All toxic behaviours stem from a lack of or inability to emotionally regulate.

Emotional regulation has become one of the latest catch cries. I believe it a skill set that we are in dire need of learning but what is it and how does it operate.

I grew up in an era of speaking your truth, currently we are asking, particularly men, to share their emotions. Without the skill set of emotional regulation this can too easily become the ground for the dumping of unprocessed emotions. Speaking our mind and the dumping of our unprocessed emotion rarely, if ever, lands well. If we were to view this as a pendulum, the withholding or repression of emotion at one end and the reactionary dumping of unprocessed emotion at the other. Emotionally regulated conversations would be the middle ground. Where we can hear and be heard, hold and be held and at the end of the day retain connection, that so often is lost.

SO, what is the skill set of emotional regulation, we may know it by name but what does that look like, what does it mean and how do we do it.

For many who have come through my therapy room, you may have heard me speak in terms of the banks of the river and the river. The banks being stillness, presence, safety, holding space, awareness. The river is all everything that shifts and changes and in this case, emotion. When we create an environment where both have space we are more able to navigate stress and stressful situations.

By learning to become our own river banks, we allow the space for emotional regulation. We bring the skill of awareness to our emotional state and become curious. Questions we might ask could be, what am I feeling and why does this have such a big effect on me. The ego wants to dump…it’s the others fault…you MADE me feel!…When we start to get curious, we turn our attention inward to where the source of our pain is…while we blame the other…we disempower ourselves from growth and evolution. 

Sure, we get hijacked in an instant by emotion and by default we might lash out in reaction from there. Like a hot potato we want to pass it to another, but now we have two people hurting. If we are able to slow things down and create a space within ourselves for the emotion we may begin to witness the movement. If we allow it to, we will notice that the intensity of the feeling subsides (it actually takes 90 seconds for emotion to pass trough the body). Our nervous system becomes more regulated, moving us from reaction to response. At which point the part of the brain that fosters connection and understanding is back online.

Learning to hold our own emotion, allowing space for it to be. Witnessing it within our bodies as an actual feeling, hot/cold, big/small, shape, temperature, colour….will allow the heat of it to subside. It is our story and the attachment we have to it that perpetuates it. The ego loves that, I’m right/ you’re wrong. When we can hold the deeper question, ‘What do we need to get along?’ A big part of which is learning the skill set of emotional regulation. Like any skill set takes time through practice to master. But without which we will continue to witness ourselves and other’s reacting in ways that are less than skillful, creating rupture rather than the connection we so desire. The middle point, neither suppressing and nor emotionally dumping resides in the application.