Do you have the ability to regulate your thoughts and emotions?

hi everyone dr. Nicola Peres the holistic psychologist here today's video is on self-regulation first I'm going to talk about what self-regulation is then why most of us have as adults have a difficulty self-regulating and then I'm going to give five steps to get started building a new practice of self-regulation so first and foremost what is self-regulation self-regulation is the ability to direct our thoughts our emotions and our behaviors having a say essentially in what we do with them when we're having thoughts oh we're having feelings and the choices that we're making around how we cope a lot of us live reactively we don't feel like we have choice something happens in our environment our thoughts are happening all the time we're feeling all kinds of ways and a lot of us are just reacting through life we are not regulating our self we are not playing an empowered part in the process of self-regulation well why why do so many of us struggle we first come to this planet and we're a little baby infant we need our nervous system let me order this like needs help with what we call Co regulation as a tiny infant we cannot regulate our emotions our energies we can't regulate our physiological body by infants cry they cry when they're upset when they're hungry when they're tired that's that's a sign that crying is their nervous system is dysregulated in that moment so what does usually happen when an infant cries more often than not a caregiver comes and in that moment where there's whatever soothing behavior is happening if the in think it's picked up and shushed and cradled and rocked that is an act of co-regulation so this disrupted nervous system that this infant is having the experience of that crying and upset is brought back down to calm now a lot of us did not have a caregiver that had a regulated enough nervous system themselves to be able to perform perform this function for us as infants so this is where a version of this dis regulation or this lack of ability to self-regulate for a lot of us began when we didn't have that parent so for instance my mother was very anxious was very nervous so that to me is a sign that she herself wasn't able to regulate her own emotion so can't imagine that when I was a crying infant that she was able to be available to me to help regulate my nervous system if she wasn't able to do that within her nervous system of course she cannot really adequately help Co regulate an infant a lot of us who were born in the 80s had the gift of this movement I think is called ferberizing or I don't know exactly the word for it but there was a time where there was actually a belief that letting babies infants cry it out was positive again we know now that because of this lack of ability to regulate ourselves and this need for someone else that could have translated some problems for us all so what happens once we're out of that infant stage we become a toddler and this is where we really see these instances of difficulty I think in in co-regulation so a toddler is crying what needs to happen this is what healthy development of self-regulation looks like what needs to happen is that child needs a caregiver someone who's present in that moment to help them understand what's going on for them to help them understand the sensations they're having in their bodies the emotions that they're having in their bodies the whole space while they're having their emotional experience and then to help them come through that in some way whether or not it's by soothing helping them learn how to soothe themselves but essentially the focus is on the infant the child I mean the the toddler right having the emotion a lot of times what happens and this is hard parenting is hard is the child's having a feeling and again because the parent themselves a lot does not have these skills of self-regulation what happens is a lot of things there could be a shutdown right I could be so overwhelmed by my toddler screaming that I'm just completely shut down I could minimize the emotions oh you're fine honey right all of these are limiting that moment and those tools of self-regulation they're not allowing them to develop so flash forward in time a lot of us are walking around this planet now in relationships as adults who have difficulty self-regulating because we were never modeled how we never learned how so now as an adult I self included is our job to teach ourselves or to relearn the steps of self-regulation so how to get started here are five steps the first step always if you follow me and listen to my work it's always gonna be developing conscious awareness learning how to observe our self in the world right to see the thoughts and the feelings and the behaviors and the habits and developing that this is our little observational right center that watcher that awareness that we are the awareness we are the consciousness behind all of this this takes consistent practice so for a lot of us consciousness which I'm always talking about is a new practice we're used to living in that autopilot right that place where we are reactive where the fact that we don't know how to be modeled or that we haven't learned this this self regulation we carry that throughout our day so we're back in our unconscious state and more often than not we're just reacting our way through life or we begin to practice consciousness I love practicing in meditation developing that space that ability to be that observer you might be practicing it throughout our day even and then will become triggered we go right back into that reactive place and I'm here to tell you that's gonna happen our triggers don't go away we have to learn how to remain conscious during them so create somewhere in your day a daily practice of consciousness whether it's building one mindful moment one conscious moment into your day where you tune into what's actually happening in your body in your present moment or through a practice of meditation which can be as small as a one-minute practice but just practice because this is going to be foundational in teaching yourself self-regulation as an adult another amazing practice is the belly breathing because we are that we a lot of a struggle with that dysregulated nervous system that I was describing earlier our breath is actually an amazing regulator of our nervous system a particular breath breathing from our belly so I'm gonna throw this out there right now it might feel weird for a lot of you for me it felt very weird at first I my posture I struggled I used to practice laying now but if you can give yourself start with one deep belly breath a day and build on it but retraining your body to breathe right deep into that belly feeling and expand all the way out that is activating your nervous system that is activating your calming your peaceful you're rested nervous system that is building in that regulation that you were not modeled or taught as a child so practice belly breathing one daily belly breath turns into two breathing from the belly goes a long way to help you self-regulate three a lot of people I know like the journal out there when you're having you know feelings that are coming up coming alive for you maybe feelings that you would have struggled regulating before I know a lot of people can find catharsis or can get it out with writing them so journal have a journal where when something happens and you're feeling you know really angry or sad or whatever you're feeling take a minute two minutes and just write those feelings down sometimes just the act of writing and getting them out and getting words to them will allow you to release them and might be but the preventive between that older reaction where you might have screamed them at someone or maybe would have been like me and it's dissociated or detached or numbed yourself with something sometimes getting them out on paper can be the difference and can be the thing that we do with them the only caveat here and I've worked with a lot of clients with this too because the difference between I put my feelings in a journal and now I walk away from the journal and I leave my feelings there and well now that I've journaled about them I can't stop thinking about them and now I'm just telling myself and replaying the thing that upset me or angered me all day long that is what I do not suggest you do because there's a lot of us know the more attention and the more self observation we're playing in our minds watching our minds the longer you think about something that's problematic for you the longer you're gonna feel about it so the only caveat I mentioned with journaling and with my clients that would begin to use this practice we talked about it exactly like I described it you pick up the journal when something's alive you write it out you close it and then you refocus your attention on your next moment you don't keep rehearsing what you wrote in that journal all day long because in that feeling is gonna carry with you all day long and it's gonna leave you possibly it's that reactive place that we want to avoid so journal and then get really focused back in the present great way you could do that number four notice your body that is a great way to ground ourselves notice the sense Asians that are happening for you in your body emotions what we're talking about here you know are thoughts that cause an emotion in our body do you cause a change in our body you can feel them they're sensations there's tightness there's tingling this might be a surprise to some of you it was a surprise to me I was so dissociated I had no idea how my body felt or how it felt to be in my body I had to relearn my whole world of sensations the more you learned that and you tune into your body the more this changes in your body sensations are going to be clues to you that something is happening with you emotionally that's gonna set you up to be able to make new choices not those old reactions right the thing I do always went on mad is I scream alright like I do I dissociate I can create choice now if I can feel my body and the sensations changing and I can get an eye on the fact that I am feeling something I'm angry I'm sad that might give me that space and now I get to choose well what do I actually want to do how do I want to show up as my highest self in this moment and deal with what my highest self do or what my self to do when I'm angry on my sad as opposed to screaming or dissociating right that's where you create this space it begins in your body your body's gonna notice the changes your body's gonna register the feelings the emotions the sooner you get connected with your body the sooner you're gonna be able to help your body too regularly so I hope this was helpful this is a journey this is a process like I said for me I had to spend a lot of time on this first step and a lot of time on this last step connecting myself in my body before I began to be able to really successfully regulate my body and talk about so journal could also be how do I communicate about my feelings right so this is a process that we evolved into this process of developing self-regulation as a child right it began in infancy where we either did or didn't have that Co regulator of our nervous system and then it became how do I deal with the motions of life and do I have someone modeling for me how to regulate myself and the answer the reality is if the answer is no here we are so here are steps to get you started I hope you found this video helpful as always thank you to all of my subscribers out there and if you haven't yet subscribed and you found this video helpful please feel free to do so thank you so much

Channel: The Holistic Psychologist

Views: 206,419

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Id: NxrfDovnjA4

Length: 11min 15sec (675 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 30 2020