In my view, our primary tools in working to regulate our emotions after trauma are our self-talk, our inner focus, and our outer focus.
Your mileage may vary, but I think the emotional regulation tools and techniques taught by many types of therapy all trace back to different ways of using our self-talk, our internal focus, and our external focus.
(There are also techniques for using our breathing and our physical body to help regulate our emotions, but even these, I feel, eventually anchor back to shifting our internal and external focus.)
Perhaps the most important thing to remember when thinking about emotional regulation is that it is not easy, and no skill, tool, or philosophy that I know of MAKES it suddenly easy.
The goal of emotional regulation skills and tools in trauma recovery is to make it EASIER to turn the volume up or down on our emotional states— but we need to remember that post traumatic emotional dysregulation is rooted in the PHYSICAL harm that was done to our nervous system when we were traumatized.
When we try to change how we habitually respond to emotional states that feel overwhelming or dangerous, we are making PHYSICAL changes to our nervous system— namely, rerouting neural pathways.
The point is that this takes time. And sometimes the project of altering neural pathways can be actually, physically uncomfortable.
Another thing to remember when working on post trauma emotional regulation is, many of the skills and tools we try in the moment may not SEEM to make much of a difference right then.
If emotional regulation really were as simple as thinking about something specific or saying something specific or using our body in a specific way during periods of intense emotion, there wouldn’t be so many trauma survivors struggling with it.
What I found in my own trauma recovery was, I would learn an emotional regulation technique— then, when it came time to practice it, I would try it…and it would seem pretty weak sauce.
A LOT of things seem like weak sauce in the face of the hurricane that is post traumatic emotional dysregulation.
The reason I even mention this is because I know, very well, that many trauma survivors are sick and tired of trying sh*t that doesn’t work.
The flood of emotions and physical sensations that happens when we get triggered is no joke— and in that moment we’re NOT in the mood to try some weak sauce self-talk or visualization technique that might not seem to make much of a dent in what we’re experiencing right now.
The paradox of learning post traumatic emotional regulation is that we have to push through our irritation and despair at how stupid and ineffective some of these techniques seem if we ever want them to start to work.
The truth is, we learn to regulate our emotions in little, bite sized chunks.
Instead of experiencing an emotion at 100% intensity, we experience it at 99%. Then maybe at 98%.
Mind you: your trauma is going to try to tell you that a 1% downtick in how intense an emotion feels isn’t worth the hassle of learning and practicing emotional regulation techniques.
That post traumatic hopelessness is the single biggest enemy of learning effective post traumatic emotional regulation.
Don’t get me wrong: we arrive at that hopelessness honestly. Nobody reading this is resistant to trying emotional regulation skills and tools because they are “difficult,” or because thy are not “trying hard enough” to learn and practice emotional regulation.
It’s just absolutely the case that, if we really want to develop this skillset, we’re GOING to need to push through that hopelessness and cynicism, and accept that this is a 1% at a time project.
The last thing I’ll mention here about learning post traumatic emotional regulation is that there really aren’t any completely universal skills, tools, or philosophies that will work for every trauma survivor— because we all have different strengths, vulnerabilities, traumas, symptoms, resources, and memories.
The self-talk and focus skills that help ME manage MY emotions might strike YOU as ineffective at best— because MY strategies are tailored to my cognitive and emotional “cheat code.”
Emotional regulation is about finding YOUR unique cognitive and emotional “cheat code.”
Post traumatic emotional dysregulation is a bitch. It is overwhelmingly the most common and most life disrupting symptom for the VAST majority of my patients.
But, with creativity, patience, and practice— it IS a solvable problem.
One day at a time.
Use Your Damn Skills 