Have you ever experienced overwhelming emotions or a sense of dysregulation? These feelings are signals from your mind and body that it’s time to take care of yourself.
Feeling overwhelmed or dysregulated may look like one or many of the below symptoms:
· Rapid heart rate
· Difficulty taking deep breaths
· Chest pain
· Inability to leave your home
· Tearful/inconsolable
· Racing negative thoughts
· Catastrophizing (thinking of worst-case scenarios).
· Tight fists/tight muscles
You can use Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT) and the TIPP skill to help manage these challenging moments.
TIPP stands for:
· Temperature
· Intense exercise
· Paced breathing
· Pair muscle relaxation.
Temperature: When you feel overwhelmed or experiencing intense emotions, it can be helpful to regulate your body temperature. You can achieve this by submerging your face in a sink filled with cold water and holding ice packs or cold-water bottles to your face. These methods can trigger your parasympathetic nervous system, helping to reduce your intense feelings.
You should apply the cold treatment (cold water, ice packs, water bottle) in 30-second intervals, with 30-second breaks, directly under your eyes and along your cheekbones. It would help if you continued this for a few minutes. Doing so can help lower your blood pressure and heart rate, reducing intense feelings.
Intense exercise: When experiencing strong emotions, it can be beneficial to participate in vigorous exercise. Engaging in various intense exercises for a brief period can elevate your heart rate and trigger the release of endorphins, which can help alleviate intense emotions.
Paced breathing: When feeling dysregulated, you can use paced breathing to reduce intense emotions. Take slow, deep breaths through your nose, then release the air through your mouth. If you find that you can hear your breath, it means you’re breathing too quickly, so slow down your breathing even more. When blowing your breath out, imagine you are blowing bubbles to help regulate how strong/slow you should blow your air out.
Paired muscle relaxation: You can use a progressive muscle relaxation technique to reduce intense emotions when feeling dysregulated. You can breathe deeply, tighten/scrunch up your muscles from your face to your toes, and hold for 5 seconds. After the 5 seconds, you want to release your tightened muscles slowly. You can repeat this a few times and should see a decrease in intense emotions.
*Before using any of the above techniques, please consult your doctor if you have any heart, breathing or blood pressure issues or if you have any physical health issues that could be negatively affected.
By Amanda Senske MS, LPC, NCC