Why is Emotion Regulation Important For My Physical Health?

I’m going to be the first to admit that when I was younger I often struggled with my emotion regulation. This often came to the forefront in the context of relationships, because I had a “short temper.” I would get angry and yell, pretty quickly. I could always calm down, but I came to realize the older I got that I had to remove myself from the situation in order to get myself to be more calm. I had a really bad breakup geez, almost 5 years ago now, that I also had a difficult time controlling my emotions, especially sadness and rumination. That last time, that was the lesson for me. But we’ll get to that in moment…

A transition from a poor emotion regulation period to a better one.

First, let’s talk about what emotion regulation is, because I know that some of you may never have really heard the term before. Emotion regulation is our attempts to control the experience, expression, time and scale of our emotions. It has been long known to be important for our mental health, and only more recently explored for physical health. These are also skills that many of us learn as children, but often do require practice throughout our lifetimes. I worked in retail for a long time and as I reflect back I can see how customers yelling at me, for let’s be honest, very small things (I had a lady yell at me once because a competitor had an item for a dollar less but she didn’t tell me before she paid – I happily would have matched it… and by yelled I mean screamed bloody murder) and I realize they were exhibiting very poor emotion regulation, which is more harmful for themselves than the stress it caused me.

If you’re yelling at retail workers (or servers, etc) you might want to check on your emotion regulation skills.

Here’s what we know about emotion regulation and physical health:

1. better emotion regulation impacts our overall physical health positively
2. difficulties with emotion regulation, especially with prolonged negative emotion, can make you more at risk at developing heart disease
3. emotional suppression and rumination (part of poor emotion regulation) cause lower energy, greater physical pain, greater disability, and overall lower quality of health
4. difficulties with emotion regulation make it difficult to engage in self-care and health-related behaviours necessary for managing chronic illness
5. better emotion regulation makes it easier to manage stressors in our lives, meaning less flares and relapses of illness
6. better emotion regulation increases medication adherence and sticking with diet and exercise regimes

Back to my story. So, I had this breakup and this very poor emotion regulation following it, and then I had a flare so terrible I ended up in the hospital for pain. I was released the same day, and the pain came down a bit, but it really went back to normal levels when I was able to come out of the depressive funk I was in. I can safely say I have not had a problem regulating my emotions since… and I mean really who wants a flare like that again? So, we’ve answered the question why, and there are lots of “how tos” in regulating emotions, but I’m going to leave you with one to try out.

A much more emotionally regulated period

Learning to self-soothe. Again, many of us learn this skill as children, but not everyone does, and often we do less of it as we get older. Some ideas for practicing self-soothing are to do meditations such as loving kindness (click here) or a relaxation practice like progressive muscle relaxation (click here). Expressive writing about the experience (click here), breathing exercises (click here), and self-care strategies like taking a bubble bath, are more ways to lear to self-soothe. There are many other strategies online so I suggest a Google search if you’re looking for more!

Take care, and keep making the most of it!
–Kelsey

Integrating Health with Mental Health

Recently I read an article in a psychotherapy magazine put out by the BCACC (British Columbia Association of Accredited Counsellors) about how therapists can and perhaps should integrate health promotion into their clinical practice. Being interested in health psychology anyway, and wanting to work with people with chronic illness as well as mental health problems, I devoured the article. Then I did a quick google search to see what others are saying. And while there are not a ton of journal articles on the subject, there are a few, all pointing to the same thought – this is something therapists should do. What makes it difficult is that psychotherapists, whether they hold a Masters or PhD (or not, depending on where you live they may not need either), typically don’t have a lot of training in health outside of mental health (always a little bit as it relates but rarely a large amount). This makes me curious as to what everything thinks about therapists encouraging health promotion, in some way, during counselling.

Article from Insights magazine (Spring 2017 issue)

What this article really looks at is not just physical health or mental health but all components of health. A holistic approach. Sometimes people go to therapy for things like weight loss, which in that case, health promotion and education seems necessary. Other times someone might bring it up as a secondary concern. There’s also, of course, the interrelation between things like exercise and nutrition and mental health. As well as sleep and mental health. See where I’m going with this? It actually might be almost impossible for therapists to not integrate health into counselling. So, while I usually save this kind of stuff for my premium blog, I thought I would share some health behaviours I’m going to put extra effort into this week, and I hope everyone reading thinks about some that they can as well! Body-mind connection week indeed!

• nutrition: I’m going to go with making sure I eat fruit everyday (which I typically do but sometimes stumble on the weekends)
• exercise: putting yoga back back into my routine at least 2x/week
• sleep: ensuring I don’t have anything to drink after 8pm (part of sleep hygiene!)
• other (social, hobbies, gratitude, mindfulness): playing the piano daily (I haven’t been playing as much as I would like)

As you can see, integrating health is rather inclusive and definitely extends beyond just physical aspects. Medication adherence can be another really important one for chronic illness warriors. The article I read speaks about Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, which I’ve mentioned in previous posts. We need to take care of our basic needs in order to take care of our higher needs. The three basic components of physical health I mentioned above are so important. So here’s my question (and I’d love answers in the comments), would you want your therapist to help you with aspects of health promotion that you are neglecting? Why or why not?

Family hike in the summer.

Until next week, keep on making the most of it!