On Emotional Management

I would like to write frankly about emotional management. Right now, I encourage you to think of a time in relationship – whether that was with friend, family, or partner – when you either:

1.       Totally lost your shit, or

2.       Shut down completely.

Let’s take a look and see what happened. What were the events leading up to this blow up / shut down? What was said? What was the subtext? Now the important question – how could things have looked differently if you were able to keep from getting to this place of blowing your lid?

There’s a lot we can discuss. People have written books on this subject. I won’t do that here. Rather it’s my hope to explore what I view to be the most important elements of emotional management.

Firstly, imagine a cup. This is your emotional capacity cup. Everyone has one. For some people it is the size of a thimble. For others, it is the size of a gallon jug. It doesn’t matter where you fall on this spectrum – once your cup is overflowing, you have lost your ability to manage your emotions. A simple way to remember this is:

As emotions go up, your ability to think clearly goes down.

Remember that time you blew up at your partner? Do you remember what you said? Probably not. Your mind and body were flooded with emotions, clouding your ability to be clear and rational.

For folks with the thimble-sized emotional capacity, well, it takes less to bring their cup to overflowing. For those lucky few with the gallon jugs it takes quite a bit more. Regardless, once the gallon jug is maxed out, that person has lost the ability to manage their emotions.

Let’s talk science for a minute. Here’s what is happening in your brain with regards to your emotions. Your prefrontal cortex is in the front of your brain, and that’s where the ability to regulate your emotions live. As your cup overflows you drop into fight-flight-freeze mode, and your prefrontal cortex goes offline. Your amygdala (also known as the hindbrain or reptilian brain) goes online and you are responding in survival mode. For some people that looks like totally losing your shit. For others it’s shutting down. There are other responses as well, but these are the two I see most often. (For those of you wondering where ‘Throwing up your hands and slamming the door on the conversation’ fits, I lump that in with shutting down.) *An interesting side note - we often find that your primary response to an overflowing cup mirrors the behaviors that you witnessed as a child when your parents’ cups were overflowing.

Whether you are blowing up or shutting down, this is a survival response, and it quite effective. Screaming is an efficient way to get your needs met. However, it is an ineffective way to be in relationship. Often the guilt we feel after acting in our hindbrain is because we have violated our values in relationship.

Here is something else to know about the level in your cup: It is constantly fluctuating. It rises when we are stuck in traffic, it lowers when we eat a good meal. It spikes when the dog pees in the house, it bottoms out when we practice five minutes of breathing. Remember that time when you had a stressful day at work and when you got home your partner said something that most nights would maybe annoy you, but that night you lost it? The level in your cup was likely near max capacity and that one comment was enough to send you over the edge. It happens to all of us.

But there is good news. It is possible to not only learn to recognize when the level in your cup is high, but it is also possible to increase the size of your cup. The tool I turn to is mindfulness. Research is clear – a 30 minute a day mindfulness practice for 8 weeks is enough to change your brain scan on a functional MRI. Even better? It doesn’t have to be a 30-minute chunk of your day. You don’t need to be levitating from your bolster in full lotus to enjoy the neurological benefits of mindfulness. 30 minutes spread throughout your day – 5 in the morning, 10 at lunch, 15 at night – is enough to rewire your brain. As Dr. Mark Schwarze said in our podcast episode on the intersection between mindfulness & addiction. “You are thickening your prefrontal cortex and shrinking your amydgala.” Aka, you’re growing the size of your cup. And what you’re also doing is coming into relationship with your body.

It was bonkers for me when I realized that my body is constantly giving me emotional cues. That tightness in my chest? This shallow breath? Anxiety. That lump in my throat? Sadness. The deep nausea beneath my breastbones? Shame. Your body tells you how you are feeling. *Please note that tuning into your body like this can be challenging and may require structured support from a clinician, especially for those with a history of trauma.

However, for those navigating tense moments in relationship, recognizing where you are holding tension can give you a good idea of the current level in your emotional capacity cup. Tuning in may be all you need to slow things down enough so that you don’t boil over and let your hindbrain go haywire.

Here are my final thoughts, and they are practical. Breathwork is an amazing tool for lowering the level in your cup. Pausing to a take a breath, especially a breath where your exhale is longer than your inhale, sends signals to your brain that you are in a safe place. It keeps your prefrontal cortex online that much longer. There are several different ways to practice breathing. I am a big fan of the 3-fold breath. After exhaling completely, breathe into your low belly. Pause. Breathe into your middle ribs. Pause. Breathe into your upper chest, pause. Exhale completely with a long, loud sigh. Repeat three times. Try this short audio out for a guided 3-fold breath.

If you’d like to know more about emotional management, or to ask about my clinical focus on this subject, please reach out to me at reese@livewildcollective.com. I look forward to hearing from you.