So hello and welcome to this live event,
Recorded,
About emotional regulation.
And I want to start off with the general evidence based tips,
And that is to practice mindfulness.
Mindfulness meditation is a key approach for enhancing emotional regulation,
Because it really encourages you to be non-judgmental about your emotions,
And being more aware of your thoughts and how you're feeling.
For example,
Chambers and colleagues in 2009,
They already found that practicing mindfulness can reduce emotional reactivity and improve emotional control.
And that is what we're going to do today within a couple of mini meditations.
And the next tip is,
And you can do this already with me,
Is to identify and label your emotions.
Might be difficult when you're starting out,
But please keep practicing.
So what it means is that you can identify and label your own emotions,
Because just labeling them has been shown to reduce the intensity of a negative emotion.
And research by Lieberman and colleagues in 2011 has shown that simply acknowledging an emotional state can already help decrease its impact.
So do you want to try it out with me?
We're going to go into our bodies and ask ourselves,
How am I feeling today?
And say it out loud with me,
For example,
I am feeling anxious,
But that's okay.
I am feeling stressed,
But that's okay.
Or it might sound something like,
I am feeling all sorts of emotion,
But that's okay.
And I want to continue on that tip.
The next tip is to write about emotions.
According to Pennebaker and Sekol in 1999,
Writing about emotions,
Where you also write down your thoughts and your feelings regarding emotional events,
Has been shown to help regulate emotions by allowing individuals to process and reframe your experience.
So what you can do now,
Is either write down your emotions,
Or state it out loud in your mind,
With the following prompting questions I have for you.
So are you ready?
How have you been feeling lately?
Were you feeling angry,
Sad,
Anxious or happy?
And what were some of the thoughts that popped up?
So once you've given yourself like 2 minutes,
Or if you prefer more,
What you can do is practice the next tip,
Self-compassion.
According to Neff in 2013,
Self-compassion,
Where you treat yourself with kindness during times of suffering,
Has been shown to help and lessen emotional distress,
And create more resilience.
So if you want to join me,
What you can do is place your hands on your heart,
Take a deep breath in through the nose,
And relax.
Say to yourself,
I am suffering,
Other people feel like this,
I am not alone,
I am honoring my emotions,
I am doing my best,
And you can give yourself a hug,
And release.
It might feel a little bit strange in the beginning,
But this is another tip which I recommend to practice,
Practice.
So my final tip,
And this is a bigger one,
I've been looking into different kind of deep breathing techniques.
So breathing has been shown to really help to regulate your emotions,
But I went into a little bit deeper.
I wanted to see what sort of breathing techniques are useful with different types of emotions.
And I want to start with anxiety,
Where you do belly breathing,
Where you,
And you can join with me,
Where you place one hand on your chest and the other one on your belly,
Where you inhale deeply through your nose,
And you expand your belly as you breathe in,
Where you exhale slowly through your mouth,
Where you feel your belly contract.
And try to aim for 4 or 5 seconds with inhaling and exhaling.
So we are breathing in through the nose,
And out through the mouth.
Again,
Breathing in through the nose,
And out through the mouth.
Make sure you focus on breathing through your stomach,
Your belly.
Breathing in through the nose,
And out through the mouth.
So according to Ma in 2017 and colleagues,
Diaphragmic breathing activates the parasympathetic nervous system.
This can help you to calm your mind and reduce the body's stress.
Now I do have a warning,
If you try to do this very long,
Very deeply,
And you are for example someone who experiences PTSD,
This might become a very stressful situation.
So my advice is to always seek out,
If you really want to do work with this,
Seek out a breathing coach.
This is something I am doing at the moment,
And it's been doing wonders,
Literally wonders for my body.
It's releasing a lot,
But then again,
Also other things are happening.
And I didn't find any scientific journals about that yet,
But perhaps soon.
Is someone already aware of what to do with anger?
What kind of breathing technique?
Because I am going to share.
And that's a box breathing.
So visualize a box in front of you,
Where you breathe in for 4,
You hold it for 4,
You breathe out for 4,
And you hold it again for 4.
And according to Nestor in 2020,
Box breathing helps to reduce the arousal by anger by slowing your breathing rate,
And you promote a more balanced,
Measured response.
And for me,
In my experience,
I am just so focused on 4,
4,
4,
4,
That I just forget the rest and my thoughts don't have any place.
And I want to try it for 3 rounds.
So are you ready?
We're going to start with inhaling,
And then pausing,
Exhaling,
And pausing again.
And we're doing this through our nose,
And out through our mouth.
So we inhale for 4,
Pause,
And out,
Pause,
And inhale for 4,
Hold it,
And out.
Pause,
And in,
Pause,
And out,
And pause.
And then I have another breathing technique for sadness.
And that's lengthening your exhalation.
And I can also suggest to try this when you're in labor,
Where you inhale gently for 4 counts,
And then you exhale slowly for 6,
Where you focus on making your exhalation longer than your inhalation.
And once you're like 3 rounds further,
You breathe in for 4,
And you breathe out for 8.
And at some point you can even do this,
At least I tried,
You can do this inhaling for 4,
Breathing out for 12.
And according to Laborde and colleagues in 2017,
This works,
Because a longer exhalation can help stimulate the vagus nerve,
Which calms your nervous system.
And it can help this lifting feeling of heaviness.
And with sadness,
It's really important that you can really drop into your body.
Another breathing technique for overwhelm,
One of my favorites,
I use it daily,
Is the 4-7-8 breathing.
As the name suggests,
You inhale for 4,
You hold it for 7,
And you exhale for 8.
You can repeat this 3 to 6 cycles.
It really works quickly.
And according to Weil in 2011,
This technique,
Like the previous one,
Calms the mind,
But it also induces relaxation,
Which is ideal for raising thoughts and overwhelm.
And I found an interesting one about grief.
Now this is an emotion,
Which I personally don't always recognize immediately.
I don't know,
Perhaps you do.
But for grief,
You can use the sighing breath.
So according to Vlemix and colleagues in 2009,
Sighing,
Like,
Stimulates the parasympathetic nervous system,
Releasing tension,
And helps you relieve the physical and emotional weight of grief.
So it encourages a natural letting go.
And perhaps we can do it right now,
Where you take a deep breath in,
And you hold it.
And when you hold it,
You make sure that your shoulders are going up,
Up,
Up.
And when you sigh out,
You also drop your shoulders.
And you can make a loud sound,
And it hopefully will give you some relief.
So we will breathe in now,
Tense,
Tense those shoulders,
And drop.
Let's do one more.
Deep breath in,
Hold it,
Tense,
Tense,
And release.
How does that feel?
Now I hope that these evidence based tips,
These mini meditations of breathing,
Labeling your emotions,
Writing about your emotions,
Are helpful to regulate your emotions.
And especially self compassion and practice is key here.
You are not alone.
More people struggle with emotional regulation.
And I want to thank you for being here.
