Broken Toys

Submissives with Mental Illness

Managing Strong Emotions

by pais

This is a companion essay to my piece on working with a slave who is dealing with PTSD (PTSD Strategies), but the information in this essay is intended to be useful to anybody struggling with unwanted thoughts, behaviors, or emotions.

Thoughts, emotions, physical sensations, and behavior are interconnected. They can be mutually reinforcing: feel lousy, spend all day in bed, think "I'm so worthless; I can't even get out of bed." Lather, rinse, repeat. And, when you're already upset, it's much easier to look for things that are going to keep you feeling upset.

Alternatively, if you are able to change thoughts, physical sensations, or behaviors, it can lead to cascading changes. That is, if you change what you're thinking it will lead to different behavior and emotions; if you change your behavior it can lead to different emotions and thoughts. Relaxing your body and slowing your heart down will send messages to your brain to stop pumping out adrenaline. Emotions in and of themselves can be difficult or impossible to change -- most people cannot simply will themselves to feel happy. So managing emotions is largely a matter of managing what you think and what you do.

The first step is to take basic care of yourself. Owners, make sure your property is getting enough sleep and exercise and eating healthy foods. I recommend reducing or eliminating illicit substances and limiting alcohol and even cigarettes and caffeine. (However, if these are your primary coping techniques, you probably want to have a plan ready for other coping strategies! Long-term reducing these types of substances is key; in the short term of course it can make things more difficult. And i am absolutely including marijuana in the list of substances to avoid if there are underlying emotional problems. Research shows that marijuana use, for example, is linked with more rapid and more frequent mood cycles for individuals with bipolar disorder.) If necessary, seek professional medical help. Get a physical check-up and visit the dentist. Manage any pain issues.

The second step is to be aware of what you want to change. Journaling or logging emotional responses is a good way to notice patterns that may be keeping you from getting what you want out of life. Some people have a hard time noticing or identifying emotions; it might be easier in those cases to keep a journal of a problem situations (talking back, zoning out, intrusive thoughts, etc.) and then try to reconstruct what the emotion was that led to the acting out. Again, emotions are often fueled by behaviors and thoughts. Is there a particular chore or task that tends to lead to more challenges? Do you find yourself experiencing intrusive or negative thoughts that drag you down emotionally?

This process is also helpful when it feels like the problem emotion or behavior comes out of nowhere with no warning and goes from 0-60 immediately. Once it's full-blown, it's much harder to get a grip on it. With practice, the warning signs can become more obvious, and the time between when you first notice the warning signs and when the problem is out of control becomes longer. The longer that time is, the more chance you have of changing the thoughts and behaviors that feed into the problem emotion, getting a handle on the emotion, and preventing any negative behaviors that tend to arise from the emotion.

Journaling is also used to get a handle on patterns of thinking. If you can identify a particular type of thought that tends to lead to spiraling emotional and behavioral problems, logging every time you think it is a good idea. These types of thoughts are usually black-and-white, all-or-nothing types of thoughts about "who I am," "how the world is" or "how people are": "I'm totally worthless." "Life sucks" (with the understood "always.") "Everyone is out to get me."

This is a place where owners can be very helpful. Assigning the journal; specifying a problem behavior or emotion on which to focus; noticing episodes that should be logged and reminding the s-type to do it; identifying patterns -- there are many ways the owner can be part of the process. Journaling can be helpful when it's once a day, going back over the day and trying to remember events to journal, but might be even more helpful if you journal as soon as you are able to notice the emotion or behavior so that your answers are more fresh in your mind.

For most people, the quicker and easier it is to do, the more likely it's a habit that will take hold and be successful. So just a quick note of the thought, emotion or behavior might be best. Once the habit is in place, or from the get-go if it seems more productive to include more information, some factors that might be useful to include in a log entry, depending on what you think will be helpful for you, might be:

· What time of day did this occur?
· What was the setting?
· What previous factors were in place -- tired, hungry, upset about something else going on?
· Any identifiable trigger event?
· What thoughts were noticeable before/at the beginning of the episode?
· What emotions were noticeable? How intense were they?
· What were your behavioral urges? What did you want to do about the thoughts and emotions?
· What did you do? How did you react?
· Was this reaction useful/helpful, or did it lead to further issues?
· If there were benefits to this reaction, but overall or in the long run this reaction is unwanted, what were the benefits, and how can you get them in some other way?

That last point is actually quite important and fairly complicated. Very, very often behaviors/thoughts/emotions that we find primarily unpleasant or counter-productive actually provide us with some reward(s) we may not always have in full awareness. Attention, either positive or negative, is a common one. Classic, common scenario is the slave who acts up because getting spanked is fun! Or, the coping strategies that we use may be tangible. Perhaps when you find yourself feeling/acting/thinking in a certain way, you have a cigarette or binge eat. Or perhaps when things get out of hand you get a break from doing your chores. And this might be the hardest part of changing a behavior: figuring out what the reward is and eliminating it. ELIMINATING it. Not most of the time, but all of the time, because for most people bad habits are hard to break and easy to slip back into -- and intermittently rewarding bad behavior makes it all the easier to slip back into and all the harder to stop because you never know when that reward might be coming!

Which means you need to have other responses ready to cope with those behaviors/thoughts/emotions because those ways we have of coping, feeling better, that are harmful in the long run, are *also* currently *working.* They are providing some results that are perceived on some level as pleasant, desirable, perhaps even necessary. So eliminating those benefits is probably not the first thing you want to do. Work on building up other coping strategies first, as follows.

You might discover a self-reinforcing, many-step pattern of emotions, thoughts, and behaviors building on each other, perhaps with no clear "beginning" of the pattern. However, there might be a place where it looks easiest to break the pattern. Or, it might be a simple one-two-three chain of thought leading to emotion leading to behavior. In any case, whether it's obvious what needs to change, or whether you simply have to pick a place to try to intervene, either without the journaling process or as a result of it, then you can identify options for dealing with it, choose what options to try, and practice those options for some period of time. Generally I would give any coping technique at least two weeks of regular practice, preferably at least once a day, before deciding that it's not working. The way you respond to emotions now is like a habit, and habits take time to change. Re-evaluate what's working and what's not, and keep trying.

Here is a list of some general coping strategies. Most of them work well with a variety of different emotions such as anxiety, anger, panic, and depression, but no coping strategy is going to work for every single person or in every situation. Again, owners can help by helping s-types identify which techniques might be most useful and monitoring how it's going, as well as supporting, encouraging, and reminding the s-type to use techniques. It can be useful at this point to add to the log whether and what coping technique was tried, and how successful it was. Practicing them in lower-intensity situations first can lead to better results with more intense situations later. Once you have learned which techniques are more effective for you and you can use them with confidence, you might find that your emotional responses seem more manageable even before you use the technique, just because you know you have tools in your toolbox.

Journal. Yep, even just noticing and writing down the emotion can help take the edge off. (Furthermore, noticing how frequently you behave a certain way or think a certain thought for many people automatically causes that behavior or thought to decrease.)
Ground yourself. Get fully present in the moment and in your physical body. Breathe deliberately and notice your breathing. Push your feet down into the floor or your rear end down into your chair or both. Use all of your senses -- eat a bite of something strong like a mint or lemon drop; splash cold water on your face; pull a blanket around your shoulders and pull down so it puts pressure on your shoulders; use a pleasantly scented hand lotion; look at or imagine something that makes you feel better; listen intently to whatever you can hear or put music on. Pay full attention to whatever you're doing and how you're doing it, and be careful to watch from inside your body. Avoid imagining that you're watching yourself from above or outside. Stay focused on physical sensations. This is useful for anger and also especially for anxiety, panic, and dissociating.
When you're in a good space, notice the little things that make you happy -- maybe put a list of them in your journal -- and then turn to those things and be kind to yourself when you're having a rough time. This is a technique that can take a little moderation, and again an owner can be helpful here. Allowing or reminding the slave to have a piece of chocolate while providing gentle or firm support to avoid the entire chocolate cake, for example, can be helpful. Not only things that feel good, but activities that help you feel good about yourself, are key here. Notice the things that you're good at and enjoy, and spend some time doing that.
Think replacement thoughts. Often people teach "thought-stopping" or "pushing the thought away/putting it in a box." Those techniques work too, but personally i prefer having a list of several positive thoughts prepared. When a negative thought or emotion starts, just start running through your list of replacement thoughts, or pick one that resonates and repeat that to yourself. It doesn't leave room for the non-helpful thought and you're reinforcing the positive thought even if in the moment it doesn't feel that convincing. Positive thoughts might be "I will get through this," "I'm in control of myself," "I can handle this situation." They might be "I've survived worse than this" or "Things can only get better from here." The Serenity Prayer, the mantra "What doesn't kill me makes me stronger," or other prayers or mantras can work (perhaps one assigned by an M-type). A happy memory can help, especially if you are able to visualize it in detail, or even an imaginary scenario of a peaceful, calm, safe place. Even single, positive words, such as "peace" or "serenity," repeated on in-breaths and/or out-breaths, can make a huge difference. Sometimes, particularly if the problem is anger, it can be motivating to think about what you stand to lose if you're not able to change the behavior or emotion, but i would use that technique with caution so as not to spiral into shame, guilt, or self-blame.
Distract yourself. Get busy with an activity you enjoy, physical exercise, or helping somebody else by volunteering. Count ceiling tiles or everything you can see that is blue. Ask your M-type for instructions or chores to do!
Wait through it. Emotions are complicated and involve both physical body reactions and chemical changes in the brain. Our brains can be conditioned to think that once an emotion begins -- sometimes before we're even aware of it -- the inevitable outcome is going to be a full-scale panic attack, angry outburst, or what have you. The goal here is to teach your body that if you can just sit and observe what's going on, the emotion will wax and wane all on its own. Your body just can't sustain an emotion at full peak for that long unless it's being reinforced by other stimuli. So find a safe place to wait it out. Notice any changes going on in your body without catastrophizing them -- "I'm breathing faster. Luckily, it is not likely that I will die from hyperventilating because I would pass out first and then I will stop panicking and my breath will slow down automatically. My heart seems to be speeding up. I know that I am not having a heart attack because I have had panic attacks before and survived them. Let me see if my observation is correct by taking my pulse for two minutes and seeing if the second minute is in fact faster than the first minute." Eventually, the brain can be reconditioned to notice those first warning signs not as a harbinger of doom but as the start of a time-limited process that will pass. This technique may take a long time at first, but the goal is for it to take less time with practice.
Deepen your spirituality, whatever that means to you. Pray. Nurture your connection to nature or the universe or a higher power. Find a place to volunteer for a humanitarian or environmental cause.
Do the opposite of what you have an urge to do. This can be very challenging and in the short or even medium term increase the unpleasant emotions, but it is a proven long-term strategy, particularly for anxiety and depression. If you're depressed or anxious and you want stay in your bed or in your house, get out and do things to the full extent you can. Challenge yourself to interact with others and socialize. If you're angry and you feel like taking on the world -- or one person in particular -- stay away from any potential conflicts. Take some time for yourself. If you feel guilty or ashamed, determine what is leading to those feelings, and if it's objectively a reasonable thing to be doing, keep doing it!
Process the underlying problem. For me, i find it more useful to ask, "Why am i having this pattern of problems?" rather than "Why do i feel so lousy today?" It's always possible to find a reason why i feel lousy today. Then i have something negative to dwell on and think about to reinforce the emotion, and almost always it's somebody else's fault so there's nothing i can do except maybe try to give the other person a guilt trip or start a fight. Those are not effective ways for me to change the emotion. But if there's a long-term pattern, then i can say, "Every week when we have social plans over the weekend I end up having a melt down on Monday or Tuesday. I think i may have a need for more personal time with my M-type. What can i change, or ask Master to change, so that need can be met? If that need cannot be met, how can i manage the emotions that i know are going to come up?"
Keep journaling. Notice which patterns are changing and which are not. Make changes in your coping strategies accordingly.

A few more pieces of advice for owners: reward your slave *tons* for trying any coping skill that you've agreed might be helpful. Even if it doesn't seem to be working. Find out from your slave what is rewarding for him or her -- and keep asking, in case your slave starts getting burned out on any particular reward. In fact, having several options of rewards so the slave doesn't know what reward might be coming next can be a useful technique. (Unpredictable rewards, like slot machines, can be addictive!) Reward for your slave for journaling. Reward your slave for noticing, "Hey, I might need to use a coping skill now." Reward, reward, reward. Over time, as your slave gains skills, you can stop rewarding for the more basic steps (such as noticing it would be a good time to use a coping skill) and only reward for more advanced behaviors (actually using the coping skill, or using the coping skill with success). Minimize punishment, which can quickly decrease the unwanted thought or behavior but which is likely to cause new problems since the underlying causes or patterns aren't being adjusted and no new coping skills are being learned -- and remember that the punishment in some cases might actually be a reward, if your slave simply needs more interaction!