227. What If Emotional Regulation Starts With Discomfort, Not Comfort

[MUSIC] Hello, hello, and welcome back to another podcast episode of Overpowering Emotions. Right? Talk all things big emotions, emotion regulation. I've been talking about distress tolerance and how important it is to practice in the moment. I actually had a lot of listener questions come through. I thought it gives some specific examples of maybe fun ways. We can start to set the stage for some of that later harder work of exposures. Because that's really what we need to get to, right? Putting kids or keeping kids in those really tough situations. I just want to say we always have to go beyond just talking, right? Because if we're always talking, the brain is never going to learn. I did introduce, you know, wise mind and emotional mind, right? And so we can't just talk about all of these different minds. We have to practice these things. Now, I did give some examples when I was talking about impulse control. So you can definitely check out those impulse control episodes. I know I've also talked a lot of things about a lot of things like frustration tolerance where we're allowing kids to face manageable frustrations. And maybe we start within a structured setting and then we slowly expand beyond that. And the one example I often give is where I play a game with kids where I always say, we're going to play this game and I'm going to win and I know I'm going to win because I'm going to cheat. And I'm a mean cheater and I'm going to call you names. And your job is to keep your prefrontal cortex online. You're going to manage that frustration because we know the Hulk brain, the emotional brain is going to take over and what's it going to want to say? It's going to want to say this and it might want to yell and it might want to punch or throw pieces or whatever it is. So your job is to keep your prefrontal cortex online, your doctor banner, wise mind on and how are you going to do that? And then they come up with their own strategies of the things that they can do. So that's just an example of a structured situation. But then I would say, okay, we've had some success, lots of reinforcement. Now we're going to do it. Maybe your sibling is going to come through and they're going to say something or do something that's going to make you really mad and what's your job. So that's an example of a structured situation. And do you want to say that we do need to start talking about screens and really probably taking screens away? I keep coming back to that because the use of screens really gives an immediate gratification that we have and it's really contributing to a lower frustration tolerance in kids. And so it makes it a lot harder if kids are always having that immediate gratification. Even just watching a television show with my girls, right? They're like, oh my, like every show leaves on a cliffhanger and you're like, oh my gosh, we need to find out what's going to happen. My daughter is really into dancing with the stars right now. We've got to watch the next episode to see who's staying and who's going, right? No, well, we can wait another week. In the good old days, you would have to wait, right? Until next week. And so we can't just binge watch everything. So that's just a really simple way too, just to work on some of that delayed gratification. But to stress tolerance, our activities are really to help kids manage and cope with whatever challenging emotions come up. And a lot of it's the physical sensations that come along with those emotions. We can't keep avoiding them. And so the idea as I go through is to really build resilience and give kids the tools to navigate through those tough situations and their thoughts and their physical feelings. And maybe we're even provoking some of that anxiety as well, right? So they need to learn that I can handle those experiences. Their brain needs to learn that. Now I've talked about having five minutes just to sit with it challenge. So we're using safe discomfort to help kids practice. So anyways, I thought I'd run through a bunch of different examples. And you can adapt depending on kids ages. With younger kids, you probably want to make it a little bit more playful. For teens, we're going to think through a little bit more thoughtfully, right? How we're going to do things. But whatever we're doing, even with the teens, we do want to make sure it's playful, at least at first, because we're too serious all the time. And maybe not even at first, maybe even through the really hard stuff. I just think of Harry Potter, right? When they're facing their worst fears, they're like ridiculous. They have to think about something funny about their worst fear. So you know, that playful side is really good. We really got to remember with any of these challenges, the purpose is to stay present with whatever the discomfort is. We're building a muscle memory for tolerating emotions instead of acting impulsively. So to help them learn, you know, that discomfort, it's temporary. It's not going to stay here forever so I can ride it out. And we're giving them the experience of coping and managing that discomfort. If you do these, do it with the kids. Do them in a group, do them with others, do them on a house, do them with the mouse, whatever it is. Just make sure they're not the only ones, because then they might feel like something's wrong and I don't want to do this. But this is a good skill for everybody to build even adults. It's good for all of us. So, you know, just making sure that we're doing that. So one example is melting ice cube challenge where everyone's holding an ice cube in their hand. You could have a paper towel too if you absolutely need to, but you know, that could be an accommodation. But just say, notice the cold. We're not trying to fight it. We can't get rid of it. Just notice how it feels. Is it cold? Is it sharp? Is it tingly? Is it wet? Maybe it's even a little painful. We're just going to watch as it changes, right? At first it's cold, but then it might get, you know, tingly and then it might be painful, like a sharp feeling. The ice is going to melt just like our feelings do. So our job is to be curious and notice that changes and just stay with it until it's gone. And then you can have a discussion afterwards. You can talk about how did your body react? What thoughts came up? What were the behavioral urges? Like I want to drop it. I can't do this. Or maybe I can't do this. Oh, look at, or where was that shift? Where it's like, I can't do it. I can't do it. I can't do it. And then like, oh, actually look, it's almost all gone. How is this feeling, you know, when we're looking at this, when does it get overwhelming? But what did you do that you could ride it out, you know, and how did it pass with time? So those are different things you could do. You could sit still like a statue where everyone sits or stands in the exact same spot. The goal is to try to stay still without any moving for five minutes or for however long you can last. And so you can say that you're going to pretend that you're a statue in a museum and you might feel itchy like you just need to scratch. You're going to want to move, but your challenge is to stay still. Notice the urges and just watch them. Watch them come a goat, you know, come and go. We're just being curious. We're staying with. We're noticing everything that's going on. It's helpful to take a third person's reporter stance, really, to notice things from a distance. Oh, I'm noticing Caroline is, you know, her nose is starting to flare out a little bit. I don't know. Or even internally, I'm just noticing Caroline has a huge itch on the top of her head, right, whatever it is. And then again, have that discussion after we're talk about what was the hardest part? Was it some of the body sensations? Was it thoughts that were going up? What were the urges that you had? And did you get, you know, did they get stronger? Did they get weaker when you were just noticing it and just reporting it like a third party reporter? How might this help if you feel an urge to shout out or to slam or to act out? I do one when I do my big workshops. I used to do it all the time, but my shoulders are showing hurt more, but just holding our arms straight out and just noticing, right? Noticing your urge to drop your arms, noticing where things are discomfort. I'm comfortable and you'll start feeling different places in your body. There's lemon bite challenge or you can take really awful like warhead candies, right? You take a bite of it or suck on it and again, you're just getting curious with the warhead you would suck it and it's terrible until you get to the center when it's nice and sweet. But just notice the sour rush. Notice your face crunching up. The saliva rushing in. Maybe there's a little bit of burning. You're just going to sit with it instead of spitting it out. And notice how quickly the sourness fades. And then afterwards again, how is it feeling? How is your body reacting? How are, you know, what thoughts are coming up? How is this like any strong emotions? Maybe intense at first, but then they start fading. You could do silent sound challenge where everybody has to sit quietly if that used to my favorite game on my girls were little. So just, you know, the silent game. But for this challenge, you're going to listen carefully for all the sounds around you. It could be the home of the fridge. It could be cars. It could be others breathing. We're just sitting in silence and noticing all of the tiny sounds. And if your body starts to feel bored or restless, that's okay. We're going to notice, but keep listening. And then afterwards we can ask, you know, did your mind wand or probably it did? Was it harder to sit and stillness than you thought it was or was it easier? Did boredoms show up? If so, like what form of discomfort did it show up? There's lots of different ways you could explore that. You could do a hand in warm water versus cold water, you know, where you're switching. You have two bowls, one warm and one cold. And you have kids place your head, maybe in the cold water to start. Notice sensations. And after a minute, you're going to switch to the warm water and notice how the feeling changes and how your body adjust. What did that change feel like? How does this show that sensations and emotions never stay the same forever? It could be in it she knows. challenge. You ask everyone to focus on their face and imagine or even, you know, even induce gently or going around tickling their nose, right? But just imagine it's on their nose so that they can notice that urge to scratch their nose, but they got to keep their hands down, right? So instead of scratching, just watch the itch. Notice how it grows, how it changes, and how it probably eventually passes, even if you don't scratch. It's just like a mosquito bite. We feel like we need to scratch it. But if you just ride the wave, you don't have to do anything at all, right? Is it hard to not give in? How can we bring those back to other scenarios? How does that compare to something like urges like yelling or eating extra candy or hitting your brother when they make you mad, right? Or just using those urges that come up to you, you know, whatever comes up, when we start to ride the urge timer. So maybe they have that urge and I do this a lot with a lot of my kiddos with OCD or they've got ticks, right? Let's start the timer and how long can we just sit with that urge? Maybe we start with 10 seconds and then we increase or 30 seconds and then we increase it from there. You could do things like scavenger hunts, you're practicing separation from caregivers, you're exploring new environments. Now that I mentioned OCD, if that's in the picture, you could do something like, I don't know, bad thought go fish. Essentially, it's just a card game where the cards have intrusive thoughts and they have to hold view and say those thoughts out loud and being able to sit with it and ride the wave. For kids who have a lot of rigidity, maybe we're changing the rules of the game midway through. That can be a great way to work on some of the stress tolerance, especially if they're like, no, this is how you have to play the great. Well, we're going to change the rules halfway through. So, you know, these are just a few ideas. We're really, I'm always saying, we're only limited by our own creativity. So, take the time brainstorm some things that you think might be helpful for kids. And then when we can watch what comes up for them, right? And you can even watch in the real world was coming up for them. You probably already have a good idea and we can start practicing with those types of things. You know, I remember at Halloween, one of the favorite things that kids used to do that I loved doing was putting our hands into boxes with unknown substances, right? And then they were labeled with things like eyeballs or guts or whatever and then kids have to touch it and they're not really knowing what it is. I mean, that could be another example to work through this. So, our job when we're putting them in these challenges or when they are naturally in these challenges is we have to be a really good coach. We're always going to validate because it does get uncomfortable. So, we need to acknowledge, yeah, this is uncomfortable. This sucks. It feels terrible when you feel like you've been punched in the stomach with just that anxiety where it feels gross on your hand and you don't know what it is. And we're also normalizing that discomfort. That makes sense. It's pretty universal for us to feel all these big feelings, right? It's all about the behaviors, how we're responding, how we're reacting. Metaphors are great with a lot of kids just like waves, urges are like waves. They rise and they fall just like, you know, the ocean. We want to generalize, and this is important. We want to generalize to real life. So, what if you could ride out that anger, the way you rode out the ice cube, right? Keep all of the exercises short, like three to five minutes math, maximum, and then you can just discuss it. But then we want to make sure we're putting it in real practice. So, maybe you do that distress tolerance and now we're going to go do a hard task. What did you use in this ice cube exercise that you can now use over here, right? So, all of those things we've got to ask kids how, how did you manage it? The best strategies are the ones they come up with. What did you do? What strategies did you do to ride it out? Because those are the very strategies that we're going to have them use in real life scenarios. So, that's really important. And again, I'm always saying I recommend that you do these things and model along with kids. You can experience, like share your own experiences and how you're coping with things in that moment too. It's good for modeling, but you're building your own well-being in resilience too, right? It's helpful for all of us to be working on this. And really easily, you're proactively inducing an adrenaline response by doing things like plunging into ice cold baths while practicing that mental calmness. I mean, that helps us raise our stress threshold by doing those types of things. I don't recommend ice baths for kids. I'm not saying that at all, but it's a good one for you. It's a controlled exposure to physiological stress. For kids though, they might jump into a really cold lake or a cold pool, right? That's the physiological stress. How are they managing that? And those are actually helping us raise our stress threshold or maybe challenging tasks, challenging sports, working through frustrations. All of those things are really inoculating the nervous system. It's making it more resilient in life to those real-time stressors. Our modern world is just too comfortable, because we've got quick remedies. We're nice and warm all the time or we can put on the EC. If it gets too warm, we've got all of these beautiful things in our life that's getting rid of discomfort immediately. And so we're all really having a hard time managing any distress and any stress at all. And so we really need to do these hard things regularly. I remember listening to a guy who went to, I can't remember for the life of me who it was, but he went to the Arctic for like a month. And he talked about how when he got on the plane, I think he was going from somewhere like Las Vegas, somewhere hot, right? Or Florida or something. I don't know. But wherever he was, it was hot. The plane was filled to the max. He was hot and grumpy. Everything was crowded. It was just terrible. And he's grumpy and he's angry, right? But then he gets to the Arctic and he freezes his butt off for a whole month. He does something really hard, right? He freezes out there. And when he got back on that plane coming back, he was like a new man. And he marveled at the wonders of the technology of being able to fly in this metal tube, right? So it gives us a new perspective. And everything else, if we can do this really hard thing, everything else just gets easier. And that's another reason why we want to make sure kids are doing these things. So I'll leave it there for today. Again, more ideas. And that was just a big question about how do we actually put this into practice? Well, do practice. We start with really structured situations. Kids can practice it. And then we can use that. Okay, now we're going to go do a real hard thing in class or as a family or whatever. So what did you learn that we can now go use in this other structured practice that's in a little bit more of a natural context? And then we want to start building from there. So check out the show notes for other homework ideas and for any other information that you might need. Reach out to me if you have more questions. I love questions. It's great. I can I can address things that are actually on your mind. If you've enjoyed the show, go to Apple, rate it so other people can find it as well. Have a lovely day. Help those kiddos be bold and courageous. And I will see you next time. (upbeat music)