Engaging Our Emotions Effectively With DBT

Adrian Acevedo, MHC

What factors have impacted your relationship with your emotions?

All of us have internalized messages about emotions, received from our parents and larger family systems, institutions and organizations, and our surrounding culture. Our beliefs about emotions and emotional expression are shaped by our personal experiences and key relationship dynamics, beginning in early childhood and continuing as we grow toward adulthood. Consider your family of origin-what “rules” were enforced around emotional expression? You may have been taught that some of your emotions were untrustworthy or dangerous. Some emotions may have been more accepted while others were discouraged and shamed. You might have learned to avoid emotional expression or to dial up your emotional responses to try and meet your relational needs.

It can seem like very few of us come into adulthood with emotional awareness, empowerment healthy emotional control, and perspective on our emotions. So many of us move through life with complex and fraught relationships with our emotions, which can lead to difficulties with self-regulation and interpersonal relationships. This is difficult work and can be overwhelming, painful, and confusing as we strive to make peace with our emotions and hold them in a healthy perspective. Unpacking internalized and often subconscious beliefs about emotions offers us an important opportunity to show up more mindfully and authentically in all areas of our lives. 

What can Dialectical Behavior Therapy teach us about emotional validity and the function of our emotions?

If you have spent any time in therapy and mental wellness spaces, you have likely heard the refrain that “your emotions are valid.” But what does this mean, really? The concept of validating emotions can be confusing, misleading, and scary if it means concluding that all of your emotions are *true* or *correct.* It can negatively shape our beliefs about ourselves, others, and the world. Believing our emotions are true and unquestionable can lead us to behave in ways that are contrary to our values and goals. 

Dialectical Behavior Therapy reminds us that validating emotions does not mean treating emotions as facts and acting on them as such. DBT teaches us that our emotions serve an important role in helping us process our experiences and connections with others. Whether they seem to align with the facts of our situation or not, emotions provide us with key information about how we are doing *internally.* They can help us communicate nonverbally with others, motivate and organize ourselves for action, and tune in to our own sense of safety and well-being. 

Dialectical Behavior Therapy teaches us that emotional intel is only part of the whole picture, and is most effectively understood alongside our rational mind. The “middle path” between our rational mind and emotional mind is referred to in DBT as the Wise Mind. Wise Mind honors both the facts and our rational beliefs about our experiences AND our intuition and emotional experiences. Connecting with Wise Mind empowers us to move through life with greater empathy and wisdom than emotions or logic alone.

What about emotional dysregulation?

Perhaps you’re able to imagine that your emotions have a purpose, but your relationship with your own remains fraught and untrusting. Recognizing the value of our emotions can be especially difficult for those of us who struggle with emotional regulation. Emotional experiences might feel overwhelming, confusing, or even dangerous. Strong emotions might lead you to act in ways that are contrary to your values and boundaries, instead of in ways that are effective and respectful to yourself and others. Ongoing or long-term emotional dysregulation can wreak havoc on our relationships and daily functioning. Painful experiences like these might lead us to shut down and suppress our emotions because we are not sure we can handle them or trust others to receive them. This might feel like necessary self-protection, but our minds and bodies still carry our unacknowledged emotions, leaving them to express themselves in unconscious and ineffective ways.

What would it look like to engage your emotions effectively? To hold them in a healthy perspective, gleaning helpful information from them without succumbing to emotional overwhelm? As you begin the work of unpacking your relationship with your emotions, and your own patterns of emotional responses, seek to meet your emotions with curiosity instead of judgment. Reflect on what they are trying to tell you as you work to build trust with your Emotional Mind and learn to integrate it effectively into Wise Mind. Through practicing emotional regulation skills and mindfulness, you can feel increasingly empowered to experience your emotions fully and act with greater effectiveness.