STUCK ON THE EMOTIONAL ROLLERCOASTER? DBT can help you find your balance.

Imagine a huge wave crashing down on you… or being onboard a runaway rollercoaster with no way to slow the speed…, these are just two of the ways, clients might describe the experience of when ‘big feelings’ take over.

Sometimes, the big feelings they describe will have grown out of proportion to the situation that elicited them, taking that rollercoaster ride from a level 1 speed to level 5 in seconds, making it even harder to hold on or cope in the moment.

Understandably, when emotions have escalated to this point, feelings begin to cloud judgement and make it almost impossible to make good decisions or have productive conversations where we can reach positive outcomes with others.

This is where DBT skills come in – helping clients halt the rollercoaster and begin to learn how to regain control and manage their emotions more effectively. This process, known as emotional regulation, is one of the most common requests for help we get from clients.

DBT is a therapeutic approach we specialise in at Mindful Recovery Services that helps people manage those big emotions that can sometimes feel impossible to control. If emotional ups and downs are holding you back, or impacting negatively on the quality of your life, DBT can teach you practical skills to better understand and manage your feelings and learn how to create a sense of calm in your life. Here’s how.

What is Emotional Dysregulation?

Simply put, emotional dysregulation is when your emotions are all over the place and holding way too much importance over your life. Maybe it’s anger, or sadness, frustration or anxiety that are getting in the way of enjoying life, or maybe it’s a mix of many competing feelings. You might find it hard to calm yourself down after something has upset you, you may be easily angered by events or situations, or you could feel like you’re constantly ‘on edge’. Often, clients will talk to me about feeling an internal ‘hum’ that buzzes all day.

While emotions are a normal and oftentimes enjoyable part of life, when they are too intense or difficult to process or control, they can cause real problems. This is where DBT skills can really make a difference.

Why DBT Works

DBT is all about accepting things as they are but also working towards making positive change. This means we are perfectly okay as we are, but we also accept that we are a ‘work in progress’ moving towards the kind of self we want to be. We talk about the 4 pillars of DBT – Mindfulness, Distress Tolerance, Emotion Regulation and Interpersonal Effectiveness. These work together to help you understand your feelings, manage them better, and improve the relationships around you.

If you feel stuck in a cycle of emotional overwhelm, as many do, DBT’s practical skills can help you regain control and navigate the ups and downs with more stability. DBT goes that one step beyond traditional talk therapy and gives real actionable strategies for improvement.

DBT Skills to Help You Manage Those Big Feelings

So, after doing a thorough assessment to know clients and their challenges, what exactly do we teach them in a DBT session? Let’s break it down into some key skills that might offer to help manage the emotional dysregulation occurring.

Mindfulness: Learning How to be Present in the Moment

When we talk about mindfulness its not about learning how to meditate like a monk, it’s simply a conversation about awareness. We learn to slow down with some simple breathing techniques and to notice what’s going on in the moment – without judgement.

When emotions become intense, it’s easy to be swept away in the turmoil, but mindfulness as a skill, helps you pause, observe, and respond thoughtfully rather than react impulsively as so many clients complain they have the habit of doing.

Some mindfulness skills might be:

To Observe: Simply noticing without judgement what is happening around you in the external environment; and internally for you emotionally and physically without trying to change anything.

To Describe: Put your feelings into words. Saying to yourself, “I’m feeling frustrated”, “I’m sad right now”. The act of naming the emotion can help you feel more in control and for my clients who are deep thinkers, and who like to analyse, more sophisticated naming of emotions is even better.

Moving beyond saying you are simply sad, happy or angry to an understanding you might be nostalgic, disillusioned, fascinated, exasperated or awe inspired or one of many nuanced emotions, gives an understanding of the spectrum of feelings we can experience every day and what they mean.

To Participate: Engage in whatever you’re doing, fully present. This helps you stay grounded instead of letting emotions dictate your actions. It also gives you the opportunity to move into what psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, described as the ‘flow state’ where you are so engaged in an activity that time seems to pass easily without distraction.

Distress Tolerance: Coping without Escalating

When emotions are big, it's easy to get carried away and react in the moment without thinking. For many clients, this is a place of regret, where their actions have caused upset to themselves and those they love and care for. Acting without thinking can make the situation worse. Distress tolerance skills help you cope with the intensity of how you’re feeling in the moment without making impulsive decisions you might regret later.

Some of the distress tolerance tools we might explore include:

TIPP Skills

A quick way to cool your emotions using any of the following - Temperature, Intense Exercise, Paced Breathing, or Progressive Relaxation. To literally ‘cool off’, you might find it helpful to immerse your face in cold water; alternatively, if action works better for you, a run around the block might be the tool to shake off the distress.

Self-Soothe

Finding ways to use your senses to calm your nervous system. This might be listening to music, taking a warm bath or enjoying a calming scent. Again, it’s not a one size fits all. It’s about identifying what works for you and putting that in your tool bag for regular use.

Radical Acceptance

Although we sometimes wish things were different, here’s a skill that encourages you to accept things as they are without resistance. You don’t have to like the situation, simply accept it.

Emotion Regulation – Slowing the Emotional Rollercoaster

Emotion regulation skills can help you manage the intensity and frequency of those big feelings. With practice, you can learn how to slow the rollercoaster, control the speed and learn how to ride the feelings out.

You may even get off the ride at the end with a sense of elation or self-satisfaction as clients sometimes report. Knowing you can navigate those big feelings, control your impulses and come out the other side okay, is a big step forward in the process.

Some skills I might suggest helping you get there are:

Check the Facts:

Ask yourself whether you are letting your emotions get the better of you in any situation. Is this reaction you’re having based on fact, or are you allowing yourself to blow the situation out of proportion? Sometimes, in the heat of the moment this is hard to discern, but with practice you will gain an insight into your patterns.

Opposite Action:

Although it might feel counter-intuitive, doing the opposite of what your emotion is telling you can help shift your mood. For example, if you’re angry, try doing something peaceful and calming rather than acting out of aggression.

Accumulate Positive Experiences:

This is a favourite of mine, and one we can all practice daily. Do things that bring you joy, even the smallest of things, to help balance out negative emotions. Similarly, just notice the joy in life, the positive moments and the happiness you see around you to counter the negativity we all see daily in the media and the moments of frustration we each experience in our day.

Interpersonal Effectiveness: How to Navigate Your Relationships without the Drama

Big feelings can complicate relationships. Sometimes they make us act in ways that hurt others and sometimes they make us avoid having those useful but difficult conversations because we are too afraid of how we might react. DBT teaches you how to communicate clearly and assertively without getting too emotional and loosing your cool.

Here are some of the skills you might learn:

DEAR MAN: Here’s a framework for asking for what you need in a respectful and clear way, free of the need to feel anxious about going in unaided. The letters stand for Describe, Express, Assert, Reinforce, Mindful, Appear Confident, and Negotiate.

If relationships and negotiations are your weakness, we would work through this framework in your sessions to help you build confidence and a scaffold around upcoming difficult conversations.

GIVE: A helpful way to maintain healthy relationships. It means being Gentle, Interested, Validating and Easy going. For some clients, this is a complete turnaround on the need for conversations to be arguments.

FAST: A tool to help you stand up for yourself in a difficult conversation while maintaining your self-respect. It stands for Fair, Apologise (only when necessary), Stick to your Values, and being Truthful. Again, if this is a tool you need, we might work through this process and practice how this conversation would go in session.

A Final Word About these Tools to Counter “Big Feelings”

Any one of these tools can be effectively used to counter ‘Big Feelings’. Alone they are good, in conjunction with the others tools they are better, but most of all, like training for anything in life, they are more effective when you practice them regularly. In the same way you wouldn’t expect to be up and running a marathon without proper physical fitness training, you should expect to put in the practice to improve your emotional fitness, too.

Finding Your Emotional Balance with DBT

When you are experiencing big feelings and your emotions seem out of your control, it’s easy to feel like you won’t ever find peace. But the good news is, that DBT offers a set of skills you take away from your sessions and apply in real life. It takes you one step beyond the talk therapy and into positive action for change.

Client’s can describe it as the missing piece of therapy. For many, they have spent years talking about their issues, but not had the skills, tools and insights to make real, lasting change.

Remember, if you are experiencing big feelings, DBT is not about getting rid of your emotions, it’s about learning how to respond to them in a more productive and healthier way – and that’s a feeling we all can enjoy.

If you’re tired of riding the emotional rollercoaster, DBT might be the guide you need to bring more balance into your life. By learning and practicing these skills, you can find your feet again and move forward with confidence and calm:)

Author: Michelle Cuneo- Counsellor

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