Overcoming Overwhelm and Emotional Distress: Finding More Ease in Everyday Life
Many people enter therapy knowing there is trauma or deeper wounding that needs to be resolved, and can become frustrated when it seems like they're never able to get past their immediate overwhelm in order to address the underlying issues. One of the biggest factors in a person's ability to process trauma is being able to stay present to intense emotions - which if I'm being honest seems like the worst possible idea to most people. I notice the desire to just stop feeling things so deeply, a sense of anger judgement at themselves for being so overwhelmed or so emotional. Often, the distress is so bad that folks just want something to make it better fast and don't have the patience or the hope that the approach being suggested will really help. But the hard truth is that good mental health isn't measured by a lack of emotions. A well regulated nervous system is measured by one's ability to weather the ups and downs of emotion without need to avoid, numb, or fix. This is a powerful skill that is developed through time and practice. There is no insight, medication, or change of scenery that can produce instant results.
The good news is that there are ways to develop greater capacity for overcoming overwhelm and emotional distress:
When we practice mindfulness we develop the ability to be present to our circumstances without judgment and can observe them more objectively. It allows you to notice racing thoughts, body sensations, and emotions without getting swept away by them. The more you practice mindfulness, the more natural it becomes and the easier it becomes to remain objective when emotions arise.
When emotions spike, there are specific skills we can use to support our ability to ride them out. I know, I know...this is a tough selling point. The emotional intensity can be a lot! Most people don't want to tolerate it - they want it to stop. But that's not how emotions work. When we aren't in the practice of attuning to them, they often have to get really loud for us to notice them and at that point we are powerless to restrain them. The only thing we can do is try to endure them without doing something we’ll regret. DBT skills, are especially intended to help you tolerate these moments of high intensity. When we learn to work with our emotions more effectively, we can start to notice them at a lower volume and learn to make adjustments that honor what they need.
Sometimes making adjustments to honor our emotions involves asking for things we need or setting boundaries, which often comes with their own set of emotions. Developing greater interpersonal skills goes hand in hand with trauma processing. Often the beliefs we’ve internalized through painful situations makes it harder to relate to others effectively because there are wounded parts that don’t believe we deserve better or don’t feel safe rocking the boat. But often when we do assert ourselves, we find a greater sense of agency and the ability to move out of spaces that don’t work for us.
Together, mindfulness, distress tolerance, emotional regulation, and interpersonal effectiveness create the pillars of Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT). Tayla Kelley (AMFT #148248) is offering an online drop-in class called Overcoming Overwhelm, to help support folks in developing these very skills. The class isn’t a substitute for therapy, but it can help create more stability so that you can begin working with the deeper issues.
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