How to be grounded in your decision making

Emotional dysregulation refers to feeling overwhelmed by emotions, often leading to unhealthy ways of processing and coping with them.  

Signs of emotional dysregulation:

• Intense negative emotions and difficulty returning to a calm state

• Lack of insight about emotions

• Avoiding or detaching from emotions

• Impulsively reacting from emotions

• Feeling as if you will implode or explode from emotion

• Difficulty coping with emotions in a healthy way

• Difficulty making decisions because of emotional barriers

Psychological reasons for emotional dysregulation:

• Biological – some people may feel emotions more strongly than others

• Skills deficit – some people are not taught how to manage emotions in a constructive way. For example, there may be role modelling in childhood whereby emotions are expressed in a hostile way, or not expressed at all

• There may be unresolved past trauma that has threatened your sense of safety, which can then lead to your nervous system remaining on high alert

• Chronic invalidation from others – having others minimize, trivialise or deny your emotions

• Unhelpful myths about emotions, “It’s not ok to feel”, “Emotions make me weak”, “It’s not safe to express my emotions to anyone”, “If I acknowledge my emotions, I can’t cope”.

Delay major decisions until emotion subsides

When emotions are intense, it is difficult to think clearly and make sound decisions. For example, if you are at sea with your emotions, it will be challenging to swim in the right direction if you are finding it difficult to stay afloat.  

• Try to name the emotion. If this is difficult, break it down to whether you are feeling any of the 4 basic human emotions of sadness (heavy in body), fear (tense in body), anger (agitated in body) or guilt (discomfort in the body).

• Be curious about the trigger. Is it a current situation or past memory of a painful event?

• Use grounding skills that involve applying your senses. For example, noticing 3 things you can see, 3 things you can hear, 3 things your body is in contact with. Alternatively, you can ground yourself with a hot or cold shower, intense exercise for 20 minutes, or a relaxation exercise.

Questions for decision making

Once you feel grounded and present in the moment, this can allow you to stay afloat like a life jacket does in the ocean, and now you can determine how to swim to solid ground.

Take a few deep breaths are ask yourself any of these questions to connect with your inner wisdom:

What will help me, rather than hurt me?

What is in my best interests in the long run vs short term?

What will allow me to grow vs stay stuck?

What do I value in terms of how I want to treat myself and others?

If you have difficulty with emotional dysregulation and decision making and need additional help, please contact Katherine Bonaldi at In Bloom Psychology.

 Written by Katherine Bonaldi.

Adapted from Marsha Linehan. (2015). DBT skills training manual (second edition).