Emotional Regulation
Overview: This week, facilitators will build off the curriculum covered during Weeks 1 & 2 and explore the DBT topic of Emotional Regulation and it's impact on member's behavior and decision making in emotionally stressful situations. Participants will be invited to share how it feels in their body when they are calm and how it feels in their body when they are feeling fear or stress due to emotional discomfort. Discussion will address:
The importance of being able to identify emotions.
The importance of understanding how emotions impact our mental health, decision making and behaviors.
The importance of being able to manage emotions effectively.
The importance of cultivating self-acceptance of the wide-variety of human emotions we all experience.
The importance of staying in the present moment, naming our emotions and letting them go.
Following Schiller's Relational Model (Schiller, 2007), the group may likely have developed into the 3rd stage of mutuality and interpersonal empathy.
Week 3:
Check-In - 25 minutes
Meditation - 5 minutes
Diary-Journal review - 20 minutes
Introduce Emotional Regulation Skill - 20 minutes
Group Activity - 30 minutes
Take-away/closing - 20 minutes
Description: This session is all about exploring and identifying emotions that arise due to feeling anxiety, with the goal being to keep emotions from negatively influencing behavior and decision making. Emotional dysregulation (numbing, acting out, distracting) can occur when someone wants to avoid feeling an emotion e.g., anxious, sad or fear (Wagnus, Rathus & Miller, 2006). To aid in re-regulation of emotions, this session will explore the power of practicing acceptance of feeling emotions and discomfort in situations, with the overarching goal to learn that it is perfectly OK to feel anxious, upset, angry or discomfort, without losing oneself. Guidance on how to identify and feel emotions wholeheartedly, without engaging in avoidant behavior, will be explored.
Purpose: The purpose of this session is to help group members to get to know how they experience emotions and how emotions can trigger and motivate healthy and unhealthy behaviors. The phase of adolescence (ages 10-19) can be a particularly emotionally challenging time. Emotional regulation problems have shown prominence in Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD), disordered eating, depression and anxiety among adolescents, with a deep concern for its connection to suicidal attempts and ideation (Gill et al, 2018). As such, adolescents can struggle in being able to manage their emotions effectively. This session is an opportunity to address the common/human challenges we all can face in being able to manage emotions, and dispel socially constructed beliefs that we are always supposed to feel happy and avoid, at all costs, feelings of emotional discomfort.
Step by Step Guide for Facilitating Week 3:
Step 1: Check-in: ( 25 minutes)
Example Check-in Prompt: HAPPY to see everyone this week! Thank you for your continued commitment in showing up for yourself and the group! Today's Check-in: Please share an emotional experience that may have happened this past week, identify any emotions that surfaced (if possible) and how you handled the situation.
Step 2: Meditation: (5 minutes)
Link to Meditation Sea Waves 5 Minute Meditation (5 minute meditation, n.d.):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5nI8EyKMo2E
Step 3: Diary/Journal Review: (20 minutes)
This portion of the session is dedicated to diary and journal review. This review allows members to share personal experiences and reflect on the skills they have learned since Week 1. Members are asked to share with the group 1 event, the emotions that surfaced and what skills (they used or didn't use) in the moment. Members are also encouraged to offer mutual aid (Cohen & Graybeal, 2007) feedback, support and praise to members for their efforts.
Step 4: Introduce Emotional Regulation Skill: The Power of Letting Go and Riding the Wave. ( 20 minutes)
The skill centers on the power of letting emotions go. Similar to the rise and fall of oceans waves crashing against the shore, emotions can be out of our control sometimes. However, the skill is found in practicing the ability to allow the emotion to come, rise and fall and allow them to pass (Zastrow & Hessenauer, 2019). The center of this discussion should focus on the power and resilience every member has, within themselves, to survive emotions, no matter how uncomfortable the emotion may feel. The critical reminder being that all emotions eventually move through us, if we name the emotion, are patient and practice self-compassion that we being human means experiencing all emotions.
Step 5: Group Activity: (30 min)
Building off the session theme of waves crashing, this activity guides members in letting go of negative and distressing emotions. One of the tips for learning to move through painful emotions is to simply accept that the emotion is happening and be witness to the feeling.
Ask members to close their eyes and recall a difficult emotional experience.
Invite members to name the emotion out loud.
Next, ask members to observe the emotion, accept it and gently try to untether from the emotion itself.
Next, ask members if they can try and allow the emotion to rise and fall within them, just like waves rising and crashing against the shoreline. (Note to facilitator: It could be helpful to play the sound of waves crashing (link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WHPEKLQID4U) during this portion of the exercise.
Remind members that they are not the emotions they are experiencing. They are simply feeling the emotions, but they have every ability to let the emotions rise and fall.
The goal of this exercise is for members to witness and experience difficult emotions, allow them to rise and fall and then let them go to return to a more calm and peaceful emotional state of well-being.
Members can try to learn to welcome all emotions that arise throughout their days. To acknowledge that emotions are reminders that we are indeed alive and human. The gift of life is to experience all of it, including the wide range of emotions that impact the human experience. To practice Acceptance, Patience and Trust that every and all emotions will come and go, if we allow them to with ease.
Reference: This activity can be found on the following website (Ackerman, Feb 5, 2018): https://positivepsychology.com/emotion-regulation-worksheets-strategies-dbt-skills/#worksheets-emotion-regulation
Step 6: Take-away and closing: (20 minutes)
In closing the session, members are encouraged to share their take-aways from the activity. Some questions to consider asking:
Was the activity helpful in being able to fully feel, observe and allow emotions to rise, fall and then be let go?
How did it feel to just be with the present emotion?
Were the sound of waves crashing helpful or distracting in being able to practice the activity?
How is everyone feeling after the activity?
Any other thoughts or observations.
Always thank the members again for showing up, sharing of themselves, participating, offering any feedback and simply being themselves. Underscoring that each members bring value to the group and what has been shared this week, remains in the container of the group and shall not be shared with anyone outside of the group.
Closing Quote to share: "To live in this world you must be able to do 3 things, to love what is mortal; to hold it against your bones knowing your own life depends on it, and, when the time comes to let it go, to let it go (Oliver, 1983).
HANDOUT: Emotional Regulation and Radical Acceptance Worksheet: https://positive.b-cdn.net/wp-content/uploads/Radical-Acceptance-Worksheet.pdf
Goal: The goal this week is for members to get comfortable knowing that the human experience is about feeling all of our emotions without judgement or fear and to learn that they can learn skills to help accept and name their emotional state, develop nonjudgemental associations with unwanted emotions and build their capacity to tolerate emotional discomfort until it passes, through self-compassion and understanding (Zastrow & Hessenauer, 2019).