All of us face emotions and trauma in some incidents of life. Almost everyone at least once in life engages with emotions and trauma. These behaviors become overwhelming if retained daily. This leads to initiating negative emotions and developing unhealthy coping techniques such as self-harm or substance abuse disorder. Do you ever realise that at what point do these feelings become difficult to manage? This difficulty initiates the unhealthy coping strategy known as “Emotional dysregulation”. This mechanism reduces the ability to manage negative experiences. People might not be able to heal their emotions and trauma and be negatively affected by it. To reverse these feelings, this blog will be all about how to heal emotional dysregulation and how it works in breaking the cycle of trauma.

Why Trauma Leads to Emotional Dysregulation?

Emotional dysregulation and trauma modify the way of controlling emotions and receiving information in the brain. When negative emotion and trauma occur, it proceeds to built-in a stress response in the nervous system. These series of fight or flight psychological reactions stimulate the involuntary response of the brain trying healing from trauma. This is referred to as a survival-oriented system of the brain and might stay for an extended duration if the survivor fails in healing emotional wounds. Increased sensitivity to perceived threats might result from;

Hyperactivity in the brain's emotional center
The amygdala
The prefrontal cortex is responsible for advanced processing like planning, reasoning, and emotional control.

All of these deteriorate as the post-traumatic effects.

The Relationship Between Emotional Dysregulation and Complex Trauma

Complex trauma influences negative emotional processing and how the brain responds to stressful events. For instance, a kid’s upbringing under ignoring behaviors and punishment will be unable to develop a healthy coping mechanism to deal with strong emotions. This results in an emotional dysregulation trait that develops in him as he grows older.

How does the brain accomplish complex emotions and trauma?

People struggling from intense emotional dysregulation develop a more sensitive amygdala that is the part of the brain responsible for fight-or-flight reactions. This eventually alters the coping technique in a person. Strong emotions like reaction to stressful events, emotional overflow, and problematic for the survivor to manage strong emotional responses.

The Signs of Emotional Dysregulation

People suffering from emotional dysregulation show different behaviors that alter their relationships, mental and physical health, and career growth. Breaking the cycle of trauma, one should be aware of the signs of emotional regulation first. Adults who exhibit emotional dysregulation frequently exhibit the following signs:

Swift mood swings: Dysregulating emotions and trauma leads to extreme mood swings after experiencing casual triggering events.

Difficulty in calming down: Difficulty in healing emotional wounds and calming after the episode of severe anger is an emotional dysregulation symptom. Having trouble calming down after being angry, which results in protracted distress.

Impulsive Behaviours: This is often taken as a failed strategy for healing from trauma by the human brain. Following impulsive behavior patterns is one of the unhealthy coping techniques and leads to substance usage, unnecessary spending, or impulsive sexual activities involvement.

Poor relationships: Due to emotional instability, people find it difficult to maintain healthy relationships. This proceeds towards frequent arguments.

Self-harm: Suicide or self-harm are one of the symptom of emotional distress. Involves injuring oneself as a coping mechanism after emotions and trauma.

Suicidal Thoughts: Having suicidal or self-harming thoughts because of an emotional overload.

Emptiness: A continuous experience of loneliness or disconnection from oneself and other people is referred to as chronic feelings of emptiness.

How to Heal Emotional Dysregulation

To comprehend how to heal emotional dysregulation. It is essential to comprehend the popular healing from trauma approach. These approaches work as breaking the cycle of trauma and aid in healing emotional wounds.

Self-regulation

Understanding your feelings, navigating the feelings of people around you, and crafting good relationships are covered under self-regulation. Knowing your feelings, inspiring yourself, navigating relationships, and identifying and comprehending the feelings of people around you are all components of emotional intelligence.

Recognise feelings

To accelerate breaking the cycle of trauma, recognizing your feelings is essential. Mastering how to express emotions verbally instead of acting them out is crucial while exploring the precise feelings. In this regard cognitive behavioral therapy works remarkably including recognising your feelings and emotions.

Communicate with your subconscious

Our feelings and ideas are not just responses to the circumstances we are in right now. Thus, it is necessary for people to communicate with their subconscious. As well as recognise how recent or old events trigger their emotions. Psychoanalytic therapy can help you regain emotional regulation by exposing your psyche's unconscious content.

Develop your ability to adjust

After facing painful emotions and trauma the survivor cannot self-heal due to trouble adjusting in their life again. Through following therapy for emotional dysregulation and changing behaviour it is possible to fight with emotional dysregulation. Refusing to adjust could lead to more stress, hopelessness, and anxiety. These habits play a role of culprit to destroy physical and emotional well-being. Your therapist can help you to enhance your emotional flexibility.

Therapy for Emotional Regulation

Therapy for emotional regulation is recommended to fight with negative emotions and trauma. Therapy for emotional regulation is better able to control their emotions, feel relaxed, and have better general health.

You can follow professional help by going for;

Internal Family Systems (IFS) Therapy
Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR)
Trauma-Focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (TF-CBT)
Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT)
Somatic Experiencing (SE)

Conclusion

Breaking the cycle of trauma requires self-motivation, confidence, and understanding your feelings with professional assistance. The trauma survivors can regain positive emotional life and balance by learning the art of emotional healing from trauma. Keep determined that there is a hope for a better and stable future.

Emotions and Trauma: Breaking the Cycle of Emotional Dysregulation