Text Module 4 Emotional Regulation

Emotional Regulation and ADHD

Emotional Dysregulation Explained:

Emotional dysregulation occurs when you're overwhelmed by your emotions. In these moments, your body sends distress signals to your brain, making it challenging to decide how to act or respond.

Regulating emotions is an executive function. For women with ADHD, uncomfortable or large emotions often trigger a stress response. This stress response can activate the fight, flight, freeze, or fawn reactions. As a child, when stressed, you likely began choosing old coping responses such as avoidance, aiming to please others, striving for perfection, or other masking behaviors. These habits impact how you react to stress today.

To trust yourself more, it's crucial first to become emotionally regulated. Then, you can try and decipher your emotions. Let's dive deeper into how ADHD influences emotional experiences and their management.

ADHD Causes ER Issues

  1. Delaying overwhelming things and a different understanding of time
    • Research has revealed that postponing gratification can activate areas of the brain associated with physical pain in ADHD individuals. Many with ADHD will prefer to put off something challenging until later. Additionally, the ADHD brain often has issues with "time blindness." Due to these preferences, stress can build up in our fast-paced world.
  2. Neurodivergent brains struggle to identify emotions.
    • Studies in the ADHD population have reported rates of a condition called alexithymia at double to quadruple that of the general population. Alexithymia involves difficulty identifying internal states such as thirst, hunger, needing to go to the bathroom, temperature, and feelings. The rates are even higher for people with autism. This means you may have trouble noticing bodily signals of stress and identifying your feelings. Alexithymia can contribute to overwhelm, communication issues, and difficulty knowing when you need to eat, drink, and sleep, making self-care challenging at times.
  3. Recognizing the positive or "decreased early sensory encoding for the positive."
    • People with ADHD tend to pay more attention to the negative aspects of a given situation. For example, if presented with a field of both living and dead flowers, their initial focus will be on the dead ones. The cause of this is still unknown and could be due to either genetic or environmental factors.
  4. Keeping out the bad stuff or filtering the "negative."
    • Neurotypical brains are like a dance club with a bouncer, while ADHD brains are like an outdoor dance party. When emotions are created, the neurotypical brain can more easily filter painful experiences, memories, and thoughts.
  5. Getting stuck to the "negative"
    • Women with ADHD have more difficulty detaching from the "negative", making it challenging to stop ruminating when experiencing something difficult.
  6. Making your big emotions smaller or cognitive "control."
    • As a woman with ADHD, you might find it harder to think about your emotions to help make them smaller or manageable once they start.
  7. Quieting the chatter that overwhelms or the Default Mode Network (DMN).
    • The DMN is a part of the brain that remains active in those with ADHD when they're working or focusing, possibly causing distractions about past mistakes, worries, or desires.

What Impacts ER?

Emotions and emotional regulation are influenced by:

  • Early development and attachment
  • How you were regulated as a child by your family
  • What you were taught about your emotions
  • The beliefs you formed about yourself and the world
  • Your brain and nervous system and how information is processed

Gross Model of ER

The primary model to help neurotypicals regulate emotions is the Gross model for emotional regulation. This model is time-linked and is a framework to enhance our ability to regulate emotions before the "triggering event," during the event, and after the event. For those with ADHD, the focus is more on staying safe and calm rather than on actions before and after a triggering event.

Summary

We've discussed emotions, their origin, their importance, and the unique emotional experiences of women with ADHD. Now, we're delving into emotional regulation and our tailored model to achieve better regulation.

Neurotypical Models Don't Work for ADHD Women

Stress can often feel like DANGER because of various factors, including years of criticism, overwhelming sensory experiences, and unmanageable routines. When the body perceives too much stress, the sympathetic nervous system activates, making the THINKING BRAIN ineffective.

Flourish Model

To regulate emotions, consistent practice is needed in:

  • Self-compassion
  • Self-care
  • Self-awareness
  • Self-accommodation
  • Self-advocacy

Reflection

Reflect on this model of emotional regulation and its relevance to what you've learned about emotions and the ADHD brain. Is it beneficial? Or not?

The Good News

You can improve your relationship with your emotions and decode them by:

  1. Unlearning false beliefs about emotions
  2. Understanding your unique brain and body
  3. Practicing new skills at different points in the event chain

New Beliefs

Emotions hold value, and understanding them is crucial. They aren't inherently good or bad and are temporary. Resisting them can prolong their presence.

The New Skills: Self Care and Self Awareness

How does the flourish model of self-care and self-awareness relate to emotional regulation?

  • Self-Awareness: Women with ADHD may often ignore their needs and suppress discomfort. Becoming self-aware can help recognize these patterns.
  • Self-Care: By learning self-care, emotional regulation becomes more achievable.

Exploring how beliefs about emotions and internalized stigma make emotional regulation more difficult and replacing them with new beliefs.

  • Learning how to recognize and name your feelings.
  • Talking to yourself to help regulate yourself.
  • Practicing self-distancing talk techniques.
  • Building skills of interoceptive awareness to help you with self-care and stress management with check-ins.

The New Skills: Self Compassion

How is self-compassion related to emotional regulation?

Throughout our group, we will focus on building self-compassion. Instead of being critical and shaming when we experience difficult emotions, it's important to be understanding and loving. This can help to prevent episodes of dysregulation. Shame causes more, not less, regulation. In our next session, we will learn about and practice a self-compassion break to help us be kinder to ourselves. Remember that difficult emotions can be seen as chances to be gentle with ourselves.

The New Skills: Self Advocacy

How is self-advocacy related to emotional regulation?

Being aware of your needs and stress levels and responding to yourself in a compassionate way can often motivate you to stand up for yourself. When you are not advocating for yourself, resentment and anger may build, adding to emotional load.

Self-advocacy is a way of taking care of yourself. Self-advocacy includes:

  • Asking for things you need
  • Getting information you need
  • Making choices
  • Trying to understand things
  • Communicating boundaries to others
  • Learning about your rights

New Skills: Self Accommodation

How does self-accommodation help with emotional regulation?

Growing up, women with ADHD were often taught to put up with difficult situations in order to make other people happy. This coping strategy can now lead to feelings of being overwhelmed. By understanding yourself better and being kinder to yourself, you can start to recognize how much of what you are going through can be improved by taking care of yourself instead of always accommodating others.

It's about giving yourself permission to make changes to help yourself to make things easier for you or more comfortable, something that was not allowed in the past.

New Skills: Self Accommodation

Some examples are:

  • Refraining from entering into situations or relationships that cause you to stress, even though you have been taught to do this to please others.
  • Creating safe sensory environments to reduce stress even though you've likely been taught you must withstand discomfort to survive.
  • Setting boundaries even though you feel it's impolite.
  • Making alterations to expectations you have of yourself so that you can do things easier, even if it feels indulgent.

Group Exercise: Self Awareness - Beliefs about Emotions

Research shows beliefs about emotions can cause us to be more or less emotionally regulated. For example, if your family teaches you emotions are to be avoided, you will try to get rid of your emotions when you experience them, which will lead to more emotional dysregulation.

You may feel shame when you feel an emotion which will be a "double emotion", the second one being completely unnecessary.

What false beliefs do you have about emotions that were taught to you that have harmed you and are now causing you dysregulation?

Emotions and helpful beliefs:

  • They aren't good and bad.
  • They are meant to keep you safe, although your body and brain may get confused.
  • You can befriend them.
  • They aren't permanent.
  • They don't mean anything good or bad about you as a person. If you feel your emotions, allow and are curious, they will go away sooner.

Group Exercise: Self Advocacy - Boundaries and Emotions

ASSERTIVE BILL OF RIGHTS

The following rights highlight the freedom you have to stand up for yourself and be clear about your position without disrespecting others.

You have the right to:

  • Express your feelings and opinions appropriately and have them taken seriously by others.
  • Ask for what you want.
  • Be treated with respect and not be taken for granted.
  • Disagree with others regardless of their position or numbers.
  • Take the time you need to respond.
  • Say “no” without feeling guilty.
  • Say “I don’t know”.
  • Ask questions when you don't understand.
  • Not sacrifice your comfort for others all the time.

Group Exercise: Self Advocacy - Boundaries and Emotions

You have the right to:

  • Feel all of your emotions (including anger) and express them appropriately.
  • Not explain to others the reasons why you say no.
  • Ask questions.
  • Set your own priorities.
  • Make my own decisions and deal with the consequences.
  • Make mistakes.
  • Change your mind.
  • Feel good about you, your actions, and your life.
  • Exercise any and all of these rights, without feeling guilty.

Discussion Questions:

  1. What happens when you read these rights?
  2. If you were deprived of these rights or did not know you had them, what impact would it have on your emotions and your emotional regulation?