Imbalanced emotional regulation

Imbalanced emotional regulation is not essentially a moral flaw of "glassy heart" or "poor personality", but a functional disorder caused by mismatching in the three links of individual emotional arousal, regulation, and feedback. According to the National Mental Health Survey Report released by the Chinese Psychological Association in 2023, 87% of the general population has experienced transient emotional imbalance in high-pressure scenes. Only when symptoms last for more than 6 months and significantly affect social functions, clinical intervention is required.

The 1998 Internet operator Xiao Zhou I met in the consulting room last week is a typical transient imbalance. After revising eight versions of the activity plan, Party A responded and asked for the first version. She stared at the screen for three minutes, squatted at the safety exit of the company corridor and cried for half an hour. When she recovered, her first reaction was to slap herself in the face, scolding herself, "I can't bear such a trivial matter, what else can I do?"

Interestingly, psychological practitioners with different orientations interpret this scene completely differently.

Psychoanalytic counselors will think that this is the result of long-term suppression of emotional expression in childhood - Xiao Zhou said that whenever he cried when he was a child, his parents would scold him, "Why are you crying? Is this even worth crying for?" ”, when she grew up, she felt ashamed of "showing emotions". The first moment her emotions came out was not acceptance, but self-attack.

Consultants in the cognitive behavioral school will anchor the problem in the current catastrophic thinking: Xiao Zhou said that the first thought that popped into her mind at the time was "I can't even connect a plan well. The leader must think that I have poor ability. I will be on the layoff list next month. If I can't pay my mortgage, I will have to sleep on the street." This directly magnified a single work incident into an existential crisis, and the emotional threshold was directly breached.

Friends who are engaged in neuroscience are more direct, saying that this is a typical "amygdala hijacking": when a person is under high pressure, the amygdala, which is responsible for emotional processing, will skip the prefrontal cortex, which is responsible for rational decision-making, and directly take over the body. To put it bluntly, "the brain cannot move, and the temper comes first." This is an instinctive reaction evolved by humans and has nothing to do with willpower.

You must have had moments like this, right? Obviously it was just your partner who forgot to buy the strawberries you had been talking about for two days after get off work, but you suddenly exploded and dug out the old account of him forgetting your birthday three years ago. You were so quarrelsome that you wanted to break up. When you calmed down and looked at the messy table, you were confused: Am I the one?

Many people have a huge misunderstanding about "emotional regulation". They think that "regulation" means "suppression", which means suppressing all negative emotions and being "invisible to happiness and anger" is considered powerful. I once met a man who worked as an auditor. He had never blushed in front of his colleagues in five years of work. He kept swallowing any grievances he had. Last month, he couldn't unscrew a can of yellow peaches at home. Then he suddenly collapsed and smashed a bowl on the table. He went to the hospital for a check-up with moderate anxiety and somatization symptoms. The doctor said that his emotions were like a balloon that was constantly being inflated. It was about to burst. The last needle was the reason why he couldn't unscrew the can.

The adjustment methods on the market actually follow different research directions, and there is no "standard answer".

Those who believe in psychoanalysis can try tracing the origin of emotions. Next time you feel emotional, don’t rush to scold yourself. First ask, “Is my anger really coming from the matter in front of me? ”The girl who quarreled with her boyfriend before because of strawberries only realized after reviewing her review that she had just stayed up all night to revise the annual report the day before and was scolded by her boss for half an hour. She was so full of grievances that she forgot that buying strawberries was just a flood outlet.

If you are used to cognitive behavioral methods, you can try the "grounding technique". When you feel emotional, first touch something cold around you, such as a glass or a metal key, name three colors you can see in front of you, and then talk about the taste in your mouth now. Use sensory experience to pull yourself out of the catastrophic thinking of "it's over".

The method for neuroscience enthusiasts is simpler. When your mood rises, you can grab a cup of cold drink first, or do five squats on the spot, and use changes in your physiological state to bring your mood back down. You have personally tested it to be effective. When I rush to work on a project and get so anxious that I want to throw the keyboard, I take out the mints from my bag and bite them into pieces. The moment the coolness explodes in my mouth, half of the unknown fire is gone.

To be honest, I am particularly annoyed by the "emotional stability" promoted on the Internet now. It seems that adults should always be calm. Shedding a tear or getting angry once is a failure.

No one can remain emotionally stable forever.

It is normal to have an imbalance in emotional regulation. Just like when you catch a cold or have a fever when the seasons change, or your legs get sore after running for too long, your emotional system will occasionally "go on strike", so you don't need to label yourself as "poor psychological quality" or "immature". When you really feel that you can't handle it anymore, it's not shameful to find a friend to scold you for half an hour, or find a place where no one is around to cry, or even talk to a professional counselor.

After all, we don’t live to be emotionless robots. We can cry, laugh, get angry and happy about trivial things. We are living human beings.