Establecimiento de la Universidad Veracruzana Intercultural

When you struggle with emotion dysregulation, it’s often quite difficult to notice and label your emotions, even in moments when your emotions aren’t that intense. Karen’s anger rapidly intensified and got the better of her during dinner. People with BPD often feel that their emotions go from 0 to 60 in an instant, and figure out what happened when it’s “too late.” This can be a painful way to live. Using mindful-ness to notice and label your emotions when they are not so intense, to become aware of when the intensity changes, and then to label your experience is vital to overcoming emotion dysregulation. In DBT this practice is known as being mindful of your current emotion (Linehan 1993). To help you under-stand the steps involved in this approach, we have developed the acronym RIDE THE WAVE:

1. Register your body sensations.

2. Identify your action urges.

3. Determine the emotion.

4. Express to yourself nonjudgmentally.

5. Take deep breaths.

6. Hands and body are open.

7. Establish a grounded position.

8. WAVE: Watch and notice your emotion as if it were a wave.

These steps will help you increase your ability to notice and label your emotions and slow them down. Remember that just paying attention to your emotions can start to

Emotion Dysregulation

103 decrease the intensity. The more you practice this, the better you will get at it and the easier it will become. Since you are just learning this skill, we recommend practicing it at least once a day as an emotional check- in when you are feeling little to no distress. It’s a practice in paying attention to your expe-rience in a particular way.

The goal is to be able to use this skill during all levels of distress; however, when you are beginning this practice or in very emotionally intense situations, you will need to step back from the situation at hand by asking for a break and going to a different room or outside so that you are better able to focus on the practice and your experience. Again, this is a “muscle”

that you are building, so practice this way of paying attention in your daily life. Once you do that, you will notice that in times of distress, you can easily reach for this type of mindful emotional check- in to slow yourself down. Remember, aware-ness of needing a break and asking for it is mindfulaware-ness. Here’s how to use RIDE THE WAVE.

1. Register your body sensations. One of the functions of emotions is to give you information about your experi-ence. One way to get that information is to pay attention to your body sensations; all emotions have body sensa-tions that can be helpful clues in identifying emosensa-tions.

For example, Karen might have been able to notice signs of anger, such as tightness or pressure in her chest; warmth in her face; or shoulder, back, or neck tension. Generally body sensations increase in intensity as the emotion increases in intensity. There is no specific body sensation that always goes with a specific emotion, but there are some common body sensations that people experience with certain emotions, and you can watch for them as you practice. As you pay more attention, you will get more familiar with your own body sensations and feelings that accompany your emotions. Here are some examples of

what you might experience, but we want you to develop your own labels and define your own experience:

 Anger: Chest and shoulder tension, a sense of pressure building up, warmth in your face, yelling

 Fear: Butterflies in your stomach, shakiness, a pit in your stomach, a lump in your throat, urges to run or hide

 Joy: Lightness in your body, a smile on your face, laughter

 Love: Feeling warm toward others, a lightness in your step

 Sadness: Heaviness, emptiness, hollowness, sluggish-ness, stillsluggish-ness, tears

 Shame: Tightness all over your body, curling into your-self, feeling jittery or numb

2. Identify your action urges. Emotions are accompanied by action urges that give you further information to help identify what you are feeling. Just because emotions have urges doesn’t mean you have to act on them. Imagine if you acted on your every urge how much trouble you would find yourself in. As with body sensations, there are also some common action urges for emotions. Here are some examples:

 Anger: The action urge is to attack.

 Fear: The action urge is to flee, freeze, or fight (you may know this as the “ fight- or- flight” response).

 Sadness: The action urge is to isolate and withdraw.

 Shame or guilt: The action urge is to hide.

Emotion Dysregulation

105 3. Determine the emotion. Once you have identified the

body sensations and the action urge, the next step is to name the emotion or emotions that you are experiencing.

The act of naming the emotions can help you to feel more grounded in your experience and more in control. Not knowing what you are feeling can cause even more dis-tress than the feeling itself.

4. Express to yourself nonjudgmentally. As we discussed previously, negative judgments can increase the intensity of your emotions, which can be a pitfall when you are being mindful of your emotional experience in the moment. The goal here is to express to yourself the emotion you are feeling and to do so nonjudgmentally;

for example, I am noticing anxiety instead of Oh God, I’m anxious, I shouldn’t feel that way, and That’s so stupid.

Using phrases such as I am noticing and I feel an emotion can be helpful. Remember that you are not your emotions and that your emotions won’t last forever. When you say to yourself I am anxious, it can signal an inevitable per-manency from which you might not imagine any escape.

5. Take deep breaths. As you RIDE THE WAVE, remem-ber to breathe. Paying attention to your breath will help you to reduce the intensity of your emotions so that you won’t move too quickly into action.

6. Hands and body are open. Keep your body in an open and grounded position. Make sure that your feet are on the ground, your arms are not crossed, and your hands are relaxed, not clinched. Try to relax your shoulders and the muscles around your eyes. Sit or stand up straight, and avoid hunching over.

7. Establish a grounded position. Place your feet firmly on the floor, and make sure that you can feel your sit bones making contact with whatever you are sitting on.

8. Watch and notice your emotion as if it were a wave.

Now that you have paid close attention to your experi-ence and identified the emotion, you can watch and notice the experience as if it were a wave. Remember that like a wave, the intensity will increase, peak, and then decline, like a wave crashing on the shore. As you watch the emotions decrease in intensity, you can elect to watch and notice for longer or shorter periods. As the emotional intensity decreases, you might find that you can begin to think more clearly, and identify ways to solve your problem and reconnect to your goals and values that often get lost during times of high emotional intensity.

RIDE THE WAVE increases awareness and gives you more control and choice about your actions and reactions.

Once you have this awareness, you may need to use other mindfulness skills, such as accepting reality as it is or experi-encing an intense emotion, like sadness, that you may have been avoiding. Karen may have needed to accept that not everyone at this dinner party would agree with her and that trying to change their opinions would only make the situa-tion worse.

The best way to learn this skill is to set your intention to practice, and check in with yourself. Set a regular time. Find a quiet place and go through the acronym step by step. Learning to notice and label your emotional experience is invaluable and takes practice. When you get the hang of it, pay attention to times when you are unsure of what you are feeling, and RIDE THE WAVE. Be open and curious about what you notice, and let yourself experience it fully.



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Mindfulness Practice: Use Nonanger