How Do You Manage Emotional Dysregulation?
How Do You Manage Emotional Dysregulation?
Hi everyone,
I’m reaching out to ask for advice and insights on how you manage emotional dysregulation. Lately, I’ve been finding it challenging to handle intense emotions, especially when they seem to come out of nowhere or are triggered by small things.
I know this is something that many people in the AuDHD community experience, so I’d love to hear about any strategies, tools, or practices that have worked for you. Whether it’s specific techniques, coping mechanisms, or lifestyle changes, I’m open to anything that might help.
Thank you in advance for your support and for sharing your experiences. I really appreciate hearing from others who understand what this is like.
Looking forward to hearing from you!
Unhealthy coping mechanism: take a break, put in headphones, put on the most overstimulating sad/manic/violent vocaloid music, proceed to engage in megalomaniacal fantasies of battle, world domination, and self destruction until you get bored.
Healthier coping method: try to do mindfulness meditations. Doing them even when you’re feeling more normal will make it easier to try when you are. Just trying to take a few deep breaths or focus on breathing could help and at the very least won’t hurt.
Another thing is just venting to someone or writing in like a journal. If something is getting to me or I’m feeling an emotion for no reason and it’s frustrating, venting about it in my journal seems to help me calm down and manage it better.
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You can write whatever you want. A single word/feeling, a rant, an insight that came to you while staring at the wall. You can write about your day, what you want to do, how loud the neighbors' lawn equipment is. The important part is that it's taking thoughts from your brain and putting them down on paper.
Journaling is just like any other technique - it works best if you make it a habit. Same with meditation, breathing, mindfulness, etc. Do it when you're feeling okay. Any time you think of it. You can use a physical reminder if (like me) you have trouble remembering to Do Thing(s). Like take a can or a box and put it upside down in a conspicuous spot. When you see it, jot something down/type it out, then move the object to where you'll see it later. But the goal is to do it enough so that when you are feeling overwhelmed, it's something that you can do with minimal cognitive load. You need to create that pathway first before your neurons will go there on their own.
Practice makes
perfectbetter.
This is too general of a question imo. The answer won't be of much help.
But in general: getting rid of whatever causes the unwanted emotions, understanding that most causes aren't actually a big deal, mindfulness meditation, slow conscious breathing, practicing to control/let go of emotions, accepting the emotions itself as not a problem aaand yeah that's enough for now
To what extent would you suggest people are related? Do you feel like if people were subtracted it would be much easier for you to maintain a decent state?
There aren't any people in my life right now, and I think that's part of the problem. In this image, I fell from green to orange, and having more people in my life would likely help bring things back up to yellow.
Thanks for that pic, very cool