Common signs of emotional dysregulation

  • Feeling overwhelmed by strong emotions

  • A sense of detachment or numbness or struggling to connect with present feelings or bodily sensations

  • Suppressing emotions by avoidance, rationalization, or distraction (social media, busyness, caretaking others)

  • Trouble sleeping, changes in appetite, muscle tension, headaches, stomach pain or GI concerns

  • Becoming self-critical when you have intense emotions, judging yourself as being “weak”, “irrational”, or “stupid”

  • Difficulty being emotionally vulnerable with others or being available for them

  • Stress or emotional eating

  • Relying on friends, partners, and family to calm you down or chronic reassurance seeking

  • You notice your emotions often spiral beyond the original moment and into something else altogether

  • Not being able to clearly recognize or label what you’re feeling

  • Self medicating your emotions through substance use or over-reliance on medications, such as benzodiazepines (e.g., Xanax)

  • Coping through behaviors you later regret after your feelings pass

Emotion dysregulation is like having a compass you don’t know how to read

Whether or not we identify as feelers, all humans are capable of strong emotions - even if we don’t know what to do with them. Emotions provide valuable information about our experiences and reactions to the world around us - they enrich our lives with color, depth, and complexity. However, emotions can also be painful and confusing. Especially if you’ve been actively discouraged from experiencing your emotions - they can feel like a betrayal when they come up. Every single emotion we are capable of has an important function and purpose in our lives - even the uncomfortable ones we push or rationalize away. It would be like eliminating your ability to see the color yellow in the world. Sure, you could try and do without, but the absence would be felt and your experience of the world would be duller without it. In truth, emotions serve as an internal compass we all have that’s meant to help us navigate life. But we need to know how to read our compasses and understand what the different directions mean. And when there’s a magnet nearby.

There may be many reasons that you struggle with managing your emotions and we want everyone to know this is incredibly common. You may have had little modeling of the full range of emotions or learned that only certain feelings were socially acceptable. Perhaps you’ve never been told that your feelings matter and are important to listen to. Or you were explicitly told that no one cares how you feel. You may have grown up in a family weighed down by a lot of anger or sadness which deeply affected you - and now you try and avoid being too angry or too sad so as not to burden anyone. Or you focus more on caring for other people’s feelings because that’s what was expected or as a way to dodge your own. Many people never learn what their emotions mean or are supported in managing their own - yet are expected to become emotionally mature adults. Experiencing trauma can also complicate what it means to trust your emotions when some of your feelings may be a result of an unprocessed past traumatic experience versus a present day reaction. Being “emotional” also has negative gendered, cultural messaging that is often not so subtle code for “weak”, “irrational”, “crazy”, or “too much”. Judging what you feel doesn’t help you regulate emotions, although many of us spend a lot of time doing so. It’s no surprise that many of us struggle with emotion regulation.

“Discovering how to listen to and value all of your emotions can be a transformative experience ”

A multicultural note: emotional expression is cultural and identity-specific

It’s important to note that emotional regulation isn’t the same thing as emotional expression. Emotional regulation is learning to identify, channel and cope with your feelings in a way that promotes wellbeing. Regulation is about the effective and healthy management of your feelings - which may mean doing things that help you release or organize your emotions (like exercising or journaling) - whereas emotional expression is about demonstrating them visibly. Showing your emotions is a personal choice, often determined by who you are, your context, and your cultural values. There is high cultural variance about the who, what, when, where, and how you express your feelings - and many ways of doing so are perfectly healthy. When you’re learning to manage your emotions, it’s helpful to pause and reflect on what cultural values or aspects of your identity influence how you express your feelings.

How can therapy for emotion regulation help me?

Therapy for emotional regulation often starts with a lot of education - so you can demystify what emotions are, what they’re for, and what they may feel like for you. For some, emotions come with bodily sensations or certain behaviors - for others they don’t. While there’s no single way an emotion is supposed to feel, it is vital that you are able to recognize and differentiate between your own emotions as they manifest for you. You might significantly increase your self-awareness and comfort level with your emotions, as well as learn evidence-based coping strategies for when your emotions become overpowering, unhelpful, or out of control. Discovering how to listen to and value all of your emotions can be a transformative experience - and usually results in an increased confidence, self-compassion, mindfulness, openness to vulnerability, and empathy for others. It can also be useful to understand what may be getting in the way of adaptive emotional regulation - sometimes the things that we try actually backfire or make us feel worse.

Having the consistent, supportive presence of a therapist in the midst of strong emotions shows you that you don’t have to fear them and you can discover healthy ways of coping instead of avoiding. Therapy for emotion regulation is often hands on and practical. Your therapist may model different exercises or techniques and invite you to try them in session and on your own. Therapy can also help you unlearn inaccurate or self-critical views you have about feelings so you can develop a healthier relationship with your inner world. You can activate curiosity and a spirit of learning about your feelings rather than a desire to control and master your emotions. Some emotions are incredibly difficult to tolerate or understand on your own. A therapist can be there for you and help sort what you’re feeling. Together you can decide what to do next.

Finding an emotion regulation therapist in NYC - we’d love to help

Our emotions are meant to serve as well in life and provide us a sense of direction - if we know how to engage with them. Our team of psychologists at Manhattan Therapy Collective are trained in a number of therapy approaches that are useful in increasing emotion regulation, including Dialectical Behavioral Therapy, Emotion Regulation Therapy, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, and mindfulness interventions. We encourage you to reach out for support - we’d love to connect with you and help you cultivate a healthy relationship with your emotions. Emotion dysregulation can mean a life of ongoing ups and downs, loneliness, poor instincts, self-doubt, and a deep mistrust of the very internal compass that’s meant to help you move forward. In therapy, you can discover what it means to feel deeply and live fully knowing you will be okay.

Common questions about therapy for emotional regulation

 

  • Absolutely not. Therapy is not an emotions boot camp. Our therapists will always work with you to set your own goals when it comes to how you’d like to grow or change managing your emotions. You may want to work on expressing or regulating your anger appropriately, or allowing yourself to feel sad sometimes instead of immediately checking out. You may want to focus on self-soothing strategies or experimenting with different outlets to see what works for you. We will always focus on what you’re interested in and respect your pace. We also understand that everyone uses their therapy sessions differently - some may use their session as a place to emotionally release, while others use it as a place to learn and discuss how best to grow.

  • This is a really common concern that we hear about all the time. It’s possible that being honest about what you’re feeling may mean feeling pretty uncomfortable for a period of time. It may feel like opening a door that you’ve held shut for a long time or like starting physical therapy where everything hurts initially. The truth is that unprocessed and built up emotions won’t dissipate all at once, but we do know that all emotions do in fact lessen when brought to light and addressed. In fact, emotional avoidance is what maintains the intensity of your feelings. In this case, it’s important that you and your therapist come up with a way to balance experiencing your feelings with increasing confidence in coping strategies.

  • We love this question and we recognize that it may be complicated to have your therapy session scheduled in the middle of the day or knowing you have to shift gears immediately afterwards. If this is a concern for you - we highly encourage you to bring it up to your therapist so you can plan together how to end sessions in a way you’re comfortable with. This may mean always wrapping things up 5 minutes earlier so you have time to do a deep breathing exercise or favorite meditation, or it may mean that you end the session intentionally discussing a lighter topic or that day’s plan for self-care.