For many of us, learning how to attune to our own emotional state and provide healthy forms of self-regulation practices can be unfamiliar and foreign.
Self-Regulation is how we “manage” ourselves. This comes online by the age of 1 year old. It is our ability to inhibit our own impulses and how we manage ourselves – i.e. hold our bladder to go to the bathroom, hold our opinion when someone is talking to listen, etc.
This builds over time.
Emotional attunement is the ability to notice the sensations in your body, understand the emotions that are associated with those sensations and get curious on what you may want/need, and or what boundaries you might have to place before reacting in an unstable or ungrounded emotional state.
In the most basic sense, it involves controlling one’s behavior, emotions, and thoughts in the pursuit of long-term goals. Emotional self-regulation refers to the ability to manage disruptive emotions and impulses. To understand on a deeper level what the sensations “in your body” are trying to tell you and regulate the sensations to what you need.
Let me ask you this:
- Growing up, did you experience parental figures in the household yelling and screaming all the time?
- When you were upset or scared as a child, were you acknowledged, punished and/or dismissed for your emotions?
- Were you told “Don’t cry, or I will give you something to cry about?”
If you answered yes to any or all above, you most likely lived with an emotionally immature or unavailable parent figure growing up. It is highly likley your needs were likely routinely unmet or dismissed.
Understanding your ability to self-regulate as an adult has roots in your development during childhood.
Emotional immaturity results from a lack of emotional attunement and resilience and the ability to process them, communicate boundaries and return the nervous system back to balance! Self-regulation involves taking a pause between a feeling and an action – taking the time to think things through, make a plan, wait patiently.
As an adult with poor emotional self-regulation skills, one may lack self-confidence and self-esteem and have trouble handling stress and frustration. Often leading to expressions of anger, anxiety and in more severe cases, this individual can be diagnosed with a mental health disorder.
This is why learning how to be emotionally attuned to our own sensations and feelings can provide us with so much wisdom in helping us to understand how we begin to take responsibility to teach ourselves the tools to meet our own needs. We can then learn how to self-regulate verus run, numb, avoid and blame others and take radical responsibility for the life we want.
This one main piller I teach in my epic mind/body transformation is emotional regulation a.k.a self-regulation. Self-regulation is the ability to understand and manage your behaviors and reactions to emotions and things happening around you. It includes being able to regulate strong reactions to strong emotions like frustration, excitement, anger and impatience. It is the ability to respond to the ongoing demands of experience with a range of emotions in a manner that is socially tolerable and sufficiently flexible to permit spontaneous reactions as well as the ability to delay spontaneous reactions.
Here are a few Effective Strategies for Self-Regulation:
- Mindfulness: Track your felt senses in your body and name the emotion out loud. Give the feeling / sense a name and get curious about what is triggering the current emotional state without judgment.
- Somatic Breathwork: Learning how to train the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system helps your nervous system oscillate more vs. staying stuck in an unwanted state and story that creates more pain in the emotional body.
- Cognitive Reframing: Learn how to change the “state” aka emotional state and then change the thought patterns linked to the state. Reinterpreting a situation in order to change your emotional response to it.
Need help with learning how to Emotional Attune and learn how to practice self-regulation, visit the upcoming workshops by EpicLuv below or contact Melissa directly at melissa@epicluv.com today!
Moon & Medicine
When: April 16th
Time: 5:30-7:30
Cost: $55
Location: : Reach Yoga
Address: 1319 Garnet Ave
San Diego, CA 92109
Get Tickets Here: https://www.epicluv.com/event/moon-medicine-shamangelic-breathwork-journey-2/
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