22. Firm foundations after separation: the importance of emotion regulation

Speaker 1: 0:00

Hello and welcome. Thank you for joining me on another episode of the post separation abuse podcast, a podcast where I don't just talk about post separation abuse, but rather I get down into the nitty gritty of all things separation, divorce and co-parenting, particularly when your current or former partner has controlling behaviors, high conflict personality traits and is also perhaps abusive in a variety of other ways. The podcast episode earlier this week was about radical acceptance and the way in which the radical acceptance of our situation, of our reality, can help us to prevent pain and distress from becoming long term suffering. Radical acceptance helps us to prevent those unavoidable thoughts, emotions and sensations from becoming suffering, the suffering that can occur when we're consistently pushing back and refusing to accept and acknowledge what is. And again, just to recap on the earlier episode this week, accepting our reality does not mean that we're okay with it. It doesn't mean that we like it, but it means that we are acknowledging that this is what is and that there are a number of elements of our situation that we do not have power and control over. If you haven't listened to that episode yet, I highly recommend it. Today's episode is about emotion regulation.

Speaker 1: 1:50

Emotions are a normal part of our everyday lives. All of us experience emotions feelings that we tend to categorize as positive or negative throughout every day. Sometimes, the experience of feeling these emotions can be overwhelming. Sometimes we can feel out of control before someone behaves in a way that could be viewed as harmful, unhelpful or unhealthy, such as hurting themselves or someone else physically or emotionally, they've usually experienced one or more very strong emotions. These can include feelings of guilt, sadness, frustration or anger. You get the idea. Feeling overwhelmed on an emotional level can lead to a deep need or desire to do something that will stop or alleviate the intensity of that emotion. This can be more likely to happen when we actively resist feeling the emotion and simply want it to go away. This is where emotion regulation also links in with radical acceptance of a situation, so we can be pushing back on the reality of our situation, of what is, and we can also be pushing back on what it is that we're feeling, and even thinking about our situation when we simply don't like what our reality is and when we don't like what it is that we're thinking and feeling as a result of what the situation is that we're dealing with.

Speaker 1: 3:29

Emotion regulation is a term that's widely used to describe our ability to effectively manage and respond appropriately to an emotional experience. Now, most of us use a range of different emotion regulation strategies, without even being consciously aware of it, in order to cope with difficult or stressful situations throughout our day. Some strategies are healthy and helpful, and some really aren't. Strategies that are healthy and helpful are strategies that don't typically cause anyone harm. They don't usually lead to making a situation worse. Healthy coping strategies help us to diffuse strong emotions and can often allow for a deeper understanding of ourselves, including what might have led to us feeling overwhelmingly emotional in the first place. Healthy emotion regulation often involves allowing the emotion to be there and allowing ourselves to feel it Again. This is linked in with one or more of the steps of practicing radical acceptance.

Speaker 1: 4:44

Unhealthy and unhelpful strategies are any strategies that have the potential to leave lasting physical or emotional damage on ourselves or others. So, whether we're talking about physical scars or chronic injuries from self-harm, from harming somebody else physically, or from damaging someone else and damaging a relationship, unhealthy and unhelpful strategies are also any strategies that result in unexpected damage to ourselves or other people, and again it's whether we're talking about physical harm or emotional harm, emotional wounds are things that we should never underestimate. Unhealthy and unhelpful strategies are also strategies that lead us to avoid dealing with situations by way of dulling or numbing our emotions. So, for example, the use of drugs or alcohol are common here, along with things like self-harm, gambling, shopping, social media use and gaming. All of those things can be a tool used to disconnect emotionally and to avoid feeling emotions that we don't like, that feel uncomfortable. The link between all of the unhealthy strategies is a desire to push the emotion away and a refusal to acknowledge it or to feel it.

Speaker 1: 6:16

Being able to regulate our emotions is really good in theory, but it's important to also reflect honestly about whether your go-to emotion regulation strategies are helping you or potentially harming you. For example, do you regularly allow your feelings to exist? Do you spend time actually feeling them, or do you try to disconnect from them as soon as possible? Do you try to disconnect from anything that feels uncomfortable? Now let's talk about some examples of healthy and helpful emotion regulation strategies Talking about the situation, talking about your thoughts and your emotions with a trusted friend, with a separation and divorce coach, with a therapist or a phone cancelling service, for example. That could be 1800RESPECT, or LIFELINE, for example. That's an example of a healthy and helpful emotion regulation strategy when you're feeling overwhelmed, and that's a situation where a lot of my clients will reach out to me, either via direct message or email, followed up also with booking in a one-on-one private coaching call with me to discuss what it is that they're feeling and some strategies, and also in the group coaching calls that I host on a weekly basis with my clients. Sharing what it is that you're feeling and how it's impacting you, whether to one trusted person or to a small group of people who understand what it is that you're navigating, can be a very healthy and helpful way to manage emotions that don't feel great.

Speaker 1: 7:57

Writing in a journal and reflecting on when you have felt or noticed the emotion and what it felt like, just letting that emotion be there that can also be very healthy and helpful. You might like to also get out some coloured pencils or textures with journaling and give the emotion a colour, a shape, perhaps also a texture, maybe visualise the emotion, consider drawing a portrait of the emotion. All of those things are possible with journaling, and journaling is something that a number of my clients really enjoy doing. They like exploring their emotions and they like using that journaling method to help them to process those emotions when they come up. Taking time to learn about and recognise your inner self-talk and negative thought patterns is also a healthy and helpful strategy.

Speaker 1: 8:49

When we take the time to learn about and recognise how we talk to our self, whether we've got persistent negative thought patterns or persistent negative self-talk, or maybe our brain has a habit of telling us made-up stories of doom and gloom, of making up what's going to happen in the future, when really the reality is that we don't know. Sometimes the source of our uncomfortable emotions is actually not based on anything factual. It's based on our brain telling us a story about how terrible something's going to be, when the reality is that we have no idea whether whatever that terrible thing is is really going to happen or not. And when you take the time to notice those things, you can sometimes sense a bit of a pattern with what's going on with your thoughts. That can help you then, in the moment, have the opportunity to challenge those negative thoughts or negative, unhelpful stories and to help you to change the negative thought patterns and the stories in the moment when you become aware of that negative spiral and when you become aware of the fact that those negative thoughts and negative stories often then lead to a strong emotional reaction.

Speaker 1: 10:08

For example, you might become aware of the way that you push against an emotion. For a while, instead of letting it be there, you could reflect on what you notice during this struggle. Does the emotion weaken and fade? Does it grow in size and persistence? You could experiment with just letting the emotion be there. You could even set a timer. Some of my clients actually set a timer on their phone for them to just sit and simply let the emotion be there, wash over them. They notice it fade Within about 60 to 90 seconds.

Speaker 1: 10:42

Usually most emotions are going to lose their intensity. Or sometimes my clients will simply let themselves be feeling the emotion while they go through the process of making themselves a hot drink so a cup of coffee or a cup of tea, hot chocolate or it could be a cold drink and allowing themselves, however many minutes to drink that particular drink, all while allowing them, allowing that emotion to be there. They're not pushing the emotion away in that moment, they're just doing something. And when they have finished doing the thing so in this example, making a drink and drinking it then they will assess on. How do I feel now, now that I've allowed this emotion to be here, allowed myself to feel it. How do I feel now? And reflecting on that, did it grow? Did it become even worse and even more unbearable? Did it stay the same or similar? Did it fade? So, experimenting with just letting the emotion be there and observing it, allowing it to change over time and a brief time I don't necessarily recommend sitting with it for 30 minutes, but I think a handful of minutes, yes. I think that's something that most of us are capable of. And a tip here is that oftentimes, when we allow an uncomfortable emotion to be there can actually lead to that uncomfortable emotion dissipating and fading away more quickly.

Speaker 1: 12:13

Another healthy and helpful strategy is to recognise when you need to take a break from a situation and then actually following through and taking the break. So, for example, if you're in the process of responding to a message from your former partner, perhaps it's something to do with the kids or anything else that they've decided to make an issue about. It could be something that's agitating you replying to this message. Or perhaps you're trying to draft a response and you're not sure how to go about it. You feel yourself getting really agitated. It can be important to recognise that you need to take a break from this, and you can again. You could set a timer to take a break or you could decide that what you're being asked to respond to is actually not urgent, it's not an emergency and that it can be left for a day, maybe even several days.

Speaker 1: 13:09

Exercising can be a healthy and helpful way to manage emotions. The caveat here is that exercising as a means to manage uncomfortable situations thoughts, emotions, physical sensations can become problematic if you find yourself becoming obsessive with the exercise and if you start using exercise to completely avoid emotions as opposed to using the exercise to just feel better in general. So, for example, making time for up to an hour or so of exercise each day on average absolutely fine, whereas if you were finding yourself needing to exercise for multiple hours on multiple days, it would be important here to explore this and to take note if it might indicate a problem for you. To take note if you feel agitated, if you're unable to exercise. That might help to give you some insight. The exception to this, of course, is if you are an athlete that's training for a sporting event like a triathlon or something of that kind. Obviously, part of that is going to be doing a lot of exercise.

Speaker 1: 14:20

Meditation and mindfulness practices can be healthy and helpful ways to manage emotions, although it's important here to note as well that when people have experienced traumatic situations so this includes a lot of my clients who are victim survivors of family violence and post separation abuse there can be symptoms consistent with complex PTSD. Meditation and mindfulness can actually exacerbate uncomfortable symptoms and can actually trigger things similar to panic attacks. So this is where, if you're someone who is still dealing with unresolved trauma, meditation and mindfulness might not be the best for you. If you've tried it and it doesn't seem to be helping. If you've tried it and it just makes you feel more agitated, no, you're not broken. This is not a problem with you. This just means that this particular approach is not the right one for you. It doesn't mean it never will be the right one for you, but it just means that it's not the right one for you right now Prioritising rest and sleep and other forms of self-care and this is something that I discussed in a podcast episode going back a week, maybe more, and I discussed some of the foundational things that we can do for our self-care.

Speaker 1: 15:43

So things like prioritising rest and sleep, prioritising healthy eating as much as possible and prioritising adequate water intake, hydration Again, we've already touched on some examples of unhealthy and unhelpful strategies, but to recap on those, that includes physically harming yourself or others, verbally abusing yourself or others, consuming illegal or prescription drugs or alcohol as a way to dampen down your cognitive, emotional or physical discomfort, withdrawing from and avoiding uncomfortable situations to the point that it completely interferes with your daily life or even with your potential outcome. I've got a number of clients who have worked with me intensively on co-parenting communication when their ex-partner has a habit, has a behaviour pattern of being very controlling, coercively controlling and abusive in other ways, and oftentimes this is not overt. My job would be a lot easier if all of these men were swearing and putting all kinds of really horrible things in co-parenting communication. The reality is that that's rare. Most of them don't. Most of them are able to recognise that it's not going to go well for them if they're putting all kinds of threats and bad language in writing. It's pure gold as far as evidence goes when they do this, but more often what I see is very covert attempts to maintain control of a situation and that's been very triggering to deal with for many of my clients. So a lot of what I do with those particular clients is help them to work out what messages need to be responded to and how should those messages be responded to.

Speaker 1: 17:38

The tendency can be to not want to communicate at all. The tendency can be to have a friend or family member deal with all of the communication and whilst I understand this approach, the problem that I have with this approach is that it can actually negatively impact somebody's outcome, particularly if their situation ends up in the court system. Refusing to engage at all with the other parent can unfortunately lead to you being painted in a negative light. It can lead to you being perceived in a negative way by the court and other professionals who work in that court space. It is possible to get to a point in your journey where communicating with the other parent is not always intensively triggering. Withdrawing from and avoiding that communication completely can negatively interfere with your outcome. Again, as I said, particularly if your situation is going through the court system and unfortunately the reality is that unless you've experienced significant abuse, and typically physical abuse, a court may view you as being unreasonable if you are refusing any and all communication, co-parenting communication with this other person.

Speaker 1: 18:58

I'm not talking about other forms of communication, I'm just solely talking about communication about kids, specifically in writing. No one's going to expect you to be having an in-person or face-to-face or telephone conversation with a controlling abuser, but there usually is an expectation by the court and court professionals that you are making some attempt to communicate in writing with that person about the children and not doing that can be a problem. And if this is something that you're struggling with, I really do encourage you to reach out, book a discovery call with me. Let's have a chat. I can talk to you about how I can help and then we can decide whether working with me going forward is the right thing for you. It's also important that I share with you here the reality that avoiding all communication, particularly co-parenting communication with an ex-partner, is actually not helping you emotionally. Let's unpack that a little bit here. We don't increase our tolerance for something by avoiding that thing. You're never going to increase your tolerance, your capacity for co-parenting communication by avoiding co-parenting communication.

Speaker 1: 20:16

And if you find that you have a nervous system response at the thought of co-parenting communication or when a message is received from your ex-partner, it's important to note that the likelihood in that situation is that you are actually physically safe in that moment. You're physically safe when you're contemplating co-parenting communication and you're physically safe when a message from your ex-partner is received. So if you have a survival response, if your amygdala is kicking into gear, if you can feel the adrenaline and the cortisol rushing through your body, if you feel panicked, it's important that you recognise that that nervous system response is an overreaction in that situation. If you have past experiences with your ex-partner that has led to trauma, that has led to your nervous system responding in a way as if you were under physical threat, that's not a great way to live and it's also not something that is likely to just simply go away on its own Time does not heal this stuff in and of itself and I'm speaking here from lived experience with this. Until I started taking my responses to co-parenting communication, my nervous system reactions, my trauma, until I started taking responsibility for that and taking my healing seriously and for me, emdr therapy was a huge part of my journey and I cannot recommend it enough, but that's a topic for another day. But until I started taking responsibility for that, I was continuing to have a very strong nervous system reaction to co-parenting communication years later, almost a decade later, after separation.

Speaker 1: 22:06

So please know, avoiding co-parenting communication in and of itself is not going to leave you ultimately feeling fine about co-parenting communication. You are really just delaying the inevitable. If you're refusing to communicate with your ex-partner because you find it triggering, it's important that you know that you are going to find it triggering until you actually start doing it in a way where you are supported and in a way where you are able to reflect on the things that are triggering, you Learn some strategies for managing those triggers, and that ties in with what we've been talking about here with emotion regulation, and part of that is recognizing that in that moment when you may be communicating with your ex-partner, that you are physically safe. And if this is something that you're struggling with, I really do urge that you reach out and seek support. If you're working with a psychologist or a counsellor who's encouraging you to continue to avoid communicating with your ex, again, this is something that you need to be aware may harm your case if your case ends up proceeding to court, and this is something that I support a number of my clients with, including helping them with communication boundaries, and including helping them to draft responses to messages from their ex partner. Communicating with your ex doesn't mean that you have to respond immediately just because they want you to. It doesn't mean that you have to give in to their demands. What it means is that you learn how to communicate effectively and strategically with a controlling person and, separate to that, but linked, you're also taking responsibility for the fact that you have unresolved trauma that may be triggered when you receive a message from your ex. That's the thought that I want to leave you with, specifically to do with communicating with your ex partner. Avoiding all communication with your ex partner is not going to lead to you ever feeling okay about communicating with your ex partner. We don't get better at tolerating something or increasing our capacity for something by just avoiding the thing.

Speaker 1: 24:23

Excessive and compulsive use of things like social media, pornography, gambling, shopping, gaming to the point that they exclude other things in life. Perhaps they take over from other responsibilities that you have. They negatively impact aspects of your life. Those things are obviously unhealthy and unhelpful ways to manage uncomfortable emotions, and they're really common. When the overall goal is simply to avoid feeling the negative or uncomfortable emotion, they can be used as distractions in an attempt to keep the emotions away, although it never really works long term. You might recognise that some of those things are things that your current or former partner uses to keep uncomfortable or negative emotions away.

Speaker 1: 25:15

Controlling and abusive people do tend to be fairly emotionally immature. They don't tend to be very skilled at regulating their own emotions, and so using things like social media, pornography, gambling, gaming those sorts of things are very commonly used by controlling people, abusive people as a means to push away any emotion that they don't like or they don't feel comfortable with. These people also tend to lash out at everybody else around them and make everybody else around them responsible for their own emotions as well. It's important to also say here that we all occasionally use unhealthy and unhelpful emotion regulation strategies. Every single one of us has lost our temper at times. Every single one of us has struggled to deal with feelings of anger, frustration, disappointment, sadness all of those sorts of things and individuals who regularly experience overwhelming and intense negative emotions are much more likely to rely on unhealthy and unhelpful strategies such as the ones that I've just been talking about.

Speaker 1: 26:31

It is important that I mention here, though, that this conversation about emotion regulation is specifically about adults. I'm not talking here about children. It's very normal for children to struggle with independently regulating their emotions to a certain degree, depending on their age and their individual personal development. In another episode I'll talk about emotion co-regulation, which is where a parent is able to support a child to regulate their emotions. This is another reason why you working on this within yourself is so important, because if you have noticed that your children struggle to manage big emotions more than what perhaps you think might be developmentally appropriate for them, it can be worthwhile to reflect on how you yourself manage your own emotions, how you yourself are able to regulate your emotions, to reflect on whether your coping strategies, your emotion regulation strategies, whether you tend to be using strategies that are healthy and helpful most of the time, or whether, most of the time, you might be using strategies that are perhaps unhealthy and unhelpful. That can help us to become increasingly aware of what we're modelling our kids and that can help us to even further tune in to how our behaviour, to how our thoughts and emotions and actions might be impacting our children's emotions and actions. So what is it that actually causes emotions to be so overwhelming in the first place that we even need these strategies.

Speaker 1: 28:18

It's really important to be aware that the experience of an emotion in and of itself is not what leads to the problems that we have. Rather, it's the perception and the interpretation of an initial situation and the thoughts that come from that that often lead to emotions of varying intensity. So there's a situation that happens we get a message from our ex-partner making a demand about parenting time. We then will have a thought, an initial thought, about that. Sometimes it can be really challenging to work out. Did my thought about that come first, or the emotion, or sometimes even a physical sensation? I know, for me personally, I spent a number of years with my phone on silent for a lot of the time, because even the sound of a message tone would cause a physical reaction in me, because I was concerned. It was yet another demand from my ex, yet another thing that was being brought up to create conflict, chaos, confusion. Sometimes it can be difficult to pinpoint which part happened first in that chain reaction of events.

Speaker 1: 29:27

But in this example of the message coming through from the ex-partner, I think it's fair and reasonable that we could assume here that one of the thoughts could be oh, what now? Oh, not again. What do they want this time? Those sorts of things. And if we're talking about a former partner who's very controlling, who's very coercive, where we perhaps have not established any clear boundaries at this point in time maybe we've got a habit of acquiescing and giving into demands we can be feeling, before we've even read the message, we can be thinking oh, what do they want from me this time? What's the demand going to be this time? What do I have to give in on this time? So those can be the thoughts and, understandably, the emotions with that will be irritation, frustration, anger. So before we know it, before we've even potentially read the message, we can be feeling all of those overwhelming things. So it's our perception and interpretation of a situation and the thoughts related to that that contribute to our emotions and contribute to how intense those emotions are.

Speaker 1: 30:38

Now, in this example and in the example that I gave of my own lived experience, there was also something going on for me that was related to my felt safety, to my nervous system, to my survival response. If you're getting a really significant physical reaction, if you start to feel panicked, if you think that your survival response has been activated, your nervous system, that's also going to make it a lot more difficult for you to manage your situation and to manage your emotions in a way that you would think was healthy or helpful. We can't expect ourselves or other people to respond in a healthy or helpful way to a situation if our nervous system is activated towards survival and this is as true for kids as what it is for adults. If you're continually struggling with avoidance, hypervigilance, there could be an indication that it's not just emotion regulation work that you would benefit from, but also work to support your nervous system and your felt safety.

Speaker 1: 31:46

We can be physically safe and still not feel safe. We can be physically safe and still end up with a survival response and feeling very, very panicked, with our heart racing, a difficult to take a breath, swirling thoughts, feeling disoriented, just simply not being able to cope. We can have that experience even if we're physically safe. This is very, very common for women who have left a controlling or abusive relationship. So we can be physically safe but not feel safe, and that's because felt safety is not the absence of threat.

Speaker 1: 32:24

I'll say that again Felt safety is not the absence of threat. There are other things that we need to do to help ourselves feel safe, even if we logically know that physically, in that moment we are safe. We may not feel safe, and that's our work to do. It's not our fault that we've experienced trauma, but it is our responsibility to do something about it If we want to start feeling better and if we want to start having more healthy and helpful ways of managing uncomfortable emotions.

Speaker 1: 33:00

This is important work, obviously for your own wellbeing, also for your kids, for your ability to provide healthy and helpful emotional support to your children, but it's also important for the way that you present in court proceedings if your matter progresses to that point, and I would say it also helps you to show up in the world the way that you want to, helps you to show up at work the way that you want to.

Speaker 1: 33:28

When you're able to manage emotions in a healthy and helpful way the majority of the time, it helps you to show up with your friends, with your family members, with your kids, teachers, with anyone and everyone that you interact with on a daily basis. I'll leave you with these thoughts. How you experience the world is not set in stone. You can improve your experience and the way that you respond to different situations and emotions by learning more about yourself, more about your emotions and your thought patterns, and more about the ways in which you manage and respond to emotions and thoughts that are challenging, that are uncomfortable, you can improve your experience, and if this is something that you'd like more support with on your journey of separation, divorce or co-parenting, I'm here to help. Thank you so much for your time. I'll talk to you soon.