Do you control your emotions, or do your emotions control you?
Something small happens and you totally lose it. Maybe someone hurt your feelings, maybe you spilled something. All you know is something happened that totally wrecked you, and now you feel embarrassed that you completely blew up or fell apart because of something so small. Regulating our emotions can be hard to do if we never learned how, or if we only learned how to react to our emotions instead of learning how to handle them daily. Issues with emotional regulation can look like temper tantrums, major meltdowns, screaming matches, or all of the above. Kids and adults alike can have a very hard time regulating their emotions. For many people, this happens because we try to avoid emotions or push them down without ever really dealing with them, but instead of disappearing, they just build and build until they eventually explode at the most inconvenient moment.
So what can I do about it?
At Jasper Therapy Group, we can help you learn how to regulate your emotions. First, we can help you learn skills for letting them out instead of holding them in. Then, we help you explore why you started holding them in in the first place, while also unlearning or replacing any unhealthy coping skills you’ve been using to keep your emotions numb, ignored, or pushed away.
The goal is to get you back in control of your emotions. No matter how much we’d like for it to be true, we can never stop feeling our emotions altogether. So instead of ignoring them and waiting for them to eventually bubble over, let us help you learn new ways to express your emotions and regulate yourself so you can feel better and be the person you want to be.
