Counseling in Montana to Help You Master Emotion Regulation

Would you like to have more control over your emotions?

As humans, we are not born knowing how to regulate our emotions. In fact, learning to handle our emotions happens in the context of early relationships. Ideally, we learn how to do this as children, and by observing our parents effectively handle their emotions. They teach us how to effectively manage our own emotions. Our parents or caregivers witness, acknowledge and help us make sense of our emotions. Optimal caregivers let us know that our experience is valid, and that our emotions even make sense.

Therapy is very helpful for people who do not easily identify, express or manage emotions. People who have difficulty regulating emotions are often very sensitive to things in the environment that become emotional triggers. They may act and react intensely to those triggers, and quite often, struggle to return to a more regulated baseline. Also, individuals who struggle with emotion regulation have difficulty identifying their emotions, or tolerating these difficult states in a heathy and effective way. This can impact their lives in significant ways especially if being activated or triggered keeps them from finishing important tasks.

In psychology, emotion regulation is often referred to as emotion dysregulation. Ongoing emotion dysregulation may create problems at work, at school, in relationships, and other areas of life. As a way of decreasing or escaping intense negative emotions such as anger, anxiety and sadness, many develop other difficulties, such as a mood or anxiety disorder, anger management, eating disorders, binge disorders, or self-injury. Some individuals experience numbness in response to strong emotions, they shut down, which causes problems as well.

So what exactly is therapy for emotion regulation? Emotion regulation therapy is conceptualized as a set of skills that can be learned, and practiced. Over time, it gets easier to effectively handle powerful, negative emotions. And this leads to increased self-esteem and master which can improve one’s life and relationships. Effective emotion regulation treatment focuses on teaching these life-changing skills. When you work with your mental health professional, you will be taught skills that include the accurate identification of emotions as they are happening, as well as how to learn to tolerate these emotions. This will naturally lead to becoming less vulnerable and reactive in the future when faced with with experiences that generate emotional activation.

Our psychologists and counselors are very skilled at helping you address the problems that bring you to counseling. We use very effective therapies that empower clients by teaching them how to change the patterns in thinking, behavior or emotional responding that cause distress, so they can improve the quality of their lives. Send us an email today and get started working with a therapist at Integrative Psychotherapy Montana. We are dedicated to helping you get better and resolve your mental health concerns.