Emotional regulation dysfunction

Emotional regulation dysfunction is not essentially the "poor personality", "bad temper" or "glassy heart" in popular perception, but a functional impairment in the individual's inability to flexibly adjust the intensity, duration, and expression of emotions according to the situation and their own needs. It may be an independent problem caused by the joint interaction of physical, psychological, and social factors, or it may be an accompanying symptom of other mental and psychological problems such as anxiety disorder, bipolar disorder, and PTSD.

A 27-year-old Internet operator visitor I received last week was particularly typical: in the meeting the day before, the boss only mentioned a few minor issues in her plan. She couldn't hold back and cried on the spot until she couldn't breathe, and couldn't even say a word of explanation.； On her way to get off work, she saw a stray cat being run over by a car. She stared at it for three minutes without any disturbance in her heart. She even complained to herself, "I'm afraid my emotional switch is wrong. When I should react, I'm as stiff as a rock. When I shouldn't be excited, I can't stop the car."

The clinical psychology community has yet to reach a unified conclusion on the cause of this problem, and practitioners with different orientations have quite different judgment logics. Friends who do neuroscience research prefer a physiological explanation - simply put, the amygdala in your brain, which is responsible for emotional triggering, is too sensitive and sounds the alarm at the slightest stimulus. The prefrontal cortex, which is responsible for regulatory control, cannot keep up with the response speed. Coupled with the disordered secretion of neurotransmitters such as serotonin and dopamine, your emotions are naturally unstable. I met a patient who was in the acute stage of bipolar disorder before. My friend joked that "the clothes he wore today are too dark." He threw a cup on the spot and wanted to break off the relationship. Half an hour later, he started crying and said that he was wrong. He didn't even know where the fire came from. This is a typical physiological problem. He can't hold it in by "forbearance" alone.

Colleagues in the field of psychodynamics pay more attention to the influence of early upbringing. Many clients with this kind of problem have never been allowed to express their emotions when they were young: after passing the exam, they jumped up and down with joy, and their parents scolded them, "I'm so good at a young age. What's there to be proud of?"”； After being wronged and crying twice, the parent yells, "Why are you crying? You will embarrass me." In the long run, the child does not know how to deal with his emotions normally. He either suppresses them or explodes. The adjustment function is equivalent to not being properly assembled since he was a child. There was a 30-year-old male visitor who was responsible for a project that was cheated by Party A and cost nearly RMB 10 million. He laughed throughout the conversation with me and said, "What a big deal." It wasn't until we talked about how when he was a child that he broke his leg and cried to his mother. Instead, he was scolded by his mother, "It's useless for a boy to cry after a fall." Then he burst into tears. He said that was the first time he cried in the past 10 years, and he thought he was born to be incapable of being sad.

Friends who do cognitive behavioral therapy are more honest. They feel that many people have not learned the correct method of emotional regulation. No one has taught them since they were young. When emotions arise, they either tolerate it or explode. They don't know that there are intermediate options such as "take a deep breath for 3 seconds" and "write your feelings in a memo on your phone." After a long time, the adjustment "switch" becomes rusty, and naturally it doesn't work.

However, there is now considerable controversy over the diagnosis of this problem in the academic community. Some scholars feel that the current standards are too broad. Occasional emotional out-of-control, irritability during menstrual periods, and even what young people call "emotional instability" are all applied to this diagnosis. On the contrary, normal emotional reactions are pathologized, and people who are fine are scaring themselves instead of causing problems.； Another group of scholars feel that too little attention was paid to this issue in the past. Many people have quarreled with their families every day due to emotional problems, made frequent mistakes at work, and even had thoughts of self-harm. They have also been labeled as having a "bad personality" and "low emotional intelligence" by those around them, which has delayed the opportunity to intervene. Early identification is not a bad thing.

I have been doing individual counseling for 6 years, and I have encountered very few cases of simple emotional regulation dysfunction. Most of them are subsidiary manifestations of other problems: for example, in patients with long-term chronic anxiety, the nerves are always as tense as a fully drawn bow, and can be broken by the slightest stimulation. It is not that he wants to lose his temper, but that the string has been tightened to the limit.； There are also clients with PTSD. As long as they encounter signals related to traumatic scenes, their entire emotional system will shut down directly, and there is no room for adjustment at all.

To give a simple metaphor, you can think of the emotion regulation function as the faucet in the bathroom at home. You can open a normal faucet as much as you want, turn it off as you want, and adjust the faucet to cold or hot water.； A broken faucet either cannot be turned on and water does not come out for a long time, or it sprays all over the room as soon as it is turned, or hot and cold flows directly. It is not that you don't want to control it, but that there is something wrong with the switch itself. It is useless to blame you for "not knowing how to use the faucet".

Many people ask me how to tell if they are born impatient or if they really have an impairment in their regulatory function. In fact, it depends on two criteria: first, whether you can control yourself, whether you regret it every time you lose your temper or emo, but you still can't stop the car next time you encounter a similar thing. ； The second is whether it affects your normal life. For example, you and your partner quarrel over trivial matters every now and then and break up. You always have uncontrollable conflicts with colleagues at work. You may even uncontrollably hurt yourself when you get emotional. As long as you fall into one of these traps, don’t hold on to it.

Oh, by the way, there was a client who practiced mindfulness meditation at home for half a year and said it was of no use at all. Later I found out that every time he started to close his eyes and regulate his breathing when his mood collapsed. By then, the amygdala was already full of alarms and he couldn't suppress it no matter how much he adjusted his breathing. The method was a good one, but it was used at the wrong time.

As for intervention methods, in fact, the plans of different schools are quite different. If there is a physiological problem found out, just take the medicine when it is necessary to reduce the excitability of the nerves first.； If it is related to your early experiences, slowly sort out the emotions that were not seen back then. ； If you simply haven’t learned the skills, just try one method after another and find the one that suits you. There is no standard answer. Don’t believe the cool articles on the Internet that say “3 tricks to fix emotional out-of-control”. The function is really damaged, and it’s impossible to get better immediately with just a few tricks. You have to give your emotional switch some time to repair, there’s no rush.