The Link Between Trauma and Emotional Dysregulation: How DBT Can Help You Heal

Mental and emotional health are majorly impacted by trauma, commonly resulting in emotional regulation difficulties. This is usually exhibited when one is unable to regulate emotions, types of responses, or reactions to emotions. Emotional dysregulation could lead to episodes of wrath, low mood, or anxiety, as well as having a hard time cooling down. PTSD and BPD are some of the conditions most likely to be associated with it, often all experienced by trauma survivors. Luckily, with Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) from professionals like DBT Center of Wisconsin LLC, patients are given a chance to learn and recover from PTSD as it provides techniques on how to gain control of their emotions again and build a lifelong plan on how to overcome it.

Learning About Emotional Dysregulation: What Is It?

Emotional dysregulation is the inability to control or express emotions in a controlled or appropriate way. Some people find it difficult to cope with ordinary stimuli in life and feel powerless to react. This can lead to impulsive behaviors, strained relationships, and even stress. Any form of child abuse, neglect, or a single traumatic event or other early adverse life experience can compromise the neural circuits responsible for regulating mood. 

This results in stress-induced hyperarousal and agitation, which causes the person to overreact to what she or he considers trivial events. For example, a man and woman who work together and have had traumatic backgrounds can overreact when they are frustrated or become suddenly sad and confused. Although such altered emotional reactions can last for various hours or days or may seem permanent, they may cause considerable problems in daily interactions.

Trauma and Emotional Dysregulation

The brain’s stress response is shifted, thereby meaning that trauma, especially if it happens during childhood, will affect a person’s brain response to stress. Ultimately, it affects survivors, who are all too often more likely to become coarser emotionally and less capable of controlling them. This constant increased sense of alertness is referred to as hyperarousal. This is because our brain stays in “fight or flight” mode even when there is no cause for it.

Emotional dysregulation can manifest in various ways, including:

• Difficulty Managing Anger: Trauma survivors can easily become angered or frustrated over what seem to be small issues.
• Overwhelming Sadness or Anxiety: With these people, even little things can cause very serious feelings such as sadness, panic, or emotional breakdowns.
• Impulsive Behavior: As should be expected, overwhelming emotions cook up impulse and destructive actions such as substance abuse or self-harm and reckless actions, among others.

How DBT Can Help You Heal

DBT stands for dialectical behavior therapy and is considered a contemporary model of cognitive behavioral therapy used for the treatment of patients with borderline personality disorder and others diagnosed with mood disorder. Although devised for clients with BPD, DBT is useful for patients experiencing affect regulation issues that often present themselves after a traumatic event.

CBT is integrated with mindfulness approaches to give DBT a framework for making changes in emotional processing and recognition of unhealthy thought processes. Here’s how DBT can assist trauma survivors:

• Mindfulness: Staying Present in the Moment

Mindfulness skills are one of the basic concepts of DBT. This is different from other forms of meditation, where the subject pays particular attention to the experience as it happens in the current moment without bias or prejudice. In persons with trauma, the practice of mindfulness narrows down the ability to resonate with their feelings yet does not immerse them in feelings. When traumatized, they can distinguish between feelings and base their action on a conscious instead of an emotional decision.

For instance, mindfulness can help a person learn that if one begins to feel anxiety, he or she will not become a victim of that feeling. This can help ensure that the person does not continue to have an aggressive panic attack or even an emotional collapse.

• Distress Tolerance: Coping with Emotional Pain

DBT aims to offer specific skills for managing distress when a person is in a crisis. Self-destructive behaviors are a characteristic feature of mental trauma patients, and distress tolerance skills can prevent patients from having high levels of emotional pain. These skills offer a technique for handling anger and other powerful feelings without worsening the situation at hand.

• Emotion Regulation: Building Emotional Stability

Emotional regulation is aimed at helping people become aware of and normalize their intense emotions. For trauma survivors, this is important in helping to cut the continuous circle of emotional instability. DBT helps people to recognize emotions correctly, prevent being overwhelmed by them, and construct positivity.

For instance, people who have experienced trauma will be educated on signals they should look for whenever they are angry and how they can manage self-cooling mechanisms before getting angry. In the course of learning, these skills assist a person in taking better control of their feelings and responses.

• Interpersonal Effectiveness: Strengthening Relationships

As people become emotionally dysregulated, relationships become strained as communication is impaired, conflicts arise, and contact is reduced. Core competencies are essential skills that involve how we think, feel, and behave. For example, in Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT), one of these skills is interpersonal effectiveness, which helps improve how we interact with others.

Trauma victims gain back personal relationships and strengthen interpersonal skills through interpersonal communication. This helps create a sanctuary that is fundamental in offering support for long-term recovery.

The Benefits of DBT for Trauma Survivors

Now, let’s look closer at the advantages DBT can offer trauma survivors. In treating emotional dysregulation in persons with histories of trauma, DBT provides a plethora of approaches for the client to use. Some key benefits include:

• Reduced Impulsive Behavior: Traumas undergo new coping strategies for managing their feelings instead of acting out such impulses as harming themselves or using drugs.
• Improved Emotional Stability: Building emotion regulation skills enables them to avoid being overwhelmed by emotions and to manage stressors more composedly.
• Enhanced Communication and Relationships: By teaching interpersonal effectiveness skills, individuals can improve and rebuild broken relationships or just create more satisfying ones.
• Increased Resilience: DBT helps trauma survivors learn how better to address emotional suffering so they do not revert to previous self-destructive behaviors.

Steps to Get Started with DBT

Distress tolerance skills include distraction, soothing oneself, and cognitive measures such as embracing one’s pain strategy, which tells the person to accept what is happening without fighting it. These skills offer a technique for handling anger and other powerful feelings without worsening the situation at hand.

If you feel that trauma is a factor in the regulation of feelings, it might be a good idea to consult with a licensed therapist who practices DBT. Most DBT programs encompass individual therapy, skills coaching in groups, and telephone to offer supplementary support in emergencies.

Here’s what you can expect when starting DBT:

• Initial Assessment: Before beginning the trauma treatment, your therapist will evaluate your trauma, emotional regulation, and general treatment plan.
• Building a Treatment Plan: In both cases, you will develop cooperation and come up with a mutual strategy to help you control your emotional dysregulation using DBT skills.
• Ongoing Skills Training: The therapy has an element of structure. The following day, you will be taken through four primary DBT skills: mindfulness, Distress Tolerance, Emotional Regulation, and Interpersonal Effectiveness.
• Support and Progress: Therapy sessions can be weekly or more often, and group support assists in reminding you of new skills and support along the way.

Final Verdict

Moving from trauma and emotional dysregulation is a slow process that needs to be treated with understanding and tools. Trauma victims have the opportunity to live full, meaningful lives free of emotional dysregulation with the help of Dialectical Behavior Therapy from brands like DBT Center of Wisconsin LLC. Cognitive techniques include tools such as directing the focus on overwhelming feelings, an individual mastering how to set limits, and dealing with feelings of fragmentation, enabling survivors of trauma to regain control in their lives. So, if emotional dysregulation stands in the middle of your life, DBT will guide you in recovering and living a healthier and normal life.