Daniel Davis, LMFT

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What is Emotional Regulation?

January 26, 2016 By Daniel Davis, LMFT Leave a Comment

An important part of psychological well-being is healthy self-soothing. Being able to calm yourself down is important. When someone feels too much anger, he may yell, curse, or hit someone else. Acting out our emotions destructively is one consequence of poor emotional regulation. Another way of dealing with painful emotions is to try to numb ourselves with alcohol or other drugs. Many problems result from our inability to regulate our feelings well.

When we are born, we rely on our mother (or primary caregivers) to calm down. Our brain is designed to rely on interactions with others to find balance and adjust to surrounding circumstances. Early in life, infants need connections to caregivers in order to develop healthy brain function. The interactions between the child and parent enable the child to achieve balance or regulation within her own mind. Interactions with caregivers allow the child’s brain to develop the structures necessary to move from emotional regulation with a parent to more independent forms of emotional regulation.

When children who are infants, toddlers, and preschoolers experience healthy emotional regulation in their relationships with their mom, they become school children who are seen by peers and teachers as likable. These children also perform well in school, show good social skills, and act in ways that build their relationships with others. But children with poor emotion socialization have difficulty in peer relationships, have trouble in school, and are at risk for emotional problems such as anxiety and depression during their childhood. These effects persist into adulthood.

Children need environments, like home and school, where they can be emotionally expressive. Children need parents who express their emotions, but do not overwhelm their children. A mother’s emotions have a powerful influence on her child’s emotional development. Children benefit when mothers talk about their own emotions. When their children are emotional, mothers who avoid yelling and punishing and provide positive responses to their children, enable their children understand their emotions better. Children also need their emotions to be accepted. When children are raised in an environment where they learn to explore their own emotions, and they learn to make connections between their emotional experience and events they see. They are able to understand their emotions in various situations.

After they reach school age, children who assess and process emotional information will in turn respond more appropriately to others and have skills that promote their own emotion self-soothing. The more emotional intelligence that children have, the greater their empathy they have with peers. These children also behave in ways that promote relationships, and they are more popular. The children who can identify their emotions and who self-sooth them well are seen as more likable and more prosocial in relationships with their peers. These early emotional experiences are a foundation for emotional intelligence.
When we are feeling highly emotional, we are in a state of emotional imbalance. An event with the people or events around us can trigger an emotional reaction. These emotional reactions are made more likely by past experiences that created vulnerabilities within the individual. These vulnerabilities are embedded in our memory and directly influence our thoughts, feelings, and choices.

Our emotions and affect influence what we see and hear. Our perceptions can be changed by the affect being experienced by the perceiver. “An affect oriented clinician can help a client more accurately perceive his environments by teaching him (Affect Management Skills Training) AMST skills to regulate his affect,” writes Dr. John Omaha.

The development of affect regulation, enables the emergence of a strong sense of self. When one has poor sense of self, he will not be able to self-soothe well. An adult with a strong sense of self is able to manage disturbing events and respond quickly to stressful demands. She will be able to remain self-aware during a disturbing event. This optimally functioning adult will be flexible, highly skillful, and self-aware in the area of emotions and affect. She will genuinely and with authority increase positive emotions, like joy, and calm negative emotions, like shame. This has been called a self-reflective function. Self-soothing with be accomplished by making use of inner images of safety, soothing, validation, and affirmation. The optimally functioning adult will not use alcohol, other drugs, food, sex, relationship, or work to numb out emotions. They will manifest vitality and will pursue the goals she sets for herself with energy and persistence. Please watch this video and learn about healthy emotional regulation from Dr. John Omaha:

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Filed Under: Affect Management Skills Training (AMST), AMST (Affect Management Skills Training), Blog, Calming Oneself Tagged With: Affect Centered Therapy, Affect Management Skills Training, AMST, anxiety, brain function, depression, emotional intelligence, Emotional Regulation, emotionally, emotionally flexible, emotionally self-aware, healthy caregiver, highly skillful, infant, John Omaha, likable, mother, numb, parents, preschoolers, psychological, school children, school performance, self soothing, social skills, strong sense of self, toddlers, well-being

How Would the World Be Different if Everyone Around You Was Calm and Peaceful?

July 28, 2015 By Daniel Davis, LMFT Leave a Comment

“Anger is an emotion of enormous power. Surveys show that more people find it the hardest of all emotions to master,” writes Dr. Roger Walsh.

I see the impact of anger every day not only at work as a marriage and family counselor, but also driving on the roads, shopping in stores, and waiting in line at Starbucks for tea. On a warm July day, I sit in my white 1993 Lincoln Towne Car at a stop light with the driver’s window down. I woman stops next to me and begins to lecture me in a rageful voice. I have no idea about what she is talking. On rainy, cold December evening, walking around a grocery store, I see all the exhausted and sad faces. Some of us turn our anger in toward our self with criticism and self-punishment.

When we feel fear we sense danger nearby. When we feel anger someone is invading our space. Someone may break into our house. They may also interrupt us in the middle of our sentence. We feel they are intruding in our psychological territory. Most of the anger we experience personally or see in others is resentment. Everyone’s experience of anger is unique to them. Often, we feel hot in the face and tension in the muscles of our arms and hands.

Yet we also can see the hatred of discrimination because of race, grievances against unjust bureaucrats, grudges against ex-husbands, as well as murder and war. “When the cat gets angry, its tail swells up to almost twice its normal size, and the cat tries to look imposing. The biological purpose of expansion is to intimidate one’s apparent enemy,” writes David Hawkins. We often can spot anger when someone is inflated, meaning they are behaving as if they were a god. When we are struggling with our appropriate human limitations, anger is a problem for us. We try to force or manipulate people, things, or events.

There are also physical reasons that people experience unhealthy anger and rage. Seventy percent of people who assault others or damage property have problems with their physical brain, specifically the left temporal lobe. When we experience anger frequently, it affects the health of our body. When we live an angry lifestyle, the chemicals that anger releases into the body can lead to heart disease or cancer.

Yet not all anger is bad. Anger has its place in our lives. It is healthy to feel angry when we experience oppression as someone interferes with our ability to choose and express our thoughts. Anger can motivate us to leave a relationship where we are slapped or punched. Anger may also lead us to quit a job where we are asked to so things we believe are wrong, because it violates our cherishes values.

What do I do when I am angry? I cannot sleep because I am so angry. I cannot listen to my children, because I feel so angry. I react at my friends and family who love me, because I feel so angry. What will help me?

The place that I think it is best to begin is with myself. Before I complain to the person with who I am angry, I need to look inside at the source of my anger. There is the 2% rule. He may be 98% wrong, but what is my part. How am I responsible for my anger? The deeper I examine my responsibility, the more I may realize that I play a significant role. For example, I look at my boss who it demanding and critical. He always asks the impossible of me.

It is often beneficial to examine my own role in my anger, before I confront another about a grievance. When the anger is out of proportion with the event that triggers the anger, I have work to do. I examine my projections around anger. (Look for my blog and video on projection for a more detail explanation of what it is.)

I would generally prefer to be civil. Being in a whole brain state seems to enable me to be civil and emotionally congruent. Learning to get into a whole brain state is another key aspect of managing my anger and self-regulating my emotions generally. (Look for my blog and video on “EMDR Self-Help – The Butterfly Hug” for more information on how to achieve a Whole Brain State.) What a difference if the world were full of calm people. Image this! Please consider watching this video on anger and calming yourself down.

 

Filed Under: Anger Management, Blog Tagged With: anger, David Hawkins, inflation, Roger Walsh, self soothing

How do I calm down?

May 12, 2015 By Daniel Davis, LMFT Leave a Comment

Think about the most mature and likable person you know.  They are probably flexible, highly skillful, and self-aware in the area of emotions and relationships.  She or he will genuinely and with confidence increase happiness and excitement as well as calm shame and anger inside her or himself.

It is like a thermostat inside of us.  A system of balancing our inner and outer worlds.  Sometimes, this system works very well, increasing our joy, desire, excitement at the best times.  Our anger, sadness, and fear will decrease as needed when this emotional system works well.  When this emotional system is not functioning well, we have trouble with our relationships and getting things done, like homework or tasks at work.

In the book, “Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban,” JK Rowling writes: “Get too near a dementor and every good feeling, every happy memory will be sucked out of you. . .You’ll be left with nothing but the worst experiences of your life.” Experiencing a dementor seems to be like being depressed.

Harry Potter learns to concentrate, with all his might, on a single, very happy memory.  This frees Harry Potter from the haunting clutches of dementors.  Great writers and directors of movies, like J.K. Rowling, William Shakespeare, Steven Spielberg and George Lucas, know how to change the emotions of readers or moviegoers.

In order to have healthy, satisfying relationships and learn and work productively, we need to influence our emotions internally.  We can try to use external methods such as food, movies, alcohol, drugs, sex, computer games, or controlling others to calm our upsetting emotions, but they eventually fail to soothe us.

Yet we can also regulate our emotions internally by changing our breathing, physical exercise, self-talk, and focusing on an images of safety, affirmation, and validation.  With healthy emotional regulation, the goal is to be aware of your body and calm unpleasant emotions, not feel numb.  Unfortunately, a vast majority of men have difficulty even sensing the emotions in their bodies and describing them in words.

Emotional regulation is a skill we can learn with practice.  Over time, it begins to happen naturally, just like learning to tie your shoes.  Do you think about it when you tie your shoes?  Put simply, healthy emotional self-regulation is responding to challenges of a situation with a level emotion allowing mature actions.  Affect Centered Therapy teaches us the skills to calm our sadness or fear.

John Omaha, Ph.D., MFT, the creator of Affect Centered Therapy and author of the book, “Psychotherapeutic Interventions for Emotional Regulation: EMDR and Bilateral Stimulation for Affect Management,” is in private practice in Santa Rosa, California in the United States of America.  In this video, John demonstrates the important skill of down regulating emotion.

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Emotional Down Regulation
“Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban,” book
self soothing
How do I calm down?
Affect Centered Therapy

Filed Under: AMST (Affect Management Skills Training), Blog Tagged With: Affect Centered Therapy, Affect Management Skills Training, Bilateral Stimulation, Emotional Down Regulation, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, J.K. Rowlings, John Omaha, self soothing

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About Daniel Davis, LMFT

I create an environment where clients experience their unique significance, authentic empowerment, and profound acceptance and collaborate with clients to identify solutions to their current crises. For more information on how I can help you, contact me today by calling 408-249-0014 or emailing info@danieldavislmft.com. I look forward to speaking with you! Read More…

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Daniel Davis, M.A., LMFT
Counselor in Santa Clara, CA
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