Manifestations of Emotional Regulation Disorders

The core essence of emotional dysregulation disorder is that there is a complete mismatch between the individual's emotional response and the current event scene and stimulus intensity, and the inability to bring the emotion back to a stable baseline through independent adjustment. All external manifestations are essentially manifestations of this "adaptation failure" and are not necessarily related to "poor self-control" or "bad personality", and are real emotional function impairments.

I just received a 28-year-old Internet product manager in the clinical consultation room last week. Before entering the door, he was still laughing and exchanging work messages with his colleagues. He sat down and said nothing. He mentioned that his colleague changed the format of a data label in his PPT without saying hello in the meeting last week. Suddenly his eyes turned red and he squeezed the mineral water bottle in his hand in front of me and said, I dropped my mouse in the conference room and cried for almost half an hour in front of the whole team. I regretted it so much that I worked overtime for three consecutive days until 2 o'clock. I even bought a week's worth of milk tea for the whole team to apologize. "I just couldn't control it. At that moment, my anger went straight to Tianling Gai. Afterwards, I felt that it was a big deal. Is there something really wrong with me?" This kind of "explosion" and "glass heart" in everyone's impression is indeed the most common manifestation of emotional dysregulation disorder, but many people don't know that insufficient response is also a typical manifestation.

Last year, a high school girl came for consultation accompanied by her mother. Her mother said that her child was too sensible. When her grandma passed away, the whole family was in panic. She didn't shed a single tear. Instead, she comforted her mother who was crying until she was shaking. After more than half a year, no matter whether it was the last grade test or the official announcement of her relationship with the idol she had been following for a long time, she had no emotional fluctuations. She didn't even bother to watch the anime that she had been waiting for for updates. When I gave her an emotion scale, she pointed to the options of "sad" and "angry" and said, I know what these words mean, but I haven't felt them in a long time. This situation is actually due to the overload of the "isolation" mechanism of emotion regulation. The brain is afraid that you will not be able to bear the severe pain, so it directly turns off all the switches of emotions, and even the pathways to happiness are blocked.

There is another type of performance that is more subtle and often even praised as "emotional stability" and "emotional maturity." I once had a visitor who worked as an Internet HR person. No matter when she encountered an employee resigning and slamming the table or the boss changing the school recruitment plan at 3 a.m., she would always smile and never blush. Everyone around her thought she had a very good personality. As a result, she passed by a convenience store after get off work last month and the iced American she wanted to buy was sold out. She stood on the side of the road and broke down crying. The aunt passing by thought she was being bullied and secretly took out her mobile phone to call the police. She couldn't explain it herself. It was obviously a trivial matter, but why she suddenly couldn't handle it. In fact, she is not emotionally stable, but has been relying on suppression. The threshold of emotional regulation has long been worn out, and any trivial matter can become the straw that breaks the camel's back.

It's interesting to say that there is currently no completely unified standard for defining emotion dysregulation disorders in the industry. It is not listed as an independent diagnostic item in the American DSM-5 diagnostic system. It is treated more as an accompanying symptom of borderline personality disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder, and depressive disorder. ； However, many domestic clinical psychology researchers have pointed out in recent years that many ordinary people who do not meet the diagnostic standards for severe mental illness and personality disorders also have clear impairments in emotion regulation functions. This impairment has significantly affected their social functions and also requires standardized intervention. Different schools of explanation also have their own emphasis: Psychoanalytically oriented counselors will believe that this is related to the lack of emotional mirroring in the early upbringing process. When you were a child, your emotions were not responded to correctly by your caregivers, so naturally you did not know how to deal with your own emotions. ； Counselors from the cognitive behavioral school will think that this is because the emotion recognition-evaluation-regulation pathway has not been established. You cannot accurately identify your emotions, and naturally you cannot talk about regulation. In fact, both statements are supported by corresponding empirical research, and there is no absolute right or wrong.

To put it bluntly, the mood adjustment system is like the automatic brightness adjustment function of your mobile phone. Under normal circumstances, the screen will automatically brighten when it is in a bright place, and dim when it is in a dark place. If you feel uncomfortable, you can also adjust it manually. But for people with adjustment disorders, this function is directly broken. It is either too dark to see clearly under the bright sun, or it is so bright that it dazzles the eyes in the middle of the night. Even if you manually press it for a long time, you cannot adjust it to a comfortable gear. It’s not that you don’t want to adjust it, but that the function is broken. It’s really not a case of “poor mental quality.”

You really don’t have to label yourself based on online entries. These manifestations are not black and white. Many people will repeatedly jump between states of explosion, isolation, and depression. If you often have the feeling that "emotions are out of my control", or you regret it to death after getting angry, or you don't feel at all when you should be sad. This situation has even affected your relationship with the people around you, and your daily work and study. Don't hold on, talk to a professional counselor, or go to the clinical psychology department of a regular hospital for an evaluation. It is much more useful than wondering on your own "Do I have a personality problem?"