When managing or controlling your feeling seems impossible…
Individuals with emotional vulnerabilities but without skills to manage their emotions find it extremely difficult to divert their attention from emotional triggers.
Emotion dysregulation is a term that describes a pattern of behavioral and emotional difficulties in managing and controlling emotional responses within the typically accepted range of emotional reactions.
Emotion dysregulation is a term that describes a pattern of behavioral and emotional difficulties in managing and controlling emotional responses within the typically accepted range of emotional reactions.
Individuals with emotional vulnerabilities, including high sensitivity and reactivity to emotional cues, and those who do not have the skills to manage their emotions often find it extremely difficult to divert their attention from emotional triggers. Extremely negative/distorted thoughts and failure to process internal or external information often become a problem for emotionally dysregulated people, making it difficult to achieve their goals and leaving them to be in a state of dissociation and act on their impulsive or self-destructive urges.
It is difficult to maintain and develop a sense of self when individuals are unable to control their emotional state. A sense of self is developed by observing oneself and other people’s reactions to one’s behavior. An ability to regulate emotions and predict coordinating actions plays a significant role in developing a sense of self.
For individuals to maintain healthy interpersonal relationships it is important to develop abilities to regulate emotions and tolerate emotional distress. Without the abilities, it is difficult to build effective interpersonal relationships; individuals with severe emotion dysregulation issues were often unable to control impulsive behavior relating to strong positive and negative affect, leading to difficulty with affective communication.
The following are major symptoms of emotional dysregulation:
– Emotional lability often leads to unwanted mistakes
– Difficulties regulating anger
– Isolating oneself from others due to difficulties maintaining social relationships
– Tendency to act on behavioral urges
– Feelings of depression and hopelessness
– Suicidal thoughts and self-harming behaviors
– Binge eating or fasting
– Frequent indirect self-destructive behaviors
– Difficulties maintaining focus when emotionally stimulated
Such emotional difficulties are the main symptoms of borderline personality disorder. Emotionally sensitive people who have experienced an invalidating environment are prone to developing symptoms such as expressing extreme emotional behaviors. Dialectical Behavior Therapy can be effective in reducing such symptoms.
Please contact us if you are currently experiencing any of the symptoms above.
