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The Anxiety Regulator: The Adaptive Nature of Emotions
Welcome to the Anxiety Regulator Blog. I am delighted to share my insights as a Scientist-Practitioner as it relates to helping you regulate strong emotions which includes but is not limited to anxiety and related syndromes. The
purpose of this blog is to provide insights from decades of research surrounding the assessment and treatment of emotional disorders. Many people have requested that I initiate this blog due to my tendency to simplify the research literature through media appearances (see http://www.drkevinchapman.com), writing, and most importantly through treatment. Along these lines, my blog will largely emphasize the "how to" in managing strong emotional experiences in a time-limited fashion, which is predominantly addressed by cognitive behavioral approaches (CBT). Furthermore, I'm excited to share a number of insights related to the successful management of "strong" emotions by: removing the veil as it relates to emotional "syndromes," providing tips to manage strong emotions on a day-to-day basis, and to underscore the significant overlap between emotional disorders and the treatment components therein. As such, my initial post will be a foundational entry in order to prepare you for future entries in which I provide "how to" thoughts and strategies that are based upon my own research (and that of my CBT colleagues) and clinical experience. The Anxiety Regulator Blog begins now. To begin, we first need to address some common assumptions about emotions in general before a more thorough discussion of specific anxiety and related disorders can be addressed in future posts.
The Truth About Your Emotions
In order to fully understand how to manage strong emotions (anger, anxiety, fear, sadness, and even disgust) we must first understand the purpose of our emotions. In many ways, our society has created skewed views of the purpose of our emotional experiences which creates confusion as to why many of us struggle with "too much" of an emotional experience. "I have anger issues" or "My anxiety is too bad," are common statements by many individuals who struggle with their emotional experience. I will address these misconceptions about emotions in a future blog post. The crucial truth about our emotions at the core is as follows: our emotions serve an adaptive purpose in our lives to help us survive as we navigate our worlds. In other words, many emotions that we experience as uncomfortable such as sadness, anger, fear and anxiety are all designed to help us deal with various threats such as life or death situations, social slights, possibly ruining a business deal in the future, or addressing the loss of a loved one. One good example is getting distressed (anxious) about an upcoming exam. The function of anxiety in this case is to prepare for future threat through studying (which is an attempt at avoiding possibly failing the exam while recognizing the adaptive nature of anxiety). Procrastination (putting off studying) serves the function of providing temporary relief from studying but backfires and creates more anxiety about the current exam and future exams. In short, understanding the purpose of our emotions at a core level can help us understand the "disorders" of emotions and also assist us in managing these emotions on a situational basis.
The Function of Specific Emotions
Before discussing emotional "disorders," it's important for me to emphasize the specific purpose of various emotions. Believe it or not, our core emotions all serve the same purpose and require certain responses. Specifically, our emotions are alerting us to pay
attention to specific internal and external events that then prompt us to perform a specific action. Anger, fear, sadness and disgust all involve paying attention to present danger in different forms that often include social slights (anger), life or death (fear and often anger), loss or grief (sadness), and contamination (disgust). Generally, When these situations present themselves our bodies often respond as if it "knows what to do." Anxiety involves paying attention to future threat and is also known as "preparatory coping" as it relates to potential danger or threat. In short, our emotions at their core are trying to help us manage current or upcoming situations NOT hurt us even though many of us experience these emotions as uncomfortable.
"Disorders" of Emotions
So what about the syndromes and diagnoses that we label as emotional disorders? As aforementioned, our emotions in and of themselves are generally never the issue since they are meant to help us navigate daily challenges. However, many of us are predisposed (through genetics coupled with learning experiences) to experience normal emotions in a dysregulated fashion. In other words, many of us who develop emotional disorders (or those who don't but experience intense emotions through learning) experience basic emotions as too intense and develop ways of coping that ironically backfire and increase the intensity of the emotion. As such, disorders of emotions share more in common than not which is confirmed by the research literature.
Particularly, individuals who develop emotional disorders (panic disorder, social anxiety disorder, major depressive disorder, generalized anxiety disorders, obsessive-compulsive disorder, etc) experience basic emotions in a dysregulated fashion which creates a pattern of the individual attempting to "get rid of" these emotional experiences in ways that backfire and create more dysregulation. In other words, the individual's regulation strategies may lead to short term relief (in the case of say, a hand washing ritual in OCD) that ultimately backfires and creates more distress long term (I need to wash my hands more to obtain relief). In short, avoidance of situations where strong emotions occur, thought suppression ("I'm not going to think about it"), distraction, rituals (hand washing, checking behaviors, reassurance seeking) and escape behaviors (leaving parties early, shopping during non-peak hours) are common examples of "temporary relief" strategies that "make me feel worse" long term. Moreover, the study of emotional disorders reveals the following shared components of emotional disorders: poor coping strategies that backfire and maintain unnecessarily strong emotions, difficulties in thinking patterns (a tendency toward negative expectations and the occurrence of threat), and avoidance behaviors. Furthermore, emotional disorders share in common the ultimate need to confront strong emotions long term in order to bring emotional experiences back into normal limits for the individual. Ultimately, disorders of emotion all stem from the same underlying tendency toward emotional dysregulation and our environmental experiences coupled with genetics dictate which "disorders" are developed (Social Anxiety versus a specific phobia, etc).
Conclusion
In short, our emotions are meant to help us not hurt us though many of us are predisposed to experience normal, helpful emotions in ways that make us feel more uncomfortable. In attempting to feel more comfortable, I engage in actions that may lead to temporary relief that makes me feel worse long term. As such, learning the functional nature of my basic emotions and learning effective ways to regulate these emotions will help me live a fulfilling life that is not dominated by the "feeling" component of my emotional experience.
