PONDER THIS: Steering Our Ship - Concrete Steps for Emotion Regulation

The Well Canto Newsletter April 4, 2024 Volume 8

Apr 05, 2024

Happy April, Fabulous Singer,

It’s a rainy start to the month in the Northeast. By April I get a little extra spring in my step because soon I’ll justify hours spent outside digging in the dirt ‘gardening’ (weeding) while listening to music and podcasts and books. But April is capricious, and despite assurances in pinks and yellows and whites, I’ve learned that my patience will be tested before reliable calm and warmth arrive.

Metaphor Alert!

Just like the drama of April’s mercurial weather, our human experience can feel all over the place, and may be confusing and exhausting. If we live a meaningful life, encountering intense emotions is inevitable. But! We have tools and techniques, Fine Singer - proven ways to settle our Sturm und Drang, or, to say it fancy-like: Emotion Regulation.

In Well Canto’s last Ponder This , we learned about our Stress Response, ANTs, and our Inherent Worth. In today’s Newsletter we will delve deeper and come away with three buckets of management strategies to start this very day:

Self-Empathy
Discern Rather Than Judge
Occupy Our Body

WHY, though?

Are we steering our ship, or is it steering us?

Emotions and feelings happen; they are how we experience our life. We are certainly not looking to suppress, ignore, or numb-out. I mean, what sort of artist would we then be? They also tend to motivate behavior, so if we are aware of the whole process we can keep our hands on the wheel and navigate the waves of emotion in real time.

Additionally, psychological stress tends to turn into vocal stress, and prolonged negative feelings block learning and dampen creativity. Ew.

Start with Self-Empathy

Empathy is being aware of emotions and attempting to understand them. Compassion is a desire to act on that awareness. Both connect us to others and our common experiences, which help us feel understood and less alone. These are fundamental human needs, Esteemed Singer. When we observe our own inner emotional life with openness and without judgment, we vastly increase our sense of well-being.

But let’s not make it too complicated. What we’re looking for here is to be nice to ourselves. Treat ourselves at least as well as we would a dear friend or a beloved child. Cut ourselves a break! We all know instinctively that being kind feels way way way better than being a jerk. If we are not being a jerk to ourselves, we are much more likely to feel and show kindness to others.

Qualities of Kindness:

Generosity, Warmth, Tolerance, Forgiveness, Understanding, Respect, Forgiveness, Patience, Consideration, Thoughtfulness, Appreciation…

What can you add? What does kindness mean for you?

“You can tell by the kindness of a dog how a human should be.”

-Captain Beefheart

HOW, though?

Make a commitment to practice self-empathy (kindness, warmth). Acknowledge that it is a process and takes practice.
Notice how you talk to yourself. Are your ANTs showing up? In what circumstances?
1. Fact-check the statements. Chances are high they are not based in fact or evidence.
2. Talk back with counter statements using humor or a light quality, like talking to a child. Being playful diminishes the impact of the ANTs.
3. Try Psychological Distancing. Observe yourself from afar, allowing you to detach from negative thoughts. Be a fly-on-the-wall instead of an active participant.
What feelings accompany the negative self-talk?
1. Define and label them. Fear? Dread? Embarrassment? Shine a light on those feelings!
2. Now that you know what you’re working with, take time to really feel. Try not to suppress or ignore them. What we resist, persists.
Actively apply compassion and understanding to yourself for feeling emotions. It’s ok; you are a human having a human experience.
Consciously list things that are going well, things you’ve accomplished, things you are grateful for, and things you like about yourself. This feels encouraging and builds confidence and motivation.

Remember that practicing self-empathy isn’t making excuses. Avoiding doing hard things and shirking responsibilities tends to make things worse in the long run (NOT very compassionate!). Honestly examining fears and resistance without self- recrimination allows more access to our inner resources like courage, persistence, and creative problem solving .

Judge - to condemn (from the Greek word katakrino)

Discern - to separate (from the Greek word krino)

Judge

Judging is a mental shortcut. We humans love to sort and encapsulate and order in an attempt to make sense of our complex world. Generalizing allows us to make decisions more quickly while engaging less. No harm, no foul, right? Well…..

Judging ourselves affects our mental health by decreasing self-esteem, increasing feelings of anxiety, depression, and fear, and often leads to general discouragement and an inability to forgive ourselves for perceived past mistakes.

Judging others might initially bring us attention or feelings of control, and help us feel accepted into a particular group. It implies having power over someone, but it actually erodes empathy and compassion and negatively affects relationships. Judgment becomes a heavy burden that weighs us down.

Discern

Discernment is characterized by keen perception, insight, and the ability to see things clearly. It takes a bit more effort and a lot more self-awareness than judging. We also must be honest about what we know and don’t know. Do we have all the information, or are we making assumptions?

To illustrate, imagine we are listening to a recording of our own singing. We hear a note that is flat. This will likely bring up a whole lot of feelings … shame, confusion, disappointment, even horror!

Now we are at choice:

The Judge Choice - negative self-labeling/name-calling, emotional spiraling, giving up.

The Discern Choice - acknowledge feelings, observe and analyze, seek advice from your teacher.

Switching from the easy habit of Judging to the more evolved habit of Discerning will take time and practice. See how many opportunities you can find within yourself, others, and circumstances.

A few tips:

Start from a place of openness and compassion.
Notice with curiosity. Explore. Be fascinated, like an anthropologist or detective.
Analyze, don't criticize. Observe without making an assessment. Gather data. What can you learn?

Occupy the Body

Somatic means ‘embodied’ or ‘relating to the body’, separate from the mind or spirit. An effective method to regulate our emotions, offload stress, and self-soothe is to occupy the body. When we let out a big sigh, or pace back and forth, or ‘shake it out’, we are doing somatic work.

It’s critical to note that our bodies can physically ‘remember’ stress we experienced in the past. I recently experienced this:

A wonderful student of mine has just learned that he has been promoted to the leading tenor role for a series of performances after the original singer had to drop out. He has two weeks to learn the music, the dialogue, and all the blocking and dances. Now, I have confidence in this young man’s abilities, and more importantly, he knows he can do it. But as I was prepping for our lesson, I noticed all the tell-tale signs of pre-performance anxiety in myself: heightened awareness, shallower breathing, restlessness, and tightening neck muscles. I’m grateful it only took a few minutes to realize what was going on. I slowed my breathing, put my hand over my heart and gently assured myself that all is well, and I needn’t feel things for other people. I also recalled my decades of performance pressure with great compassion and understanding. When my student arrived I had the clear mind and calm body to focus on his needs.

Ways to Occupy the Body

Breathing
1. Anything deliberate. It doesn’t have to be complicated. Low and slow will be calming. Faster practices like Breath of Fire will energize. ‘Box Breathing’ is popular if you like more structure.
Movement
1. Any kind. It doesn’t have to be formal or prolonged. Take a walk. Dance around your kitchen. Yoga. Play with your dog.
Singing, Chanting, Laughing (Ain’t-a that good news?)
Engage your senses (Just experience. Try to stay out of drawing conclusions, evaluating, or judging)
1. Touch - Rub your hands together. Explore the contours of an object with your fingertips. Notice the temperature of your coffee mug.
2. Hearing - Notice the sounds around you. How many? Which is the farthest? The closest? The loudest and softest?
3. Sight - Look intently at something and really see its curves, angles, colors, shadows. Do this with something close, middle distance, and far away.
4. Taste and/or smell - What can you discern? Pleasant? Sweet? Bitter?
5. The 3-3-3 Rule for Anxiety: Name 3 things you can see, 3 things you can hear, and move 3 different parts of your body.
Create a Safe Haven
1. Move your palm in circles over your heart area.
2. Cross your arms in front of you like a self-hug. Move your palms up and down your arms.
3. Add a slight swaying movement, like rocking a child.
Self-massage. Rub your own shoulders, neck, scalp, hands, legs, feet.

Meditation and Mindfulness integrate mind and body. Research clearly shows the profound benefits of both, and virtually any level or amount of practice has positive effects. Additionally, there are plenty of other body-centered therapies like Tapping (EFT) and EMDR that can be explored with an experienced practitioner.

Have fun investigating Emotion Regulation with an open mind. Try lots of techniques and find ones that feel right for you. Employ them often. Start to understand how much choice you have in experiencing your life, while embracing that life is not linear or tidy or predictable. It is more like a game of Chutes and Ladders!