November 17, 2023 • 14 mins
Overwhelmed? Consumed by Negativity? Saying Hurtful Things When You Don’t Mean To? Dr. Saltz Reveals How to Stop Those Runaway Feelings and Return to Being Your Nice, Normal Self.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
These are challenging times, but you don't have to navigate
them alone. Welcome to how can I Help? I'm doctor
Gail Saltz. I'm a clinical Associate Professor of Psychiatry at
the New York Presbyterian Hospital, the psychoanalyst, and best selling author,
and I'm here every week to answer your most pressing questions,
(00:26):
hopefully with understanding, insight and advice. Almost everyone has had
a time when something was so upsetting or stressful or
angering that your emotions soared to overload and you couldn't
think straight. You just felt flooded by negative emotions. These
(00:49):
emotions may have been anxiety or sadness, or anger or frustration.
It's a terrible feeling to be that level of distressed,
and in addition, it may is it difficult to think
to use all your wisdom in order to either do
or not do something that often makes your situation even
(01:09):
worse in the long run. So today I am answering
a question from a listener who often finds herself overwhelmed
by emotion and feeling so miserably frozen that she is
not able to manage herself. When a person becomes emotionally
overwhelmed it means they are experiencing intense and often distressing
(01:31):
emotions that are difficult to manage or cope with. This
can happen for a variety of reasons like stress, trauma, grief,
relationship issues, or even positive experiences like joy and excitement.
When someone is emotionally overwhelmed, several things can happen. There
(01:53):
are the physiologic responses. Because emotions can trigger physical responses
such as an increase heart rate, shallow breathing, muscle tension,
and changes in blood pressure, which can lead to symptoms
like sweating, trembling, and a feeling of being on edge.
It can lead to cognitive effects. Emotionally overwhelmed individuals may
(02:17):
have racing thoughts, difficulty concentrating, and anability to think clearly.
They may also experience negative thought patterns or what is
called catastrophic thinking that means basically constantly going to the
worst case scenario of anything that might pop up into
your mind. They may experience behavioral changes, which can include irritability, agitation, withdrawal,
(02:45):
or outbursts of anger or tears, and reduce decision making abilities.
Because emotions can overwhelm your ability to make a calm
and thought out decision, and it can really impair your
problem solving skills and cloud your judgment. It can cause
(03:06):
physical symptoms because prolonged emotions can overwhelm and lead to
physical health issues like sleep disturbances, headaches, gastrointestinal problems, and
even a weakened immune system. High emotions can increase your
sensitivity overall, such that when you're overwhelmed, you can become
(03:28):
more sensitive to whatever is coming in and normal sounds
or lights or interactions can be more distressing than they
were before, and it can lead to escapism and avoidance.
People may engage in behaviors or activities to distract themselves
from their overwhelming emotions, like overeating, substance use, or excessive
(03:51):
screen time. It's important to know that emotionally being overwhelmed
is a natural response to challenging or intense situations, but
sometimes it can become problematic, either if it persists, or
it leads to chronic stress or mental health issues, or
it causes you to make bad decisions in the moment
(04:15):
that harm you in the long run. To cope with
being emotionally overwhelmed, individuals can try different strategies like deep breathing, mindfulness, talking,
to a trusted friend or therapist and engaging in self care.
Seeking professional help might be important if you're emotionally overwhelmed
(04:36):
and it's chronic or it interferes with your day to
day life and functioning. So with that, let's turn to
my listener's question and ask how can I help dear
doctor Saltz. Last week, my daughter in law told me
she doesn't want to come to our house for the holidays.
(04:58):
She wants to stay home. She said it's not relaxing
and she wants to relax for the holidays. This really
really upset me. It's so important to me that we
all be together for the holidays, and I felt upset,
angry and hurt that she's going to ruin that for me.
(05:18):
I was so upset in the moment, I sort of
screamed at her. I told her she was being selfish
and that fine. Then I didn't even want them to come,
which is not true. It's like she flipped a switch
in me, and I was so over the top mad
and hurt that I just blurted out all these things.
(05:38):
And so she left in a fury, and of course
told my son, who is now also angry at me,
and I just really messed everything up. This, unfortunately, is
not new for me. When I feel emotionally overwhelmed because
I'm hurt or angry or afraid, I seem to have
no control over my mouth, and often enough it gets
(06:01):
me into trouble. A few hours later, I calm down,
and I wish I'd handled things very differently. In the end,
I know I'm emotionally hurting myself, and yet the next time,
once I'm emotionally sky high, I can't stop doing the
exact same thing. Is there anyway I can calm myself
(06:25):
down closer to the moment, so I can give more
considered responses instead of blowing everything up. When we are
emotionally highly distressed, it activates our sympathetic nervous system to
come on board signaling danger. Danger, do something like flee
or fight, it says, do so without even thinking through
(06:49):
your actions, because it's telling you there is no time,
there is danger. This makes it very hard to think
through the situation and bring all your wisdom to bear
on the problem. You are doing the emotional equivalent of fighting,
of throwing jabs, and of course, as you point out,
(07:10):
this is most often not at all the wise thing
to do. So, how can you take a mind in
distress and deploy some crisis survival skills so that you
can bring down that distress level enough to once again
deploy your wisdom and think through a response. There are skills.
(07:33):
They're actually often taught in what is called dialectical behavioral
therapy aimed at distress tolerance, and they start with something
called the stop skill. In a moment of emotional distress,
stop stands for stop, take a step back, observe, and
(07:56):
proceed mindfully. So for stop, the first s do not react, stop, freeze,
don't move a muscle, meaning don't open your mouth. Your
emotions may try to make you act or speak, but
you can be in control by just doing zero, nothing freezing.
(08:20):
Then take a step back, take a step back from
the situation, take a break, let go, take a deep breath.
Do not let your feelings make you act impulsively in
your situation. That might have meant you froze, and then
you said I need a moment. And in the moment
(08:43):
you might have walked away. You might have said be
right back. You might have just stepped back and said
one second. Then the next part of stop is observe,
notice what is going on inside you and out side you.
What is the situation, What are your thoughts and feelings?
(09:05):
What are other people saying are doing in the moment?
Look around, look inside, don't speak yet, then the p
proceed mindfully. You will have a moment to calm down
and then think with awareness. In deciding what you want
(09:26):
to do, consider your thoughts and feelings, consider the situation,
consider other people's thoughts and feelings, and then thinking about
your goals, ask your wise mind which action will make
it better or worse. Going through stop quickly can help
(09:50):
you take a break, step out of the situation and
arrive to an emotionally calmer place before you open your
mouth and have time to think about what action will
make it better or worse. So, when you feel your
emotional distress start to soar, whatever the situation, you are
(10:12):
going to tell yourself stop full stop, don't speak. Tell
the other person you need a moment. You'll be back
to them shortly. Leave the room if you need to
do that. It's always okay to later say you felt
upset in the moment and you needed a bit of
time to regroup because you wanted to make sure that
(10:33):
you were okay with your response. After the break, I'm
going to tell you a number of ways to bring
down that super heightened state of distressing emotion so that
you can re enter thinking through and responding in a
way that you know will ultimately be best or better
for you. Back with methods of bringing down very high
(11:04):
emotional distress. These skills are actually called tips' skills in
dialectical behavioral therapy, standing for temperature, intense exercise and paired
muscle relaxation and paste deep breathing. And these are methods
of changing your body chemistry, taking that sympathetic nervous system
(11:29):
offline and reving up the parasympathetic nervous system to help
calm down in order to bring your overwhelmed emotional state
back to manageable. So tips first is temperature. By changing
our body temperature, we can quickly decrease the intensity of
an emotion. That means things like dip your face in
(11:51):
cold water not less than fifty degrees and hold your breath.
Try to hold it there from thirty to sixty. Don't
attempt this skill if you have cardiac problems, that's not
for you. But if not, this skill can help you
to quickly calm down. If it's not feasible for you
(12:16):
to put your face underwater, you could try an ice
pack on your face around your eyes and cheeks. The
point is to abruptly change temperature. Next is the eye
intense exercise. By engaging an intense cardio or aerobic exercise,
we engage our physical body in a way that de
(12:36):
escalates intense emotions. Exercising for twenty minutes or more. If
it's not possible, do what you can do, but exercise
so that your heart rate is seventy percent of its capacity.
There are calculators that can tell you, based on your
current heart rate, what that would be, but you are
going to target heart rate of about that. Breathing, try
(13:01):
to slow your breathing down to five or six breaths
per minute. This means that you're in breath and out.
Breath put together should take ten to twelve seconds. You
might want to use a timer or an app to
achieve this. There's something called the Paste breathing app that's
(13:22):
on Android phones, or the Breathing app for the iPhone. Basically,
you're breathing in slowly through the nose to account of
five and then slower to account of seven out your
mouth for the ex sale That longer X sale will
help reduce heart rate and bring your emotional response down.
(13:45):
And then paired muscle relaxation. Practice tensing your muscles as
you breathe in for five to six seconds, note that
feeling of tension, and then relax them as you breathe out,
paying attention to how that feels as you do it
and noticing the difference between the feeling of tension and
the feeling of relaxation. Go through each muscle group in
(14:09):
the body, starting with your feet and working your way
up to your head, tensing and relaxing each one one
at a time. As you relax a muscle group, you
can say to yourself relax. Over time, you can see
which of these techniques works best for you to bring
(14:29):
it down your emotional distress and employ them so that
you can think through your options and make your best
informed response. Do you have a problem I can help with?
If so, email me it how can I help? At
senecawomen dot com. All centers remain anonymous and listen every
(14:51):
Friday to how can I help with me? Doctor Gale's
Salts
These are challenging times, but you don't have to navigate
them alone. Welcome to how can I Help? I'm doctor
Gail Saltz. I'm a clinical Associate Professor of Psychiatry at
the New York Presbyterian Hospital, the psychoanalyst, and best selling author,
and I'm here every week to answer your most pressing questions,
(00:26):
hopefully with understanding, insight and advice. Almost everyone has had
a time when something was so upsetting or stressful or
angering that your emotions soared to overload and you couldn't
think straight. You just felt flooded by negative emotions. These
(00:49):
emotions may have been anxiety or sadness, or anger or frustration.
It's a terrible feeling to be that level of distressed,
and in addition, it may is it difficult to think
to use all your wisdom in order to either do
or not do something that often makes your situation even
(01:09):
worse in the long run. So today I am answering
a question from a listener who often finds herself overwhelmed
by emotion and feeling so miserably frozen that she is
not able to manage herself. When a person becomes emotionally
overwhelmed it means they are experiencing intense and often distressing
(01:31):
emotions that are difficult to manage or cope with. This
can happen for a variety of reasons like stress, trauma, grief,
relationship issues, or even positive experiences like joy and excitement.
When someone is emotionally overwhelmed, several things can happen. There
(01:53):
are the physiologic responses. Because emotions can trigger physical responses
such as an increase heart rate, shallow breathing, muscle tension,
and changes in blood pressure, which can lead to symptoms
like sweating, trembling, and a feeling of being on edge.
It can lead to cognitive effects. Emotionally overwhelmed individuals may
(02:17):
have racing thoughts, difficulty concentrating, and anability to think clearly.
They may also experience negative thought patterns or what is
called catastrophic thinking that means basically constantly going to the
worst case scenario of anything that might pop up into
your mind. They may experience behavioral changes, which can include irritability, agitation, withdrawal,
(02:45):
or outbursts of anger or tears, and reduce decision making abilities.
Because emotions can overwhelm your ability to make a calm
and thought out decision, and it can really impair your
problem solving skills and cloud your judgment. It can cause
(03:06):
physical symptoms because prolonged emotions can overwhelm and lead to
physical health issues like sleep disturbances, headaches, gastrointestinal problems, and
even a weakened immune system. High emotions can increase your
sensitivity overall, such that when you're overwhelmed, you can become
(03:28):
more sensitive to whatever is coming in and normal sounds
or lights or interactions can be more distressing than they
were before, and it can lead to escapism and avoidance.
People may engage in behaviors or activities to distract themselves
from their overwhelming emotions, like overeating, substance use, or excessive
(03:51):
screen time. It's important to know that emotionally being overwhelmed
is a natural response to challenging or intense situations, but
sometimes it can become problematic, either if it persists, or
it leads to chronic stress or mental health issues, or
it causes you to make bad decisions in the moment
(04:15):
that harm you in the long run. To cope with
being emotionally overwhelmed, individuals can try different strategies like deep breathing, mindfulness, talking,
to a trusted friend or therapist and engaging in self care.
Seeking professional help might be important if you're emotionally overwhelmed
(04:36):
and it's chronic or it interferes with your day to
day life and functioning. So with that, let's turn to
my listener's question and ask how can I help dear
doctor Saltz. Last week, my daughter in law told me
she doesn't want to come to our house for the holidays.
(04:58):
She wants to stay home. She said it's not relaxing
and she wants to relax for the holidays. This really
really upset me. It's so important to me that we
all be together for the holidays, and I felt upset,
angry and hurt that she's going to ruin that for me.
(05:18):
I was so upset in the moment, I sort of
screamed at her. I told her she was being selfish
and that fine. Then I didn't even want them to come,
which is not true. It's like she flipped a switch
in me, and I was so over the top mad
and hurt that I just blurted out all these things.
(05:38):
And so she left in a fury, and of course
told my son, who is now also angry at me,
and I just really messed everything up. This, unfortunately, is
not new for me. When I feel emotionally overwhelmed because
I'm hurt or angry or afraid, I seem to have
no control over my mouth, and often enough it gets
(06:01):
me into trouble. A few hours later, I calm down,
and I wish I'd handled things very differently. In the end,
I know I'm emotionally hurting myself, and yet the next time,
once I'm emotionally sky high, I can't stop doing the
exact same thing. Is there anyway I can calm myself
(06:25):
down closer to the moment, so I can give more
considered responses instead of blowing everything up. When we are
emotionally highly distressed, it activates our sympathetic nervous system to
come on board signaling danger. Danger, do something like flee
or fight, it says, do so without even thinking through
(06:49):
your actions, because it's telling you there is no time,
there is danger. This makes it very hard to think
through the situation and bring all your wisdom to bear
on the problem. You are doing the emotional equivalent of fighting,
of throwing jabs, and of course, as you point out,
(07:10):
this is most often not at all the wise thing
to do. So, how can you take a mind in
distress and deploy some crisis survival skills so that you
can bring down that distress level enough to once again
deploy your wisdom and think through a response. There are skills.
(07:33):
They're actually often taught in what is called dialectical behavioral
therapy aimed at distress tolerance, and they start with something
called the stop skill. In a moment of emotional distress,
stop stands for stop, take a step back, observe, and
(07:56):
proceed mindfully. So for stop, the first s do not react, stop, freeze,
don't move a muscle, meaning don't open your mouth. Your
emotions may try to make you act or speak, but
you can be in control by just doing zero, nothing freezing.
(08:20):
Then take a step back, take a step back from
the situation, take a break, let go, take a deep breath.
Do not let your feelings make you act impulsively in
your situation. That might have meant you froze, and then
you said I need a moment. And in the moment
(08:43):
you might have walked away. You might have said be
right back. You might have just stepped back and said
one second. Then the next part of stop is observe,
notice what is going on inside you and out side you.
What is the situation, What are your thoughts and feelings?
(09:05):
What are other people saying are doing in the moment?
Look around, look inside, don't speak yet, then the p
proceed mindfully. You will have a moment to calm down
and then think with awareness. In deciding what you want
(09:26):
to do, consider your thoughts and feelings, consider the situation,
consider other people's thoughts and feelings, and then thinking about
your goals, ask your wise mind which action will make
it better or worse. Going through stop quickly can help
(09:50):
you take a break, step out of the situation and
arrive to an emotionally calmer place before you open your
mouth and have time to think about what action will
make it better or worse. So, when you feel your
emotional distress start to soar, whatever the situation, you are
(10:12):
going to tell yourself stop full stop, don't speak. Tell
the other person you need a moment. You'll be back
to them shortly. Leave the room if you need to
do that. It's always okay to later say you felt
upset in the moment and you needed a bit of
time to regroup because you wanted to make sure that
(10:33):
you were okay with your response. After the break, I'm
going to tell you a number of ways to bring
down that super heightened state of distressing emotion so that
you can re enter thinking through and responding in a
way that you know will ultimately be best or better
for you. Back with methods of bringing down very high
(11:04):
emotional distress. These skills are actually called tips' skills in
dialectical behavioral therapy, standing for temperature, intense exercise and paired
muscle relaxation and paste deep breathing. And these are methods
of changing your body chemistry, taking that sympathetic nervous system
(11:29):
offline and reving up the parasympathetic nervous system to help
calm down in order to bring your overwhelmed emotional state
back to manageable. So tips first is temperature. By changing
our body temperature, we can quickly decrease the intensity of
an emotion. That means things like dip your face in
(11:51):
cold water not less than fifty degrees and hold your breath.
Try to hold it there from thirty to sixty. Don't
attempt this skill if you have cardiac problems, that's not
for you. But if not, this skill can help you
to quickly calm down. If it's not feasible for you
(12:16):
to put your face underwater, you could try an ice
pack on your face around your eyes and cheeks. The
point is to abruptly change temperature. Next is the eye
intense exercise. By engaging an intense cardio or aerobic exercise,
we engage our physical body in a way that de
(12:36):
escalates intense emotions. Exercising for twenty minutes or more. If
it's not possible, do what you can do, but exercise
so that your heart rate is seventy percent of its capacity.
There are calculators that can tell you, based on your
current heart rate, what that would be, but you are
going to target heart rate of about that. Breathing, try
(13:01):
to slow your breathing down to five or six breaths
per minute. This means that you're in breath and out.
Breath put together should take ten to twelve seconds. You
might want to use a timer or an app to
achieve this. There's something called the Paste breathing app that's
(13:22):
on Android phones, or the Breathing app for the iPhone. Basically,
you're breathing in slowly through the nose to account of
five and then slower to account of seven out your
mouth for the ex sale That longer X sale will
help reduce heart rate and bring your emotional response down.
(13:45):
And then paired muscle relaxation. Practice tensing your muscles as
you breathe in for five to six seconds, note that
feeling of tension, and then relax them as you breathe out,
paying attention to how that feels as you do it
and noticing the difference between the feeling of tension and
the feeling of relaxation. Go through each muscle group in
(14:09):
the body, starting with your feet and working your way
up to your head, tensing and relaxing each one one
at a time. As you relax a muscle group, you
can say to yourself relax. Over time, you can see
which of these techniques works best for you to bring
(14:29):
it down your emotional distress and employ them so that
you can think through your options and make your best
informed response. Do you have a problem I can help with?
If so, email me it how can I help? At
senecawomen dot com. All centers remain anonymous and listen every
(14:51):
Friday to how can I help with me? Doctor Gale's
Salts
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