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

Setting Work Boundaries

When it comes to work, a lot of people have difficulties setting boundaries. For those of us with a chronic illness, it becomes a difficult but necessary part of literally being able to work. Why am I bringing this up today? I have been off of work for the past week because of my hip tear, which seemingly go worse when I (a) accidentally leaned against it at work, and (b) my hip popped out of and back into place when I was doing an elevated pushup. Now I’m set to go back tomorrow but I will probably need some accommodations, because, despite the fact that I felt worse on Monday and now better today, I do a lot to mitigate the pain. The other part of this equation is that work has been so stressful since we fully reopened (limited customers) at the end of May, and I haven’t been able to set boundaries around that, I’ve become more anxious and had a general increase in body pain anyway. Now’s the time to make a change.

Even on the beach I had to change positions a million times.

So how do you set work boundaries? I mean, no boss or company wants to have to accommodate for an employee, right? Yet as much as I hate asking, I have seen some managers do it for others, and have had some managers do it for me. Plus, legally in Canada and some other countries, employers can’t discriminate because of (dis)ability. In the past I’ve always approached it with a very direct attitude. This is what I need, this is why I need it, and without it I can’t do my job properly. Direct works best. And when in doubt I have a doctor’s note as well (I currently have a few doctor’s notes in my file with no “expiry” date to them). Plus, I always tell my bosses that I will be flexible when needed (and I have been) because I understand the importance of the business (I work in electronics retail so it’s importance really depends on your own value to it).

Image from: https://www.flickr.com/photos/moodlegal/32946222992/

What’s the difference now? Covid-19. As I’ve mentioned, we aren’t through it yet. At my work, we still have 18 staff members not back yet, we let limited customers in the store which is still too many at a time at times, and things are definitely not running as “normal.” What I currently need because of my hip: to be able to change physical positions as needed – sitting, sitting with my legs up, standing, walking, lying down. What I need because of stress: to not be the only person scheduled at customer service where I get long lines and yelled at by customers all day. Here’s the thing, I am scheduled alone at customer service for the next 3 days. The only other person scheduled for my entire department is collecting web orders, so literally nothing to do with directly dealing with customers. Therefore, I can’t just leave my post to change what position I’m in. I will stand for 9 hours with just my 30 minute break. Bad for hip and bad for stress. Do I need to say something? Yes. How will it go? I guess we’ll find out.

Being in nature is helpful for stress. Take a time out every know and then in order to heal.

I’m curious if any of my fellow Spoonies have been back to a work environment yet and what they are doing for boundary setting. This is a time where I wish I could work from home, but wishing isn’t going to make that happen at the moment. Please comment or DM me on Instagram and share your work boundary stories. Stay Safe.