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Naming What You Actually Feel (or 'Fine' Doesn't Cut It) (DBT mini-season part 5)
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This week on a very special episode of Friendless, we ask what if the goal of emotional maturity isn't to stop feeling things but to stop fighting them?
In Part 5 of Friendless's deep dive into DBT emotional regulation, James unpacks what emotions are actually for, and why treating them like problems to solve is exactly what keeps us stuck.
This episode covers three foundational skills: naming emotions accurately (because "I feel bad" tells you nothing useful), checking the facts (the difference between what actually happened and the story your brain added on top), and the PLEASE skill — the unglamorous daily maintenance checklist that has a surprisingly direct line to how regulated you feel.
James also gets personal: about spending years terrified of his own anger, about the shame hiding underneath a text that didn't get answered, and about why exercise remains the bane of his existence.
In this episode:
- Why emotions are signals, not malfunctions
- The smoke alarm analogy that reframes everything
- How vague labels like "fine" keep you stuck
- Checking the facts vs. checking the story
- PLEASE: Physical illness, Eating, Avoid substances, Sleep, Exercise
- A short practice to try right now
Friendless is a podcast about loneliness, connection, and the honest, sometimes uncomfortable work of understanding ourselves.
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Transcript
Introduction and Emotional Misconceptions
00:00:00
Speaker
I used to think the goal of emotional maturity was to stop having intense feelings altogether. Spoiler alert. That's not actually possible unless you are a rock. In which case, you wouldn't be listening to this.
00:00:22
Speaker
Welcome back to Friendless Sweet Bees. I'm your host, James Avramenko, and this is episode five. We are moving into a new module in our DBT exploration. We're looking at emotional regulation.
00:00:33
Speaker
And um right out the hop, I want to be really clear about what we mean by regulation, because I think that This word gets really
Understanding Emotional Regulation
00:00:43
Speaker
misunderstood.
00:00:43
Speaker
um Emotional regulation doesn't mean having fewer emotions. It doesn't mean being calmer. It doesn't mean achieving some state where difficult emotions stop arriving.
00:00:55
Speaker
It means understanding what your emotions are doing and having the tools to work with them instead of being completely at their mercy. So for the last couple episodes, we were kind of in survival mode. and Distress tolerance is about, you know, really getting through that storm, using stop and tip and just making sure that, you know, that whole sort of disaster scenario just doesn't get worse.
00:01:18
Speaker
Self-soothing, radical acceptance, you know, these are these are being used for um repairing and sort of surviving what we might call the aftermath of it, right? Emotional regulation is going to be different.
00:01:32
Speaker
ah To keep the metaphor going, let's say it's about understanding the weather patterns. So, you know, why do storms happen in the first place? What are they made of? What makes some days more vulnerable than others?
00:01:45
Speaker
And what can I actually do, not just in crisis, but before and after to have a different relationship with my emotional life?
Function and Importance of Emotions
00:01:57
Speaker
So today we're going to be covering a couple different things. What emotions actually do, because like, they are tools, they have a function, and they're not just there to ruin your day.
00:02:08
Speaker
um We're going to look at how to name emotions accurately, because things like I feel bad just doesn't tend to be specific enough to be useful.
00:02:20
Speaker
We're gonna talk about checking the facts, um which is a skill for investigating whether your emotion fits what's actually happening or if it fits the story that you're telling yourself. And then we're gonna look at the PLEASE skill acronym, which um is,
00:02:37
Speaker
unglamorous, but genuinely important sort of daily maintenance checklists for emotional resilience. and It is also one of the most comedic acronyms in the in the program, so but we will get there.
00:02:53
Speaker
So I wanna start with something that I think um a lot of us have in common for a long time. And I mean a long time, um most of my life,
00:03:04
Speaker
I treated my emotions like problems to be fixed, you know, especially the really uncomfortable ones, you know, anxiety, um anger, things like that. um But, you know, if I was anxious, my job was to figure out how to stop being anxious, you know, just got logic it away, distract myself out of it power through it until it passed.
00:03:26
Speaker
And the implicit belief underneath all of that was having this emotion means something is wrong. Either something is wrong with the situation or something is wrong with me.
Personal Experiences with Anger
00:03:38
Speaker
um Let me be a little bit more specific about about another example of emotion. um When I first started therapy with my boy, Scott, um I came to recognize that I was terrified of being angry.
00:03:57
Speaker
um And I don't mean i was afraid of other people's anger. um If anything, I thought that anger towards me was a demonstration of love, but that's a different can of worms.
00:04:09
Speaker
um I mean, i was i was terrified of my own anger, of even acknowledging that I was angry um because I had had it repeatedly reinforced um that I was not allowed to be angry about whatever it was that had happened to me.
00:04:27
Speaker
ah Because i had been told that and and shown that to be angry meant that I was now the dangerous one. I was now the three. um Even if I was just expressing my feelings of anger and nothing else, no yelling, no aggression, just just saying I'm angry.
00:04:43
Speaker
Now I became treated as a problem and I completely internalized that. I decided, okay to survive this relationship, I need to never show my feelings. I i would just become that, you know, that happy-go-lucky, always laughing, nothing's problem. I'm so easy to get along with, you know, that that that facade.
00:05:05
Speaker
And, you know, I didn't want to be the problem. So I just made sure that I never was.
Anger as a Tool and Boundary Setting
00:05:13
Speaker
So what did I do with the anger? i just pushed it down.
00:05:17
Speaker
but i just, you know, pretended I was actually feeling something else. You know, I'm not angry. I'm i'm tired. I'm not angry. I'm just disappointed. I'm i'm not angry. Everything's fine.
00:05:29
Speaker
Right? I just told myself, it's all fine over and over. It's fine. It's fine. It's fine.
00:05:36
Speaker
But the anger didn't go away. It just built up and it came out in other ways. I would get pedantic and argumentative about things that didn't matter. I'd be really overly critical of myself, of other people, of of everything.
00:05:51
Speaker
you know um I would get into these depressive states, these really avoidant states. I drank, I smoked, I played video games for hours. I basically, I would just do anything I could to distract myself from the feeling that I wasn't allowed to have.
00:06:10
Speaker
And did it work? Of course it didn't.
00:06:16
Speaker
I think in hindsight, I needed to listen to that anger more because we have to realize anger is incredibly useful tool when applied properly.
00:06:32
Speaker
It's a really motivating emotion. It gets you moving, it gets you into action. It's telling you something matters. And it's telling you that a boundary has been crossed or broken.
Emotions as Information
00:06:46
Speaker
But instead of doing that, I would freeze and and I would remain frozen and and I had remained frozen for for for years of my life that I now can't get back. And you know yeah, I know, time passes regardless, um but you know I wanted to do so much and I couldn't because I was spending all of my energy pretending that I wasn't angry.
00:07:11
Speaker
And when I started to listen to that emotion, and when I started to listen to what the emotion was trying to say, that it's okay to be angry, that I could let the anger help me change things, that's when I actually did.
00:07:27
Speaker
um Because here's what I know now that I didn't then. Emotions aren't malfunctions. They're not glitches in an otherwise functional system. They're not evidence that something is wrong with you.
00:07:43
Speaker
They're signals, information. they it's It's data about what's happening inside you and around you. the yeah the There's a smoke alarm analogy that's really useful here. you know Sometimes the smoke alarm is going off because the house is on fire and that's genuinely useful information.
00:08:05
Speaker
You need to act on that. And sometimes the smoke alarm is going off because you made toast. But the alarm is still going off. It's still doing its job.
00:08:16
Speaker
It's detected something that might be dangerous. It's just, um you know, it's it's just wrong in this particular case. There's no fire. There's just toast. But either way, you you don't rip the smoke alarm out of the ceiling.
00:08:32
Speaker
You don't curse the alarm for going off. You just figure out whether there's actually a fire. And that's what we're doing with emotions. We're figuring out whether there's a fire. um you know What is the emotion responding to?
00:08:45
Speaker
Whether it it fits the situation or whether it's just toast. And you can only really do that if you stop treating the emotion as an enemy. um you know This brings me back to something that I wanna say really clearly, um because I think it's really important. you know anger um is is an emotion that often gets a really bad rap, right?
00:09:11
Speaker
um But anger isn't dangerous. Danger is dangerous. um What we do with anger is where things change.
00:09:23
Speaker
You know, you can be dysregulated and still be safe. You can be angry and still be safe. The emotion itself isn't the threat. It's just information.
Motivation and Communication through Emotions
00:09:33
Speaker
And I know I spent far too long treating it like an enemy that I kind of lost access to one of the most important emotions that we have.
00:09:51
Speaker
So what are emotions actually for? What do they do? A myriad of things, but three that I've identified. um that may or may not come as a surprise or maybe a reminder, you know.
00:10:07
Speaker
First thing is that emotions motivate action. um Every emotion comes with what DBT calls an action urge. It's a push towards doing something um or away.
00:10:20
Speaker
um So for instance, Fear says, you know, run, freeze, hide. Anger says, fight back, push, set a limit. um Joy says, stay, do more of this, share this with someone. You know, sadness says, slow down, withdraw, process, grieve, whatever it might be.
00:10:40
Speaker
um Now, the thing to remember is that the action urge isn't always the most effective action.
00:10:52
Speaker
Fear of an email is not the same as fear of a physical threat, um even if your nervous system treats them the same.
00:11:03
Speaker
But the urge is information. um It's telling you what the system wants, what it thinks it needs. And you can then choose what to do with this information.
00:11:15
Speaker
But first, you have to actually receive it, which means not immediately trying to suppress the emotion before it's told you what it came to say. Second, um emotions communicate to other people.
00:11:29
Speaker
You know, your face, your body language, your tone. All of it communicates your emotional state. And it does this whether you want it to or not. Tears signal distress or vulnerability.
00:11:42
Speaker
They tell the people around you that you're in pain and potentially need support. Laughter signals safety, connection, ease. It's an invitation. Anger signals that something feels like a violation.
00:11:55
Speaker
You know, a limit has been crossed. And even when we try to hide our emotions, and we all try to, to some degree or another, they will inevitably leak because they've been designed to be seen.
00:12:09
Speaker
they're They're literally part of how we communicate as social animals. um Before we ever had words, we had faces, right? You know? um I wish I had looked up the statistic, but i it's something like 75% of communication is non-verbal.
00:12:25
Speaker
So this is where, you know, emotions come into play. The third element here is emotions communicate to yourself. um And I think this one is actually probably the most interesting for me at least, right?
00:12:40
Speaker
Because emotions are telling you what matters to you. um If something genuinely doesn't matter, if you have no investment in the outcome, you don't have big feelings about it.
00:12:55
Speaker
The presence of a strong emotion means this thing is important to you somehow. What this means is when you're having an intense emotional reaction to something, that intensity is information.
00:13:10
Speaker
Not necessarily accurate information about what's happening outside of you, but accurate information about what's happening inside of you, about what you care about, what you're afraid of losing, what you're protecting.
00:13:25
Speaker
And that, that's worth paying attention to in my box. The takeaway here, and I wanna make sure this lands before we move on, your emotions are functional.
00:13:39
Speaker
Even the uncomfortable one, even the ones that feel disproportionate or embarrassing or that you wish you weren't having, they're doing something. They're not just evidence that you're broken.
00:13:58
Speaker
Okay, so skill one, Naming emotions accurately. Sounds easy. It's not. In fact, we are remarkably bad at it.
00:14:10
Speaker
Most of us will default to a handful of vague labels. I feel bad. i feel weird. I feel off. I'm fine. but Which almost always means I'm not fine, but I just i don't know what else to say.
00:14:25
Speaker
um But the problem with vague labels is that they're not actionable. I feel bad doesn't tell you anything that you can work with.
00:14:37
Speaker
What kind bad? Bad like you're overwhelmed? Bad like you're scared? Bad like you're angry at someone specific? Bad like you're grieving something? All of those feel completely different.
00:14:50
Speaker
All of them have totally different action urges, and all of them need something slightly different from you. So the more specific the name, the more useful the information.
00:15:01
Speaker
So bad might actually be anxious, overwhelmed, ashamed, frustrated, lonely, numb, scared, disappointed, hurt, resentful. you know Fine might be numb, resigned, cautiously okay, avoiding, managing.
00:15:21
Speaker
Upset might be angry, hurt, betrayed, disappointed, frightened. These distinctions matter, and here's why. When you name an emotion accurately, you separate it from yourself.
00:15:37
Speaker
You move from, i am a mess to, I am experiencing overwhelm right now. One of those is a statement about your identity. The other is a statement about your current state.
00:15:51
Speaker
And your current state is not permanent. Your current state changes, but your identity feels a lot harder to change. So naming accurately keeps it in the realm of something that you're moving through, not something that you are.
Accurate Identification of Emotions
00:16:11
Speaker
An example for me um of trying to kind of name more specifically. I am a sporadic texter at best. I will be the very first to admit this um from from the long list of people I have texted.
00:16:28
Speaker
but but i I often don't know what to say right away. um So I'll usually, you know, I'll read a text, I'll think about a response, but by then the no notifications disappeared. So I forget that there's a text waiting. You know, it's, this is not a new story and this is not a unique story to me, but I still, despite myself, find that I get deeply annoyed when other people don't text me back.
00:16:56
Speaker
um which i I know, I know. ah You know, what example, recently, i reached out to a friend to just see how they're doing, to invite them out for a coffee, you know, just simple, how you doing? Want to grab a tea sometime, right?
00:17:11
Speaker
And I never heard back from them. And it annoyed the ever-loving shit out of me. i i I was angry. I i was insulted. you know, i I was hot, right? I was hot about it.
00:17:23
Speaker
You know, how they yeah how dare they not respond? You know I reached out, I make the effort, and they can't even be bothered to text me back.
00:17:31
Speaker
But then I sat with the feeling a bit, and I looked at the facts around the story that I was telling. And I realized that the feeling that was trying to speak wasn't actually anger.
00:17:47
Speaker
it was It was actually, it was concern, and it was also a little bit of shame.
00:17:54
Speaker
You know, there was concern about them. You know, are they okay? You know, ah hopefully they're not in their own funk and just not being responsive because they're struggling.
00:18:08
Speaker
Concern that just, you know, they're safe. And then shame. Shame of feeling ignored. um Feeling kind of, you know, small, replaceable. That feeling, that feeling of shame was actually just pretending to be anger.
00:18:27
Speaker
Because if I got angry, then I could get righteous. you know I could make it their fault. I could be the one who was wronged. I could you know get all the way into that story, right? But if I accepted that I was actually just feeling embarrassed, that I felt vulnerable for reaching out and not hearing back, I could then just soothe myself out of that pit and I could move on.
00:18:51
Speaker
And like, sure yeah, like i' I was still annoyed, but nothing like that initial reaction. And it came from this far deeper empathy for them that I had but before.
00:19:03
Speaker
Because I could see that maybe they were doing the exact same thing that I do all the time. Maybe they read the text, meant to respond, forgot. Maybe they were struggling. Maybe they just didn't see it. um But when I changed how I was identifying my emotions, the way I engaged with them changed.
DBT Skills and Fact-Checking Emotions
00:19:21
Speaker
The anger kept me stuck in, this is about me being wrong. The concern and the shame let me see the whole situation more clearly.
00:19:34
Speaker
It let me be a little gent, you know both with them and with myself.
00:19:44
Speaker
Check the facts. This is a skill that investigates your emotion. Specifically, does this emotion fit the actual situation or does it fit the story I'm telling about the situation?
00:19:58
Speaker
And we talked about this a little in the mindfulness episodes, the difference between facts and stories. But check the facts brings it specifically into emotional regulation territory.
00:20:09
Speaker
So here's the process. There's sort of three core questions to it. Question one is, what are the actual facts? Not the interpretation. Not the story, just what literally happened.
00:20:22
Speaker
Not, oh, they hate me. What happened? They didn't text me back for three hours. It's not, I'm failing at everything.
00:20:33
Speaker
What happened? I didn't finish the task I planned to finish today. It's not, um everyone thinks I'm incompetent. Because what happened was, one person asked me a clarifying question about my work.
00:20:47
Speaker
Just the facts. The observable, verifiable things, not the meaning that you've put on top of them. Question two, what story am I telling?
00:21:00
Speaker
This is where your brain adds meaning and your brain is so good at adding meaning very, very quickly and often even without you noticing. The story on top of they didn't text me back for three hours might be they're annoyed with me. They probably don't want to be friends anymore. i said something wrong. i always do this. You know, the story on top of I didn't finish the task I planned to finish today might be I'm lazy.
00:21:27
Speaker
I never follow through. I'm just going to keep failing forever. This is why nothing ever works out for me. You know, these are stories and they might be true, but they might not be.
00:21:40
Speaker
At the end of the day, they're interpretations. They're not facts. And your emotional response is often responding to that story, not the facts. Question three, does my emotion match the facts or the story?
00:21:56
Speaker
So if your emotion matches the actual facts, if the facts genuinely warrant this feeling, then the emotion is justified. Validate it, you deal with it. If your emotion matches the story, but the facts are neutral or ambiguous,
00:22:10
Speaker
then you have an opportunity to look at whether the story is accurate and whether a different interpretation might actually fit the facts equally well.
00:22:21
Speaker
And to be totally clear here, this is not about invalidating your feelings. Feelings are real regardless. but understanding whether they're responding to facts or stories will help you figure out what to do next, right?
00:22:35
Speaker
This isn't all about just ignore it, repress it. This is about figuring out what to do with it. So example for me. You know, as you've probably become aware, I spend a lot of time in my head.
00:22:48
Speaker
You know, I'm a storyteller. so so So it's very easy for me to spin a little tale for myself. And then, of course, you add in the ransom note of diagnosed letters that I have, and I have a real predilection for escalating.
00:23:01
Speaker
More often than not, I have let the story get away from me. This can be as simple as a text message being misread and then suddenly I'm off to the races, right?
00:23:14
Speaker
Maybe I read it too quickly and miss a word or two. So now I've suddenly decided on some brand new context that doesn't even exist. um or or Or maybe, you know, because tone can be so god awful over text, I totally misread the intention behind the message.
00:23:30
Speaker
I mistake a joke for something literal or I read sarcasm where there wasn't any or I interpret shortness as anger when really they were just busy. And suddenly I am catastrophizing.
00:23:42
Speaker
You know, they said this, which means that, which means they're annoyed with me, which means they don't want to be friends anymore, which means I ruined everything.
00:23:50
Speaker
But if I take a step back, if I just look at the basics that I can observe, I can bring myself down. Instead of saying, oh, they said this means that means they hate me.
00:24:02
Speaker
I just say, okay, they said this. Now what? What are the actual facts? They sent a short text. That's it.
00:24:13
Speaker
That's the only fact. The story is everything I added on top of that. And the story might be wrong. So I get to decide how to respond. Maybe I just ask for clarity.
00:24:26
Speaker
Hey, I'm reading this as, google is that what you mean? Or you know maybe I just responded a more mindful way instead of reacting to the story I made up. Really, it's it's another way to make sure my emotions stay regulated and within that zone of tolerance. Because if I don't check the facts, I'm responding to a story.
00:24:45
Speaker
And stories can spiral.
PLEASE Acronym and Emotional Stability
00:24:48
Speaker
Facts are just facts. And facts I can work with.
00:24:56
Speaker
Last skill of the day. Please. but but After all that. We're gonna be talking about sleep and vegetables, but hear me up, okay?
00:25:10
Speaker
Please, P-L-E-A-S-E, is the daily maintenance checklist for emotional regulation. It's the boring stuff that actually prevents meltdowns.
00:25:22
Speaker
And I include this because we all know these things, and most of us are doing at least one of these really badly. but And the connection between doing them badly and being emotionally dysregulated is way more direct than I think we like to admit.
00:25:43
Speaker
So as I've said before, blessed Marsha Linehan loves acronyms and some of them are more ah forced than others.
00:25:55
Speaker
Please is admittedly one of the more forced ones, but we'll break down how it goes. So... yeah PL stands for treat physical illness.
00:26:07
Speaker
So if you're sick, you're in pain, or you know you're dealing with some kind of chronic condition, your emotional baseline is going to be lower. Your cap capacity is reduced, you're more vulnerable to big emotions and faster to dysregulate.
00:26:21
Speaker
Again, this is not a moral failing, it's biology. Your nervous system has less resources and ignoring a physical problem doesn't make you tougher.
00:26:33
Speaker
It just makes you more vulnerable. e stands for eat regularly. Blood sugar crashes lead to emotional crashes.
00:26:44
Speaker
When your blood sugar drops, your mood drops with it. You become irritable, more anxious, less able to tolerate frustration. Your brain literally doesn't have the fuel it needs. Hangry is real.
00:26:56
Speaker
yeah Eating regularly and eating enough, you know, not in some specific one diet fits all, just eating regularly and enough, that is foundational.
00:27:10
Speaker
It's way more foundational than we give it credit for. a avoid mood-altering substances. Alcohol, weed, excessive caffeine.
00:27:22
Speaker
These all have a cost on emotional regulation. Now, um you know look, I'm not saying never. and i'm I'm saying know the cost. Know what it does to your baseline the next day.
00:27:34
Speaker
Know what it does to your ah anxiety or your emotional stability and factor that in. S. S is for sleep enough. We all know this.
00:27:46
Speaker
We are all bad at this. Sleep deprivation is emotional vulnerability on hard mode. When you are sleep deprived, your amygdala, the emotional alarm system, becomes way more reactive.
00:28:02
Speaker
Your prefrontal cortex, the thinking reasoning part, becomes less active. So you are now running on a system that is literally better at having big emotional reactions and worse at regulating them.
00:28:19
Speaker
And yet, ah go to bed is what I'm saying, okay? oh E is for exercise.
00:28:31
Speaker
i know, I'm sorry. Movement. Gentle movement counts. You don't have to run a marathon. You don't have to go to the gym. Walking counts. Stretching counts.
00:28:42
Speaker
Dancing around your kitchen counts. Movement regulates your nervous system. It metabolizes stress hormones and it gives your body what fight or flight was gearing up for.
00:28:54
Speaker
Even 10 minutes of gentle movement makes a genuine measurable difference.
00:29:03
Speaker
Let me be the first to to admit my struggles around please. um You know, as I said before, we're all probably doing at least one of these poorly and and that's okay. Again, no moral failing.
00:29:16
Speaker
For me, exercise the bane of my existence. i i I get really rooted where I am. I get comfortable and then it becomes really easy to ignore.
00:29:30
Speaker
Um, and then I think, you know, oh, I should go for a walk, but because I've been so still and so rooted now I'm really sore. ha And if I get sore, then it feels like, oh, it would be a bad idea to exercise now because I'm really sore, which in case you tell yourself a similar story, it's total bullshit.
00:29:54
Speaker
That's a complete bullshit excuse story, but it is a story that I tell myself. and then it builds, you know, and then I get more irritable because I'm not letting off that energy.
00:30:06
Speaker
I'm holding it in my body and it has nowhere to go. I start to struggle to sleep because I feel still really wired. You know, my brain is tired, but my body isn't. So I just kind of lie there. and The other tools then become harder to apply.
00:30:22
Speaker
Tip feels harder. Self-soothing doesn't land the same way. Everything is just a little bit harder when I'm not moving my body. And, of you know, I'm working on changing it. I've i started walking more consistently again. I i noticed that I had used the the bad weather as an excuse, you know, it's raining, I can't go out. But with spring coming, I'm hopeful that things are changing.
00:30:44
Speaker
But, you know, who knows? And The thing about all the please skills, you know what you need. You know it will help. And sometimes you still don't do it.
00:30:57
Speaker
And that's no failing on your part. It's just hard, especially, you know, when you're already struggling, the thing that will help is often the thing that feels the most impossible. So, you know, I'm trying one walk at a time, you know, and some weeks they're better than others. And that's just kind of where I'm at.
00:31:18
Speaker
it's made It's moments like this that I think are reminders that you know the core, the true DBT program that I am very much not running here is is built to be ah taken over the course of months and months and months of repeated small practice. you know You're not supposed to just one day flip the switch and all the please skills work for you. you You're expected to and apply them really, really gently one at a time. So I want to make sure that whenever you're doing any kind of reflection on yourself, you're not taking it as some massive problem that you can't get them all right away. You're supposed to go slow and gentle um with all of this. So just be where you are and build from there.
00:32:04
Speaker
Because when it when it boils down to to the real root, I think please skills can be tricky because they appear simple. You know, they're unglamorous. They can feel obvious. You know, they feel like, yeah, duh, I know I should eat regularly and sleep enough.
00:32:21
Speaker
But knowing that doesn't make doing it easier, especially, you know, when you're already struggling, especially when the very things that would help your emotional regulation are the things that tend to go first when you're dysregulated.
00:32:36
Speaker
So I'm not going to tell you just be better at please and you know you'll feel more regulated because i know that it is not that simple. But I am going to tell you when I notice my emotional regulation getting worse, one of the first things I check now is please. Which you know which one have I been neglected?
00:32:56
Speaker
And is there one small thing that I can do differently today? Not all of them, just one of
Functionality of Emotions and Conclusion
00:33:03
Speaker
them. That's where to start.
00:33:11
Speaker
So let's do a quick practice. We're just going to name and check.
00:33:21
Speaker
Think about one emotion you felt today. Just one. Name it as specifically as you can. Not bad or stressed.
00:33:33
Speaker
Get as precise as you can. Now, What are the facts of the situation you're responding to? Just the observable things.
00:33:46
Speaker
What actually happened?
00:33:51
Speaker
Then what story might be sitting on top of those facts? What meaning have you added? Does your emotion match the facts or the story?
00:34:08
Speaker
You don't have to solve anything. You don't have to feel differently. Just notice the gap or the lack of gap between what's actually happening and what your emotion is responding to.
00:34:23
Speaker
And that's it.
00:34:26
Speaker
One question for the Which Please skill, if you improved it even slightly, would make the biggest difference to your emotional baseline?
00:34:37
Speaker
Not all five, just one. Pick the lowest hanging fruit. The thing that if you did it even just a little bit, your nervous system would have a little bit more to work with.
00:34:49
Speaker
And then if you want, try it just for a few days. See if you notice anything.
00:34:59
Speaker
And that is part one of emotional regulation. Remember, emotions are signals, not malfunctions. Even the uncomfortable ones, even the disproportionate ones, even the ones you really, really wish you weren't having.
00:35:12
Speaker
They are doing something. The question is what? So name them accurately because specificity gives you something to work with. Remember, check the facts, figure out whether you're responding to what's actually happening or to the story, and keep up with pleas.
00:35:31
Speaker
Not perfectly, not all at once, just incrementally. Because your emotional battery starts lower when you're not taking care of the basics.
00:35:43
Speaker
um As always, if you have questions, if you have stories, if you have things you wanna share, please email me, friendlesspod at gmail.com. um You can also message me on Instagram or TikTok at friendlesspod.
00:35:55
Speaker
All the links are in the show notes. But um all that aside, Thank you so much for listening to the episode. And as always, I really hope I'm going to catch you at the next one, but I'm not going to worry about that right now. And neither should you, because as always, that is then, this is now.
00:36:13
Speaker
So for now, I'll just say I love you and I wish you well. Fun and safety, sweet peas.
00:36:58
Speaker
Amen.