True Recovery

I am looking forward to your next section!

Thank you for your thoughtful response.  I need to read and think about it more. 

Regarding the ‘free floating emotions.’  I actually have two thoughts for you on this.

There’s a tight connection between our body and our emotions. We physically feel symptoms, or indications of different emotions.  A good example is, butterflies in your stomach, when you’re nervous.  I’ve even seen studies showing a strong connection between depression and Cancer. 

What I never realized before was that we can go the other way too; we can affect our mood with our bodies.  Within Dr. Linehan’s skills training manual, she talks about the ‘half smile’.  In a stressful situation, put a half-smile on your face.  I thought it was the silliest thing I’d ever heard, then I tried it and it actually made a difference.  Think about something or someone you really despise.  Then put on a smile, just half way.  Does it affect your emotions?  It does mine.  I find it really difficult to feel hatred with a partial smile on my face. 

I remember a masseuse friend of mine, several years ago, telling me that it’s not uncommon for clients of hers to weep or experience other strong emotions while getting a massage.  There’s a book (I’ve not yet read) called, ‘The Yoga of the Nine Emotions,’ which goes through yoga positions to experience a full range of emotions.  I know nothing about acupuncture or acupressure, but I have heard that practitioners apply this technique to treat depression and other psychological issues.  Just two days ago, ‘mitchems’, another user on this site was telling me about researchers who studied a full range of facial expressions using electrodes implanted in their face to stimulate muscles.  They found they actually experienced many of the emotions they were simulating.

Another thing to consider is if you’re fusing thoughts with emotions in your mind.  Get a notebook, and next time you experience this, describe your emotions on paper.  If you can’t do it in the moment, get through it using Distress Tolerance tools and describe your emotions as soon as you’re able.  When I started doing that, I wound up with a bunch of thoughts phrased as emotions.  Emotions, by their definition, are adjectives like ‘I feel happy, sad or anxious’.  On the other hand phrases like, ‘I feel like banging my head against the wall’, ‘I feel taken for granted’, ‘I feel like he’s a jerk’ are not emotions at all, they’re thoughts (judgments or responses).  I understood the thoughts, but wasn’t able to split them apart from the emotion, much less identify and describe them.  I’m writing a section of how to identify emotions, which should be up in a couple of days.  That might help.

Mindfulness contains many of the tools to separate experience from thought, and thought from emotion.  You might want to go through some of the guided mindfulness exercises. 

About the feedback, thanks!  You’re very welcome, I’m glad to hear you’re getting value from the site.  Please remember, though, that while I’m passionate about it and strongly believe in DBT, I am not a professional. 

There can be some stigma associated with taking the class, especially with instructors whom you know personally.  Personally, I have greater respect for anyone who can get through DBT and successfully apply it.  I hope most DBT instructors share that view.

Mike

First, I just wanted to thank you from the bottom of my heart for this site.  I have really wanted to join a DBT class but can't.  In my work I work with many therapists and many of them also provide DBT.  It feels a certainty that my work community would find out I was doing DBT tx and that would be too scary.  So this is a fabulous option for me.  Thank you.

The free floating emotions...  they are probably connected to something, I'm just not sure what.  If I am sitting around, doing paperwork for example, one moment, I'll be feeling great and excited about my work, then my mood will fall and I'll think about cutting or something.  It's hard for me to pinpoint what happened.  The change in emotion feels unconnected to anything else. 

I love your explanation above.  It makes sense. 

I understand how overwhelming emotions can leave you exhausted, especially if you're having challenges regulating them.

In general, there's no way to regulate what we don't understand or can't identify.  So, it's really the first step in emotion regulation.  We do work with our emotions differently, especially using the 'Opposite Action' tool (which is under development).  Working with fear, for example, is different from managing shame or joy.

I'm not entirely sure I understand what you mean by 'free floating emotions'.  I only know of two different ways we form emotions, first from our thoughts.  Example:  I think about the disconnect notice I got from the electric company, and my lack of money to pay and I begin to feel 'worried', 'scared', 'nervous', or 'anxious'.  The other source of emotions is physiological.  So, a person suffering from bipolar disorder, clinical depression, or premenstrual syndrome can stimulate various centers within our brain, which trigger emotions.  We can manage chemical imbalances with medication.  Many with more mild cases have found success improving emotional stability through diet, exercise and mindfulness or meditation.

Please tell me a bit more about these 'free floating emotions'.

Mike