in a bird makes more sense because fear is so much associated with heart pumping and stuff like that versus jealousy. Just like shame and guilt, which are very interesting emotions that are problematic for me, especially shame. I doubt that fishes struggle with shame. I doubt that my dog struggles with shame. I doubt it. But guilt, maybe.

Maybe there's a little bit of guilt that they're capable of. But shame, I doubt it. I doubt it. What's the difference between guilt and shame, by the way? Guilt is that you feel bad about something you did that violated some boundary that you have or society has. And shame is you're ashamed about who you are. Not about what you did necessarily, but who you are. And you are afraid that if you get exposed for who you are, that you will be rejected by society.

Which is the reason that shame exists, because that allows you to fucking bullshit some things so that you don't get kicked out of your village, which is good for survival. But it's also like short-term fix or something like that. It's kind of like the bullshit way out, that you sometimes have to take, because life's not perfect, right? So I do think a little bit about these emotions that are related to what was useful for like sort of bare basic survival versus society survival.

And you got to feel them out in a different way. Generally, like these shame, guilt, jealousy, envy, they're like a little bit more intellectual in a way. But I've seen major improvement for people that started actually carrying around a printout of an emotion wheel. And you can Google for it. I'll leave it in the show notes just to see what they're really feeling and how to tell that.

And especially if you're stuck in some kind of like compulsive pattern, that seems to really be step one. Just recognizing the emotion. I have an episode from another YouTube channel that I really, really like. The title is Awareness Alone Can Be Curative. Or Awareness Alone Is Curative by Leo from actualized.org. I really recommend that. That was a major, a major thing for me to watch. Cool. So without knowing, you can't regulate it.

Without awareness, you can't. So I recommend you start there. So now we get to emotional responses. And in a way, we've been talking for how long now, and the changing of emotional responses, funnily enough, is actually pretty fucking simple. Once you have the emotion clear in your sights, and you can remain present, you can experience, you can feel it, the rest is sort of child's play. That's the funny thing.

The hard part is just like hanging, recognizing, not starting to do something else. I found that really funny while preparing this episode. Because we're kind of like at the end of it. It is going to be a two-parter, because I want to talk about three skills, and these are DBT skills. But I will give some personal examples on why they worked for me very well as well.

And then there's a bit more that's to come, but I want to do that in a separate episode. And that actually coincides, the second episode coincides a lot about building a meaningful life and doing things that makes you happy, because it turns out that has a lot to do with emotion regulation, but more about that later. We're focusing on the basics now. So what are the basics the moment that you want to regulate these emotions?

I mean, first of all, you have to become aware of them. That's what we've been talking about. Nothing of this works unless you train the ability to be aware and to sort of stop in a moment, to take that meta perspective. And that's hard. That's the hard part, I think. The moment that you have that, what you can do is check the facts. So check the facts is a skill there.

And it's described as check out whether your emotional reaction fits the facts of the situation. Changing your beliefs and assumptions to fit the facts can help you change your emotional reactions to situations. So I don't really like the premise of changing your emotions. And this is where it's sort of tricky and nested into itself, because the emotion that you have, it doesn't really help to be like, oh, this is a wrong emotion.

Oh, the emotion is the emotion. It's allowed to be there. But this is like that middle path thing again. You can want to change things about that, as long as you don't reject the current moment. It's like, I don't want to feel this. Well, you're feeling the fucking fear. Deal with it, right? And what can I do? Like, how can I manage that? Process that, right? So this is more of an art than a science, because how do you check the facts?

I mean, what are facts to begin with? Like, you can have a nice existential conversation about what actually is factual, but for the purposes of what we're talking about is like, let the factual aspect of what you are aware of, right? And those are then still your facts, your facts, because everyone looks at these things kind of different. But you can still, even in that situation, take a little bit of distance and look at the fact, okay, I'm feeling this right now.

I'm feeling this anxiety. Okay, what's the cause of that? What are the things that happened in me? Right? What are the facts that fit that? Like, for example, my boss told me that we need to have a presentation by Friday. And I might feel burdened by it. I feel like I have to do that. And I'm, like, really nervous about that. But if you just look at the facts, it might be like, okay, your boss said that he needs that presentation, but he didn't ask you.

He wasn't asked to you. It's just like he's aware that that needs to happen. So should I be feeling like, does that make sense? Is it justified for me to feel in that way? Other examples can be for anger, like someone expressing that, for example, the conversation you're having is boring to them. That can be jarring to hear, that can make you angry or insecure, but then generally that expresses itself through anger or isolation or something like that.

But then you can just like sit back and think about, okay, that's that statement that that person give. Just does it justify this emotion? Can it just not just be the thing? Okay, that's not what they find interesting. It doesn't mean that I'm like bad or wrong or something like that. It's not just something that doesn't quite resonate with them. And it does, for me, it doesn't say that they're bad, I'm good, or the other way around, right?

So it starts by this really identifying, of course, what the emotion is that you're feeling. It's as well, like, remember that model that we were talking about, the racetrack. What's the event that prompted the emotion? What's the thing that entered your awareness, the car that entered the track, that like, started up this entire thing? You need awareness for that. That can be hard, because often these things start hours before, especially as you're getting better at that.

What are my interpretations, thoughts, and assumptions about that event? Oh, my boss said he needs a presentation. Okay, that must mean that I would have to make that presentation, right? That's an assumption. She said that this topic is boring. That must mean that she thinks I'm boring. Oh, fuck. Am I assuming a threat? Yeah, and generally, that's the case. And what's the crisis, right? If you go through these steps, that you can ask yourself the question is, does my emotion or its intensity, and or its intensity, actually fit the facts that I'm aware of?

Right? Still your personal view on the facts. An intensity of duration of emotions are generally justified by how likely is it that the expected outcomes will occur, like your doom scenario. How great and or important are these outcomes? And how effective is the emotion in your life right now? Effectiveness being, does it make you effective to... Because emotions enable you to do things. Is this emotion helping you move in the direction that you want to be moving in?

Right? So, if it is very unlikely that the expected outcome, so if you're nervous about your company going bankrupt or something, something like that, okay, that's how likely is that? Are you just like egging yourself on, making yourself nervous? Oftentimes, it is like that. And some situations that we could really get hung up on, that's the second part, is like the outcomes don't really matter. Like, left or right, it's fine.

Like, you're at a random party and you're afraid that the people don't like you. So fucking why? Are you going to see these people again? Like, no, it doesn't matter. Like, an effectiveness of the emotion, I find that one really important, because that really, like, that emotion probably was effective for you at one point in your life. Otherwise, it wouldn't show up on the scene, right? But is it still?

And that can be a very good, like, sort of change agent, realizing, like, no, this is actually not effective. So check the facts allows you to go into two different branches, really. The check the facts is required to see, do I want to do A, opposite action, or B, do I want to go and problem solve? Right. Because it's possible. Let's start problem solving because I'm a guy.

Maybe you're a guy, maybe not. But people in general, we love problem solving. That's great. And partially is, unless we've actually verified that the thing is a problem, problem solving doesn't help. We're going to solve the wrong problem at this point. So when the facts themselves are the problem, solving the problem will reduce the frequency of the emotions. That's true. If I'm anxious about procrastinating, because I've not been going to work for three days or I've been late or something like that, there is a threat.

There is a crisis. My emotion is justified. Maybe it's a little too intense, but it's justified. And now I'm going to reduce my anxiety by actually creating a plan so that I can get to work on time, so that I stop, what's the word? Procrastinating. But there's often situations as well where that's not the case. I would love every emotion to be a reason for me to problem solve, because I fucking love problem solving.

I can do that all day long. Wonderful. But oftentimes, and this is where opposite action comes in, when your emotions do not fit the facts, when they're not justified, right? That means that your emotion is leading you into a direction that you actually don't want to go. But it's emotion. It's fucking strong. So you're going to do that unless you have a good way, like a different tool in your tool belt that you can pull out.

Opposite action is that, right? So when your emotions do not fit the fact, or when acting on your emotion will not be effective, and remember, you don't know that, but if you're just taking this moment to reflect, you're thinking like, no, this will not be effective. Acting opposite all the way can change, what it says can change your emotional reaction. I'm a little ambivalent about that, but it can change your behavior, and ultimately what you want to change your behavior, and your emotions will start adjusting to that.

I don't think that the goal is to change your emotions. I question if it's even possible, but what is possible is to change your behaviors, and that has a feedback loop with your emotions, especially if you see the effect of your actions, create self-esteem, etc. Stuff like that. So it's as simple as that. It's as simple as that. Once you have the skill set to be able to recognize the emotion that I'm feeling, trace back the breadcrumb trail of how that happened.

See how you interpret things, how you bring things to the scene, like what kind of thoughts, assumptions you have. And then see, okay, what am I imagining in my head? Is it a threat? Is it a crisis? And does it fit the facts? If you can do that, you can then decide, am I going to do opposite action? Am I going to not do what this emotion tells me?

Or am I going to problem solve? Just good old problem solving that we know and love, right? Just going through my notes, seeing if there's anything that I want to mention here more. Let's see. Yeah, there was an interesting thing. A couple of things that I want to mention about opposite action. What I found out handy is a couple of these examples. So an emotion has an action urge and an opposite action, right?

And then DBT makes also the distinction of acting opposite all the way, so really going against it, so you can do it like soft or hard. So let's go through a couple of examples. I think they're good. Fear. What's my action urge? Run away or avoid? What's my opposite action? Approach. Don't avoid. Anger. My action urge is attack. Opposite action is gently avoid. Be a little nice.

Sadness. I want to withdraw. I want to go away. I want to isolate. Opposite action is get active. Shame. Big one for me. Hiding. Avoid. Take care of your own needs. Opposite action is actually go out, seek a group of people that you can tell it to, who will accept you. Very, very important. Doesn't mean you tell the next stranger on the street, but it does mean you got to find your tribe, where you can express that.

So I found this quite helpful. Some of the opposite actions are more focused on doing it over and over and over again. So it's more like the repetition. And there's also the way where you do it all the way, which is really like sort of intense. Right. So the way opposite for fear, for example, is keep your eyes and ears open and focus on the fear of the event.

Like look at like straight into like its jaws. Look around slowly. Explore. So do everything. Like normally when you're afraid, you're like jittery and stuff like that. Now, the other thing, all the way. Take in information from the situation. Notice you're safe and do it with like sort of this predisposition that you are safe. Do not find threats. Find reasons that you're safe. Change your posture. Keep a confident voice tone.

Right. Keep your head, your eyes up, your shoulders back and relaxed. Assertive body postures, things like that. And change your body chemistry. Right. Base breathing, deep breathing, things like that. Because remember that a lot of these emotions coupled with your nervous system. So that means by changing the state of your nervous system, you change the emotion. So that's a great example. I'll do another one for disgust.

Or let's do one for shame. So opposite action for shame is make public your personal characteristics or your behavior with people that don't reject you. Right. Instead of isolating yourself. Repeat the behavior actually that sets off the shame over and over, without hiding the behavior from those that won't reject you. So that's like sort of programming, reprogramming that. And then all the way, opposite action, all the way, going all the way is just no apologizing, or trying to make up for a perceived transgression.

Taking all the information out of the situation, and again, changing your body posture. Looking proud instead of ashamed of the thing that you have. And there's many examples that you can think of, especially like sort of in Hollywood kind of like movies, where you transmute shame into actually a thing that you're proud of. And it's often the plot of a movie that, you know, someone has like a thing that they're ashamed of, can be like a body thing or something like that, and they're just like hiding it all the time.

And then the end of the movie, it's like flip the polar opposite. And that's actually the reason that they're great. Right. Note that that's a little bit different. Like I always mix up shame and guilt. Guilt is a little bit different, because guilt you do feel when you've actually did a transgression that you don't agree with, like you violated your own, your own standards of behavior. But anyways, let's get back on, back on track.

I like to talk about your environment. So we're bringing it in for a landing here. It can be also hard that if your environment doesn't grow with you, because others suck at self-regulation. And why would you go through all of this effort? What if your peers don't? If your family doesn't, if your dad doesn't, if your partner doesn't. But that's like allowing yourself to binge drink because your peers do it, which happens all the time.

So you can. You don't have to scoop to that level. It doesn't have to be fair. Yes, there is an added effort that comes with rising above. That's the gravity effect, the crabs in a bucket. And yes, people will hate, judge, and criticize you for it. Look at Mr. or Mrs. Uppity. And yes, they will push you to a place where you lose the capability of self-regulation.

This is the crabs in a bucket. Even if you're the crab that's like really fucking good at getting out of that bucket, you will get pulled down at one point. So key part of emotion regulation is not succeeding at it, sadly, or whatever. It's just how it is. And think as well of like a baby or spiritual guru from that matter. They can shift between a state of intense joy to utter misery in microseconds.

Right. That's mainly for a baby. A guru, I think of like contrary, you expect a guru to be like very like even keeled and stuff like that. But gurus, there's good stories about that. They can become so angry that the entire room shudders. Right. It's not that the guru is incapable of anger, but a few moments later, it's over. You're just like an emotional superconductor. Right. So what you're trying to do when you're regulating your emotions is guiding them into a direction that you find effective, that goes into your goals of life, who you want to be, and stuff like that, because there's nothing...

You don't have to regulate your emotions. You can be an angry fuck and get in bar fights. That's fine. You can be caught up in a compulsive, porn watching, and masturbation, and just waste your life. I mean, I'm being judgmental here, but maybe that's your love language, that you just want to do that, and that's the best life that you can imagine. Hey, that's fine. The question in these situations is just more, what do you really want to achieve?

And being open to not being able to do that all the time. This is the whole thing where I'm talking about your environment, and the fact that the guru can become very angry, but then it passes through you. So even if you don't regulate it at the first swing, you kind of catch it on the rebound, right? Because what often happens for me is that I get so upset that I acted like an ass in response to emotion, and hey, I just got like really defensive.

And then I just kind of like feel like I have to stick with that, because I'm caught in like the emotional, like secondary reaction to what I just did. So if you can't do it on step one, you can do it on the rebound still. So you don't have to be perfect. And the great thing about rebounds is like the ball bounces multiple times. You are going to have a lot of options to correct it.

You don't, it doesn't have to be in the exact moment. Right? So there's also grace and self-forgiveness. Like the baby has no ego of a much sense of the past and present, and the guru is enlightened. So there's, I wouldn't say that a baby has grace or self-forgiveness, it just doesn't really have a concept of how cause and effect works. But the guru does have sort of that same capacity as a baby has, but has grace and self-forgiveness.

Because ruminating on your failings is not effective. Self-reflecting is like taking forward action. This is another thing that in my personal examples, I have often not self-reflected. This is very much happened in my family as well. Like something would happen, and then no one would talk about it. Maybe there was some kind of material side thingy to it, you understand or have examples of these arguments that you might have in your life where ultimately, you're just talking about like the fucking like laundry that's not in the basket, and you think that at the end of the three-hour argument, that the takeaway is that you should put the laundry in the basket, and that's not the takeaway, generally.

The takeaway is much more on an emotional level. It's probably more about your partner being hurt, and you're going on about whether or not things belong in the hamper, or you make up rationalizations why you didn't put your workout clothes in there, because they were still wet, and blah, blah, blah, blah, whatever. It doesn't fucking matter. It's fucking ridiculous. It's the self-reflecting on that process. It's generally not about like the material thing that you really decide on.

So anyways, that ties into like more of your environment and how that can affect your growth and capabilities. So let's wrap up. So we looked at a lot of things. What emotions are, the definitions, some personal examples, knowing what your level of emotion regulation is, how you recognize that you might need this work. We went into recognizing emotions, what makes it hard to regulate emotions, biology, like skills, et cetera, et cetera.

We developed a model to describe these emotions so that we can like more reflect on and we can have a breadcrumb trail back with that awareness on where our emotion started. And we talked about changing the emotional responses and or the behaviors associated with that. Specific skills, checking the facts, and depending on what the facts tell us, opposite action or problem solving. Talked about how your environment might respond to that and how your environment influences that.

And like I said, I have an exciting next episode coming up on the second part of emotion regulation. This is the very practical ABC first aid skill set. And there is something more where part of emotion regulation is also making sure you have a really fertile ground and you're feeling really in a good solid place with yourself about yourself. So that you can handle whatever the universe throws at you.

Sounds maybe a little mysterious, but stay tuned for the next episode. This has been Vincent, and thank you very much for tuning in. I'll see you next time. Bye now.