How to regulate big emotions as a single parent, including anger.
There are no right way to feel about a situation. These big emotions that we have, especially anger as this is often seen as a taboo, can feel uncomfortable and can have feelings attached to them like ‘bad or destructive.’ Being emotional doesn’t mean that you have to be out of control. Actually you can learn to respond not react, and often silence is very powerful and empowering in situations where emotions are high. Not everyone will agree, approve or understand how you are feeling, and that’s ok. They aren’t the best person to judge how you are feeling, YOU ARE. Painful emotions like anger are important and shouldn’t be ignored.
Our bodies come equipped with what we need to survive and emotions are a huge part of that package. Emotions are not right or wrong, good or bad, they are just emotions. These big emotions don’t last forever and it’s important you learn about yourself, your triggers and your crisis points. You can’t get rid of emotions as they serve important survival functions. A healthy perspective on big emotions is a great place to start.
Emotional regulation is not about pushing down or ignoring our feelings. Sadness, fear and anger are perfectly normal and healthy emotions. It’s about accepting, noticing and prioritising ourselves and self care. Which as single parents we must do. Because if we aren’t in a strong resilient position, who will look after our children? It has a ripple affect to our children and we are modelling and teaching them valuable lessons about emotions.
Here are 4 quick steps to emotional acceptance:
Observe, bring awareness to feelings in your body
Breathe., take a few deep breathes
Expand, create some space for these big feelings
Allow, allow the feelings to be there, don’t ignore them
When we don’t understand and accept our emotions we reach crisis point. Everyone will have a different crisis point. It’s about knowing your limits and making sure that we are practising self care and staying in tune with our emotions.
We will all feel emotions differently on the body and we will all have different triggers. For example, someone might not be bothered or feel angry about someone being late, but someone else might be outraged and hold punctuality as a big value in their lives.
I would like you to think about a positive emotion and point out where you feel this in your body, does it have a sensation? does it have a colour? do you like the feeling? Now do the same with anger How does it feel? can you describe where you feel it? how does impact you? Some examples include vision blurred, throat, stomach, clenched jaw, clenched fists, sweaty hands, hot flushes and muscle tension.
Emotional Regulation sounds very robotic but it is actually a very enlightening and simple way that we can check in with ourselves, become more aware of how we are feeling and not let our emotions take over. The aim of emotional regulation is to become in control of our emotions, not just surviving them. We can respond and manage an emotional experience that we can feel positive about.
Upping your emotional regulation skill will help you to:
Understand the emotions you experience better
Learning to identify emotions quicker, and not burying your head in the sand, that will leave to the feelings escalating, and explosive situations
Understand more about the functions of these emotions, the purposes they serve or needs they fulfil
Reduce emotional vulnerability and give you more control
Learn how to decrease your emotional suffering
Give you the skills to quiet your body especially when you have a racing heart, fast breathing, tense muscles etc
Give you the skills to deal with intense emotions and respond rather than react
Improve self esteem as we can be proud (sometimes) of the way we respond, less regret and judgemental feelings
Let’s talk about emotional regulation a bit more. There are 3 islands:
IN CONTROL ISLAND
When we are on this island we feel motivated, we are happy achieving our goals, we are progressing and feel focused. This is called the ‘Drive System’. But as we achieve more, we do more and we start to see triggers of feeling tired, overwhelmed, stressed etc.
If we ignore these triggers and let ourselves drift out to sea then we will find ourselves on…
OUT OF CONTROL ISLAND
This is our threat system where our adrenaline and cortisol kicks in. We go into fight or flight mode. We have ignored all of our triggers and we have now found ourselves deep out into the sea and on this out of control island. We can have feelings of anxiety, anger and disgust. Good news is that we don’t need to stay here for ever, there is a return ticket to ‘In Control Island’, it just takes a bit longer to get back. We might have to take more drastic measures and action like, taking time off sick from work, going to long term counselling and even going to the GP and taking medication.
However if we had noticed our triggers earlier, if when we had snapped at our children, felt very tired, muscle ache, feeling tearful, whatever your triggers might be. If we had listened and taken action on those then we would hop over to…
EMOTIONAL REGULATION ISLAND
This island is fairly close to the ‘In Control Island’, you can hop over and visit this island a few times a day if you need to, or you could spend the whole day here. It’s about recognising early that your emotions and feelings are heightened and you are starting to feel out of control. The key is the word ‘starting’. On the ‘ER Island’ we want our soothing system to kick in. Our main aim is to recognise how we are feeling early, and take positive action to not get to crisis point. We want to manage our distress, these big emotions and promote feelings of contentment and feel cared for. Promoting self love and care is what this island is all about. All of the things you do on this island don’t need to be grand gestures, they can just be a quick 5 minute self care that enables you to become back in control. There is a huge list of suggestions below.
6 ways to check in with yourself regularly:
Notice any feelings or triggers eg tiredness, adjust your day to slow down if you can
Try to describe how you are feeling like the weather, angry might be stormy or cloudy might feel a bit overwhelmed. Or perhaps cloudy with a bit of sun feels like you are happy but can feel something isn’t quite right
Do a quick body scan, notice any tense areas
Check in with a friend, give each other a few minutes to acknowledge what is presenting for them today
Take 5 minutes in the morning to read an affirmation and respond to how this sits with you today
Do 5 minutes of mindfulness, notice if anything came up
75 things you can do:
Here is a huge list of ways and activities that we can relax, soothe, have fun and take time to regulate our emotions. So there are no excuses to not being able to think of anything or create time to master being good at spending some time in our emotional regulation island. What would you add to the list?
Making lists
Planning a holiday
Making plans for the future
Finish a and focus on a job that’s been on your list for a while
Watching something we enjoy on TV
Talking to a friend on the phone
Texting a friend
Arrange to meet up with a friend
Relaxing in the sun/ outside
Going for a short brisk walk
Going for a long walk
Scream into a pillow
Jump on egg boxes with your children
Really tense your muscles like uncooked pasta and then release them lie cooked spaghetti
Sit in a comfy chair with a hot cup of tea
Repairing something
Drawing
Painting
Doodling
Do a Mandala
Being creative
Sewing/ Knitting/ Cross Stitch
Watching your fav movie or a new one
Listen to a podcast
Watch some TED talks
Taking care of plants/ gardening
Writing in a diary or journal
Lighting a candle and enjoying the smell
Sit and think about your emotional weather
Plan an early night/ lie in
Put up positive affirmations and repeat, maybe whilst your doing the dishes
Listen to your fav song
Have a dance in the kitchen
Reading/ writing a letter
Look at/ talking about photos that make you happy
Daydreaming
Cooking a meal you love
Playing a card game
Set up a relaxing bath
Have a hot/ cold shower, taking your time
Singing in the shower
Watching/ listening to birds
Doing exercise even if it’s 5 minutes
Do a few yoga poses
Go to your fav coffee shop
Watching a comedy
Sit still with your feet up
Singing in the shower
Have a good clean, even if it’s just 1 drawer in your house or the whole house
Go for a picnic or take a meal outside
Enjoy some time alone, even if it’s 5 minutes
Hide your phone for an hour
Take 7 purposeful breathes
Put your fav radio show on
Make a Pintrest board of things you love
Make a vision board out of old magazines
Pay a bill/ plan and save to pay a bill/ enquire about resolving the bill
Take a different route to a usual destination
Take longer than normal moisturising
Eat something you really enjoy and savour each bite
Go on a bike ride instead of taking the car
Put your fav music on in the car and sing along loudly
Read a book
Discuss a book with someone
Get cosy with a blanket and big pillow for 10 minutes
Make a smoothie/ Milkshake/ Take some vitamins
Tell Sandra (your inner critic) to Fuck Off
Go to a beach
Go to the the countryside
Playing an instrument
Run and and down your stairs
Cuddle a pet
Watch clips of cute animals
Make your favourite drink
Remembering that you are important as well and worthy of love, care and attention
Remember big emotions are normal and it is a big skill to learn how to regulate, accept and make sure that we are practising self care. We cover this in our Anger Workshops run by Melissa Theo, plus in our Wellbeing Workshops.