What do you think?
Rate this book
Calming the Emotional Storm: Using Dialectical Behavior Therapy Skills to Manage Your Emotions and Balance Your Life
Sheri Van Dijk presents Calming the Emotional Storm, an easy-to-read introduction to the dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) skills that can help readers keep calm in the face of distressing emotions and regain emotional balance in their lives.
186 pages, Kindle Edition
First published March 1, 2012
329 people are currently reading
1666 people want to read
About the author
Sheri Van Dijk
29 books41 followersI am a psychotherapist working at Southlake Regional Health Centre and in private practice. I have a Master's degree in social work, and specialize in treating psychiatric disorders using dialectical behavior therapy and mindfulness practice.
I have written several books that help readers use DBT skills to treat emotional problems, including The Dialectical Behavior Therapy Skills Workbook for Bipolar Disorder, The Bipolar Workbook for Teens (co-author), Don’t Let Your Emotions Run Your Life for Teens, and Calming the Emotional Storm; and am the author of DBT Made Simple, a book that aims to teach clinicians how to use DBT with their clients diagnosed with a variety of emotional problems.
I'm just putting the finishing touches on my sixth book, which teaches teens DBT skills to help them be more effective in their relationships; look for this book to be published early in 2015.
In 2010 I won the R.O. Jones Award at the Canadian Psychiatric Association Annual Conference for my research on using DBT skills in a bipolar disorder group, published in the Journal of Affective Disorders in March, 2013.
Visit me at www.sherivandijk.com.
I have written several books that help readers use DBT skills to treat emotional problems, including The Dialectical Behavior Therapy Skills Workbook for Bipolar Disorder, The Bipolar Workbook for Teens (co-author), Don’t Let Your Emotions Run Your Life for Teens, and Calming the Emotional Storm; and am the author of DBT Made Simple, a book that aims to teach clinicians how to use DBT with their clients diagnosed with a variety of emotional problems.
I'm just putting the finishing touches on my sixth book, which teaches teens DBT skills to help them be more effective in their relationships; look for this book to be published early in 2015.
In 2010 I won the R.O. Jones Award at the Canadian Psychiatric Association Annual Conference for my research on using DBT skills in a bipolar disorder group, published in the Journal of Affective Disorders in March, 2013.
Visit me at www.sherivandijk.com.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 74 reviews
August 31, 2015
Calming The Emotional Storm is essentially a self-help book for people who struggle with Emotional Dysregulation.
Emotional Dysregulation (ED) refers to a trait of labile, easily destabilized or otherwise inadequately modulated emotional responses.
Possible behavioral manifestations of ED (not to be confused with erectile dysfunction, although behavioral manifestations can be similar) include angry outbursts, destroying or throwing objects, aggression towards self or others, and threats to kill oneself.
ED can be associated with an experience of early psychological and sexual trauma or chronic maltreatment (such as child neglect/abuse).
You can also catch it from dating someone with early psychological and sexual trauma or chronic maltreatment (such as child neglect/abuse).
Not really (but sorta).
ED may present in people with psychiatric disorders such as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), bipolar disorder and complex post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
But this book is based on the Dialectal Behavioral Therapy (DBT) modal which is primarily focused on treatment of borderline personality disorder.
Borderline personality disorder (BPD) is a cluster-B personality disorder.
The essential features include a pattern of impulsivity and instability of behaviors, chaotic (high drama) interpersonal relationships, unstable self-image and ED (hypersensitivity to emotional stimuli and a slower return to a normal emotional state).
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy:
Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) is a short-term, goal-oriented psychotherapy treatment that takes a practical approach to problem-solving and symptom reduction.
CBT focuses on identifying and changing inaccurate or unhelpful ways of thinking,
CBT assumes that people suffer from unpleasant feelings and moods (e.g. anxiety and depression) because they have maladaptive (negative, harmful etc.) thoughts and behaviors.
For more on CBT check out professor Jason M. Saterfield's amazing Great Courses audio program titled Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, and/or read my summary review of it, right here on Goodreads.
Dialectical Behavior Therapy:
Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) is a modified form of CBT that was developed by Marsha M. Linehan.
DBT is designed to help individuals increase their emotional regulation by (a) identifying triggers that lead to emotionally reactive states, and (b) implementing effective coping skills.
DBT combines standard cognitive-behavioral techniques for emotion regulation and mindful awareness skill building exercises largely derived from Zen Buddhist meditation practice.
Mindfuflness:
DBT is one of the major mindfulness based therapeutic protocols.
Mindfulness has been the buzzword lately, and for good reason. It's precisely what our stressed out culture needs. A little equanimity.
Mindfulness is not as much of a concept as it is a way of being with your inner experiences and being in the world.
Mindfulness refers to a way of assuming the role of the non judgmental witness of your own experience, as it arises, moment to moment, in the here and now.
Jon Kabat-Zinn is the guy most associated with secularizing mindfulness and introducing it into the clinical context.
Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR):
Kabat-Zinn created an 8 week program for people with untreatable chronic pain and anxiety called Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR).
He piloted MBSR at Boston Medical and was able to help people reduce their suffering from pain conditions, whom conventional treatment had failed (either due to developing too high a tolerance to pain medication or because of a lack of medical intervention for their condition or both).
MBSR is very effective for pain, particularly for chronic pain, but here's the catch.
MBSR doesn't help people reduce their pain.
MBSR helps people use mindfulness to open up and make space for the pain, and stop resisting it, and thereby reduce their suffering.
Similarly, DBT helps people use mindfulness to open up and make space for their difficult thoughts and emotions, and resisting against them, and thereby reduce their suffering.
Pain vs. Suffering:
According to the mindfulness traditions, pain and suffering are two different things.
Pain is an inevitability, suffering is optional.
One can have pain without necessarily suffering.
For example:
Remember when you were a kid and you had to get a shot from the doctor. If you were like me you threw a fit. You tensed every muscle in fear and resistance. Then you got the shot and it was not nearly as bad as you thought is would be.
In this example, the pain was the momentary sensory experience of the shot. The suffering was all of the extra stuff you projected onto the situation out of fear and all of the tension created due to resistance.
The short hand for this phenomena is:
Suffering equals Pain multiplied by Resistance
The pseudo math formula that explains the phenomena is:
Suffering (S) Is equal to (=) Pain (P) multiplied by (x) Resistance (R).
S=PxR
Now as an adult, when you know you're about to get a shot, you still feel that wave of dread, but now you know to relax, breath, maybe close your eyes, and surrender to the moment. And poof, it's over with just a little prick sensation.
That's mindfulness in a nutshell.
So the whole equation goes like this:
Suffering equals Pain times Resistance divided by Mindful Acceptance
Or:
Suffering (S) equals (=) Pain (P) multiplied by (x) Resistance (R) divided by ( / ) Mindfulness and Acceptance (Ma)
Or:
S=PxR/Ma
So what exactly is mindfulness?
According to Jon Kabat-Zinn, mindfulness is:
• paying attention
• in a particular way
• on purpose
• in the present moment
• non-judgmentally (without prejudgment)
So if you're
• spaced out
• mind wandering
• future tripping
• dwelling in the past
• lost in fantasy
• operating on auto pilot
• resisting what is, and
• entangled in your judgmental thoughts
Than you're not practicing mindfulness.
That's okay.
But it's just not what we're talking about here.
Wise Mind:
DBT trains their clients to recognize and skillfully maneuver between 3 basic states of mind
• Rational Mind
- intellectual, logical, planning thoughts
• Emotional Mind
- viewing the world through the lens of feelings
• Wise Mind
- integrating thinking and feeling and arriving at healthy, sustainable, intentional behaviors
DBT helps clients act from Wise Mind via the practice of Mindfulness Meditation.
Mindfulness Meditation can be practiced in a variety of styles and methods depending on the individuals preferences and goals.
Formal Mindfulness Meditation practice:
This is what is most commonly thought of when people think of meditation. It entails sustained, relaxed concentration on an "object" of awareness, most commonly the breath.
If the mind wanders away from watching the breath, than the mindful attention is (gently and self lovingly) returned to the breath
It's usually done sitting in a comfortable but awake seated position, with eyes closed and in silence.
Formal practice is useful for developing basic skills and deepening practice, but is certainly not the only way to practice mindfulness.
Informal Mindfulness Meditation practice:
Entails maintaining the same type of relaxed concentration as formal practice, but in the context of ordinary activities, such as (but not limited to) walking, eating, exercising, doing the dishes etc.
People often think you have to be chill or tranquil to be mindful, or be doing something peaceful or sacred like yoga or really really slow walking.
But the activity itself is not the important part, it's the quality of Mindful Awareness that you bring to it that matters. And that can be done during any activity and in any thinking or emotional state, as long as you maintain mindful awareness of the thoughts, feelings and events.
The creators of DBT typically practice mindfulness with eyes open. The rationale is because they want their clients to bring their mindful awareness into their daily lives instead of having it be a special, occasional thing.
Mindfulness and Emotional Regulation:
Everyone has had the experience of becoming overwhelmed by intense emotions.
Weather your being "swept away" by strong feelings of love or happiness, or "flying off the handle" out of anger, both extremes share the quality of "loosing your self" in your emotional experience.
As we say in the biz, if it's not a problem, it's not a problem, but if it's a problem, it's a problem.
Generally speaking, emotions are not a problem. Far from it, they keep you safe and close to others. They are a source of internal guidance. They are the thing that makes life interesting.
But becoming emotionally dysregulated and behaving Impulsively can be a HUGE problem.
When emotionally driven behavioral impulsively is a problem, we need a good solution.
For a lot of people, more and more everyday, mindfulness is that solution.
Mindfulness allows you to have your emotions instead of your emotions having you.
Mindfulness can be an instrumental skill for emotional regulation for a lot of reasons. First and foremost is that it increases awareness of the emotions.
Mindfulness Researcher and Therapist Danieal Siegel refers to the importance of Monitoring and Modulating emotional states.
He typically explains this concept with the following metaphor:
If you're driving a car you need to (a) look where you are going and (b) steer and operate the gas and break pedals.
You need to "monitor" the road conditions as you appropriately "modulate" left, right, gas and break.
Emotional Regulation is similar in the sense that you need "monitor" your emotions by bringing your mindful attention to the feelings, and appropriately "modulate" the emotion by practicing any number of "soothing" (emotional down regulation) skills e.g. mindful deep, elongated breathing.
As I mentioned earlier, suffering is increased when we meet pain with resistance (S=PxR).
Conversely, suffering is decreased when we bring our mindful attention to it and meet it with willingness (S=PxR/Ma).
So by simply practicing mindfulness on our feelings, we can drastically reduce the suffering we experience.
Flying Off The Handle:
Everyone has said and done things that they later regret due to being carried away by strong emotions.
People often behave impulsively when they are Emotionally Dysregulated.
Weather it's impulsive eating, sex, substance abuse or clashing with a partner or family member, the ramifications of emotionally driven impulsivity can be devastating.
This is an occasional problem for some, but for others who experience Emotional Dysregulation chronically, it's an everyday problem.
Auschwitz survivor and psychotherapist Viktor E. Frankl said:
"Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom".
Essentially, what Frankl is saying is that when difficult or triggering things happen, oftentimes we we simply automatically react.
This is totally understandable, there's no judgment, but when life comes at you, and you simply react, there isn't a lot of freedom in that.
No Space
v
Stimuli=>||<=Response
^
No Freedom
Frankl is asserting that there is actually a gap between what comes at you and how you behave. And the more you practice pausing. The larger that gap gets.
Being carried away with a powerful emotion is like having no space between the stimulus (the feeling) and the response (the behavior).
Practicing mindfulness on emotions (no matter how intense) increases the space between the stimulus and the response, increasing behavioral flexibility i.e. the freedom to choose the behavior instead of simply automatically and inflexibly reacting.
Mindfulness
v
Stimuli=>| |<= Response
^
The Freedom Zone
Practicing mindfulness is like having a "pause button" on life. You can "hit pause" before you take action.
For someone struggling to gain control over emotionally driven impulsive behavior, this is the difference between being a prisoner and freedom.
Having freedom to choose as opposed to being on autopilot is precisely what the creators of DBT are referring to when they say Wise Mind.
ACTing Wisely:
Acceptance Commitment Therapy (ACT) is another of the major mindfulness based psychotherapy orientations.
ACT is focused more on the behavioral flexibility component than DBT, which is more focused on the emotional regulation.
The creators of ACT define mindfulness as being comprised of the following 4 psychological processes:
1: Contact with the Present Moment
- being in the "here and now"
2: Cognitive De-fusion
- taking a “step back” from thinking processes.
- watching our thoughts instead of being them.
3: Acceptance
-opening up and making room for painful feelings, sensations, urges, and emotions.
-dropping the struggle to feel one way or the other.
-being willing to be with what ever feelings arise.
4: Self As Context
-being identified with the spacious awareness of the thoughts and feelings, instead of being identified with the content of the thoughts and feelings.
Again, these are psychological skills that take practice and instruction to fully master. But if skillfully utilized, they can drastically reduce suffering and allow the individual to mindfully chose their actions instead of simply mindlessly reacting.
In other words, they can help you act from Wise Mind as opposed to acting all cray cray.
Take Note:
Mindfulness teacher (and all around geeky good guy) Shinzen Young teaches a secularized variant of a form of Buddhist Meditation called vipassana (which translated means "to see things as they really are").
One of the fundamental assumptions of vipassana is that our conscious experience is made up of lots of separate streams of information e.g. sight, touch, sound, mental talk, mental images, emotional feelings etc.
All of these information streams arise and subside in our "witnessing awareness" i.e. the part of us that is simply silently and nonjudgmentally aware.
Our ordinary experience of life is a jumble of sights, sounds, touch sensations, mental talk, mental images and emotional feelings (and smells and tastes and stuff) all twisted together in one undifferentiated stream.
Shinzen breaks them down like this:
Outside (sensory):
• S - sight (visual stimuli)
• T - touch (tactile stimuli)
• Sd - sound (audible stimuli)
STS for short
Inside (mental):
• F - feel (emotional body sensations)
• I - image (mental images)
• T - talk (mental talk)
FIT for short
According to Shinzen, these (STS-FIT) are all the different streams basic of information that combine to create our conscious awareness.
Vipassana practice teaches you to "deconstruct" your awareness into its component parts by mindfully directing your focus to one information stream at a time.
You do this by mentally labeling the target stream in order to maintain your mindful concentration on it.
For example: one of the practices is to simply notice self talk while your meditating. In order to do this you simply sit and watch your mind do what it does, and when ever you notice any "self talk" you mentally label it "talk".
You don't analyze the content or meaning of the words. You just label it "talk".
You don't take it personally, you don't try to stop it from happening, you simply observe it and label it "talk".
This is a way for you to differentiate yourself from the (rather endless) stream of mental talk that any healthy brain just sort of spews.
Brains make self talk, we don't necessarily have to get involved. We can simply sit and watch the self talk flow by like leaves on a stream.
"Talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk".
By doing this, we are identifying as the witness of the talk instead of the being reflexively identified with the talk.
Shinzen's definition of mindfulness is "concentration, clarity and equanimity".
1. Concentration:
• intentionally maintaining relaxed attention
2. Clarity:
• remaining vividly awake and in witness mode
3. Equanimity:
• remaining nonjudgmental, excepting and willing
What he essentially means is, as long as we're on the bank watching the leaves flow by, instead of drowning in the river, were practicing mindfulness.
And as long as you're labeling (or simply noticing) a part of the stream of sensory and mental content (STS-FIT), you're doing exactly that.
You can learn more about Shinzen's teachings at
http://www.basicmindfulness.org
DBT utilizes this technique for emotional regulation.
The technique is straight up Shinzen style vipassana.
You simply label your emotions.
Weather you're happy or sad or angry or whatever, you simply "witness" what ever your feeling and label it "feel".
You sit on the bank of the stream and watch the "feels" flow on by like floating leaves.
"feel, feel, feel, feel, feel, feel, feel, feel, feel".
You're not the focusing on the content of the feelings, your just being the equanimous (nonjudgmental) witness of the feelings.
You're still feeling every little bit of them. You're just not drowning in a treacherous, fast-moving river of them.
By mentally noting your experience in this way, you're able to stay connected to your feelings by noticing them, but you're not allowing them to take over your identity and behavior and run the show called you.
This process helps you to take a "step back" from your feelings so that they don't overwhelm you.
It's one of the ways you can mindfully have your feelings instead of your feelings having you.
It's one of the best ways to act out of Wise Mind.
The Basic Trifecta of Emotional Regulation:
The absolute fundamental factors of emotional regulation are:
(S) sleep
(E) exercise
(D) diet
Everyone has had the experience of feeling fucked up when you either eat too much or too little, sleep too much or too little or you don't get enough exercise.
Any of these can make you either lethargic and spaced out, or sensitive and irritable or all of the above and more.
Healthy diet and exercise and restful, restorative sleep are pretty much the basics of self care.
They are all important, and they all effect the other "tri-directionally" i.e. they are interdependent factors.
Meaning, if you mess one or two of them up, the other ones will also suffer, and you'll feel all kinds of fucked up.
If you drew them out diagrammatically, it would look like this:
The Basics of Emotional Regulation Triangle:
(S)
/ \
(E) __ (D)
S: sleep
E: exercise
D: diet
Not enough sleep (S) makes it more likely that you will over or under eat (D) and/or under exercise (E).
Not enough exercise (E) makes it more likely that you will over or under eat (D) and/or over or under sleep (S).
And
Over or under eating (D) makes it more likely that you will over or under sleep (S) and under exercise (E).
Basic Bitches:
So these are the absolute BASICS of self care and emotion regulation.
But I put them below mindfulness skills in this review for a good reason.
Because they occur later in the book.
But there's a good reason for that too.
The reason for that is because mindfulness can help regulate all of these interdependent factors.
Minding The Basics:
Mindful Eating can help you avoid over or under eating, and can help make better, healthier choices.
Mindfulness can help you get better sleep.
And
Mindfulness can also help you enjoy exercise more and know when you need to do more of it.
I could go on and on.
Rather than listen to me prattle on.
How about if you just read this short, simple, powerful little book.
Emotional Dysregulation (ED) refers to a trait of labile, easily destabilized or otherwise inadequately modulated emotional responses.
Possible behavioral manifestations of ED (not to be confused with erectile dysfunction, although behavioral manifestations can be similar) include angry outbursts, destroying or throwing objects, aggression towards self or others, and threats to kill oneself.
ED can be associated with an experience of early psychological and sexual trauma or chronic maltreatment (such as child neglect/abuse).
You can also catch it from dating someone with early psychological and sexual trauma or chronic maltreatment (such as child neglect/abuse).
Not really (but sorta).
ED may present in people with psychiatric disorders such as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), bipolar disorder and complex post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
But this book is based on the Dialectal Behavioral Therapy (DBT) modal which is primarily focused on treatment of borderline personality disorder.
Borderline personality disorder (BPD) is a cluster-B personality disorder.
The essential features include a pattern of impulsivity and instability of behaviors, chaotic (high drama) interpersonal relationships, unstable self-image and ED (hypersensitivity to emotional stimuli and a slower return to a normal emotional state).
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy:
Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) is a short-term, goal-oriented psychotherapy treatment that takes a practical approach to problem-solving and symptom reduction.
CBT focuses on identifying and changing inaccurate or unhelpful ways of thinking,
CBT assumes that people suffer from unpleasant feelings and moods (e.g. anxiety and depression) because they have maladaptive (negative, harmful etc.) thoughts and behaviors.
For more on CBT check out professor Jason M. Saterfield's amazing Great Courses audio program titled Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, and/or read my summary review of it, right here on Goodreads.
Dialectical Behavior Therapy:
Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) is a modified form of CBT that was developed by Marsha M. Linehan.
DBT is designed to help individuals increase their emotional regulation by (a) identifying triggers that lead to emotionally reactive states, and (b) implementing effective coping skills.
DBT combines standard cognitive-behavioral techniques for emotion regulation and mindful awareness skill building exercises largely derived from Zen Buddhist meditation practice.
Mindfuflness:
DBT is one of the major mindfulness based therapeutic protocols.
Mindfulness has been the buzzword lately, and for good reason. It's precisely what our stressed out culture needs. A little equanimity.
Mindfulness is not as much of a concept as it is a way of being with your inner experiences and being in the world.
Mindfulness refers to a way of assuming the role of the non judgmental witness of your own experience, as it arises, moment to moment, in the here and now.
Jon Kabat-Zinn is the guy most associated with secularizing mindfulness and introducing it into the clinical context.
Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR):
Kabat-Zinn created an 8 week program for people with untreatable chronic pain and anxiety called Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR).
He piloted MBSR at Boston Medical and was able to help people reduce their suffering from pain conditions, whom conventional treatment had failed (either due to developing too high a tolerance to pain medication or because of a lack of medical intervention for their condition or both).
MBSR is very effective for pain, particularly for chronic pain, but here's the catch.
MBSR doesn't help people reduce their pain.
MBSR helps people use mindfulness to open up and make space for the pain, and stop resisting it, and thereby reduce their suffering.
Similarly, DBT helps people use mindfulness to open up and make space for their difficult thoughts and emotions, and resisting against them, and thereby reduce their suffering.
Pain vs. Suffering:
According to the mindfulness traditions, pain and suffering are two different things.
Pain is an inevitability, suffering is optional.
One can have pain without necessarily suffering.
For example:
Remember when you were a kid and you had to get a shot from the doctor. If you were like me you threw a fit. You tensed every muscle in fear and resistance. Then you got the shot and it was not nearly as bad as you thought is would be.
In this example, the pain was the momentary sensory experience of the shot. The suffering was all of the extra stuff you projected onto the situation out of fear and all of the tension created due to resistance.
The short hand for this phenomena is:
Suffering equals Pain multiplied by Resistance
The pseudo math formula that explains the phenomena is:
Suffering (S) Is equal to (=) Pain (P) multiplied by (x) Resistance (R).
S=PxR
Now as an adult, when you know you're about to get a shot, you still feel that wave of dread, but now you know to relax, breath, maybe close your eyes, and surrender to the moment. And poof, it's over with just a little prick sensation.
That's mindfulness in a nutshell.
So the whole equation goes like this:
Suffering equals Pain times Resistance divided by Mindful Acceptance
Or:
Suffering (S) equals (=) Pain (P) multiplied by (x) Resistance (R) divided by ( / ) Mindfulness and Acceptance (Ma)
Or:
S=PxR/Ma
So what exactly is mindfulness?
According to Jon Kabat-Zinn, mindfulness is:
• paying attention
• in a particular way
• on purpose
• in the present moment
• non-judgmentally (without prejudgment)
So if you're
• spaced out
• mind wandering
• future tripping
• dwelling in the past
• lost in fantasy
• operating on auto pilot
• resisting what is, and
• entangled in your judgmental thoughts
Than you're not practicing mindfulness.
That's okay.
But it's just not what we're talking about here.
Wise Mind:
DBT trains their clients to recognize and skillfully maneuver between 3 basic states of mind
• Rational Mind
- intellectual, logical, planning thoughts
• Emotional Mind
- viewing the world through the lens of feelings
• Wise Mind
- integrating thinking and feeling and arriving at healthy, sustainable, intentional behaviors
DBT helps clients act from Wise Mind via the practice of Mindfulness Meditation.
Mindfulness Meditation can be practiced in a variety of styles and methods depending on the individuals preferences and goals.
Formal Mindfulness Meditation practice:
This is what is most commonly thought of when people think of meditation. It entails sustained, relaxed concentration on an "object" of awareness, most commonly the breath.
If the mind wanders away from watching the breath, than the mindful attention is (gently and self lovingly) returned to the breath
It's usually done sitting in a comfortable but awake seated position, with eyes closed and in silence.
Formal practice is useful for developing basic skills and deepening practice, but is certainly not the only way to practice mindfulness.
Informal Mindfulness Meditation practice:
Entails maintaining the same type of relaxed concentration as formal practice, but in the context of ordinary activities, such as (but not limited to) walking, eating, exercising, doing the dishes etc.
People often think you have to be chill or tranquil to be mindful, or be doing something peaceful or sacred like yoga or really really slow walking.
But the activity itself is not the important part, it's the quality of Mindful Awareness that you bring to it that matters. And that can be done during any activity and in any thinking or emotional state, as long as you maintain mindful awareness of the thoughts, feelings and events.
The creators of DBT typically practice mindfulness with eyes open. The rationale is because they want their clients to bring their mindful awareness into their daily lives instead of having it be a special, occasional thing.
Mindfulness and Emotional Regulation:
Everyone has had the experience of becoming overwhelmed by intense emotions.
Weather your being "swept away" by strong feelings of love or happiness, or "flying off the handle" out of anger, both extremes share the quality of "loosing your self" in your emotional experience.
As we say in the biz, if it's not a problem, it's not a problem, but if it's a problem, it's a problem.
Generally speaking, emotions are not a problem. Far from it, they keep you safe and close to others. They are a source of internal guidance. They are the thing that makes life interesting.
But becoming emotionally dysregulated and behaving Impulsively can be a HUGE problem.
When emotionally driven behavioral impulsively is a problem, we need a good solution.
For a lot of people, more and more everyday, mindfulness is that solution.
Mindfulness allows you to have your emotions instead of your emotions having you.
Mindfulness can be an instrumental skill for emotional regulation for a lot of reasons. First and foremost is that it increases awareness of the emotions.
Mindfulness Researcher and Therapist Danieal Siegel refers to the importance of Monitoring and Modulating emotional states.
He typically explains this concept with the following metaphor:
If you're driving a car you need to (a) look where you are going and (b) steer and operate the gas and break pedals.
You need to "monitor" the road conditions as you appropriately "modulate" left, right, gas and break.
Emotional Regulation is similar in the sense that you need "monitor" your emotions by bringing your mindful attention to the feelings, and appropriately "modulate" the emotion by practicing any number of "soothing" (emotional down regulation) skills e.g. mindful deep, elongated breathing.
As I mentioned earlier, suffering is increased when we meet pain with resistance (S=PxR).
Conversely, suffering is decreased when we bring our mindful attention to it and meet it with willingness (S=PxR/Ma).
So by simply practicing mindfulness on our feelings, we can drastically reduce the suffering we experience.
Flying Off The Handle:
Everyone has said and done things that they later regret due to being carried away by strong emotions.
People often behave impulsively when they are Emotionally Dysregulated.
Weather it's impulsive eating, sex, substance abuse or clashing with a partner or family member, the ramifications of emotionally driven impulsivity can be devastating.
This is an occasional problem for some, but for others who experience Emotional Dysregulation chronically, it's an everyday problem.
Auschwitz survivor and psychotherapist Viktor E. Frankl said:
"Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom".
Essentially, what Frankl is saying is that when difficult or triggering things happen, oftentimes we we simply automatically react.
This is totally understandable, there's no judgment, but when life comes at you, and you simply react, there isn't a lot of freedom in that.
No Space
v
Stimuli=>||<=Response
^
No Freedom
Frankl is asserting that there is actually a gap between what comes at you and how you behave. And the more you practice pausing. The larger that gap gets.
Being carried away with a powerful emotion is like having no space between the stimulus (the feeling) and the response (the behavior).
Practicing mindfulness on emotions (no matter how intense) increases the space between the stimulus and the response, increasing behavioral flexibility i.e. the freedom to choose the behavior instead of simply automatically and inflexibly reacting.
Mindfulness
v
Stimuli=>| |<= Response
^
The Freedom Zone
Practicing mindfulness is like having a "pause button" on life. You can "hit pause" before you take action.
For someone struggling to gain control over emotionally driven impulsive behavior, this is the difference between being a prisoner and freedom.
Having freedom to choose as opposed to being on autopilot is precisely what the creators of DBT are referring to when they say Wise Mind.
ACTing Wisely:
Acceptance Commitment Therapy (ACT) is another of the major mindfulness based psychotherapy orientations.
ACT is focused more on the behavioral flexibility component than DBT, which is more focused on the emotional regulation.
The creators of ACT define mindfulness as being comprised of the following 4 psychological processes:
1: Contact with the Present Moment
- being in the "here and now"
2: Cognitive De-fusion
- taking a “step back” from thinking processes.
- watching our thoughts instead of being them.
3: Acceptance
-opening up and making room for painful feelings, sensations, urges, and emotions.
-dropping the struggle to feel one way or the other.
-being willing to be with what ever feelings arise.
4: Self As Context
-being identified with the spacious awareness of the thoughts and feelings, instead of being identified with the content of the thoughts and feelings.
Again, these are psychological skills that take practice and instruction to fully master. But if skillfully utilized, they can drastically reduce suffering and allow the individual to mindfully chose their actions instead of simply mindlessly reacting.
In other words, they can help you act from Wise Mind as opposed to acting all cray cray.
Take Note:
Mindfulness teacher (and all around geeky good guy) Shinzen Young teaches a secularized variant of a form of Buddhist Meditation called vipassana (which translated means "to see things as they really are").
One of the fundamental assumptions of vipassana is that our conscious experience is made up of lots of separate streams of information e.g. sight, touch, sound, mental talk, mental images, emotional feelings etc.
All of these information streams arise and subside in our "witnessing awareness" i.e. the part of us that is simply silently and nonjudgmentally aware.
Our ordinary experience of life is a jumble of sights, sounds, touch sensations, mental talk, mental images and emotional feelings (and smells and tastes and stuff) all twisted together in one undifferentiated stream.
Shinzen breaks them down like this:
Outside (sensory):
• S - sight (visual stimuli)
• T - touch (tactile stimuli)
• Sd - sound (audible stimuli)
STS for short
Inside (mental):
• F - feel (emotional body sensations)
• I - image (mental images)
• T - talk (mental talk)
FIT for short
According to Shinzen, these (STS-FIT) are all the different streams basic of information that combine to create our conscious awareness.
Vipassana practice teaches you to "deconstruct" your awareness into its component parts by mindfully directing your focus to one information stream at a time.
You do this by mentally labeling the target stream in order to maintain your mindful concentration on it.
For example: one of the practices is to simply notice self talk while your meditating. In order to do this you simply sit and watch your mind do what it does, and when ever you notice any "self talk" you mentally label it "talk".
You don't analyze the content or meaning of the words. You just label it "talk".
You don't take it personally, you don't try to stop it from happening, you simply observe it and label it "talk".
This is a way for you to differentiate yourself from the (rather endless) stream of mental talk that any healthy brain just sort of spews.
Brains make self talk, we don't necessarily have to get involved. We can simply sit and watch the self talk flow by like leaves on a stream.
"Talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk".
By doing this, we are identifying as the witness of the talk instead of the being reflexively identified with the talk.
Shinzen's definition of mindfulness is "concentration, clarity and equanimity".
1. Concentration:
• intentionally maintaining relaxed attention
2. Clarity:
• remaining vividly awake and in witness mode
3. Equanimity:
• remaining nonjudgmental, excepting and willing
What he essentially means is, as long as we're on the bank watching the leaves flow by, instead of drowning in the river, were practicing mindfulness.
And as long as you're labeling (or simply noticing) a part of the stream of sensory and mental content (STS-FIT), you're doing exactly that.
You can learn more about Shinzen's teachings at
http://www.basicmindfulness.org
DBT utilizes this technique for emotional regulation.
The technique is straight up Shinzen style vipassana.
You simply label your emotions.
Weather you're happy or sad or angry or whatever, you simply "witness" what ever your feeling and label it "feel".
You sit on the bank of the stream and watch the "feels" flow on by like floating leaves.
"feel, feel, feel, feel, feel, feel, feel, feel, feel".
You're not the focusing on the content of the feelings, your just being the equanimous (nonjudgmental) witness of the feelings.
You're still feeling every little bit of them. You're just not drowning in a treacherous, fast-moving river of them.
By mentally noting your experience in this way, you're able to stay connected to your feelings by noticing them, but you're not allowing them to take over your identity and behavior and run the show called you.
This process helps you to take a "step back" from your feelings so that they don't overwhelm you.
It's one of the ways you can mindfully have your feelings instead of your feelings having you.
It's one of the best ways to act out of Wise Mind.
The Basic Trifecta of Emotional Regulation:
The absolute fundamental factors of emotional regulation are:
(S) sleep
(E) exercise
(D) diet
Everyone has had the experience of feeling fucked up when you either eat too much or too little, sleep too much or too little or you don't get enough exercise.
Any of these can make you either lethargic and spaced out, or sensitive and irritable or all of the above and more.
Healthy diet and exercise and restful, restorative sleep are pretty much the basics of self care.
They are all important, and they all effect the other "tri-directionally" i.e. they are interdependent factors.
Meaning, if you mess one or two of them up, the other ones will also suffer, and you'll feel all kinds of fucked up.
If you drew them out diagrammatically, it would look like this:
The Basics of Emotional Regulation Triangle:
(S)
/ \
(E) __ (D)
S: sleep
E: exercise
D: diet
Not enough sleep (S) makes it more likely that you will over or under eat (D) and/or under exercise (E).
Not enough exercise (E) makes it more likely that you will over or under eat (D) and/or over or under sleep (S).
And
Over or under eating (D) makes it more likely that you will over or under sleep (S) and under exercise (E).
Basic Bitches:
So these are the absolute BASICS of self care and emotion regulation.
But I put them below mindfulness skills in this review for a good reason.
Because they occur later in the book.
But there's a good reason for that too.
The reason for that is because mindfulness can help regulate all of these interdependent factors.
Minding The Basics:
Mindful Eating can help you avoid over or under eating, and can help make better, healthier choices.
Mindfulness can help you get better sleep.
And
Mindfulness can also help you enjoy exercise more and know when you need to do more of it.
I could go on and on.
Rather than listen to me prattle on.
How about if you just read this short, simple, powerful little book.
March 27, 2022
After a first read through of Calming the Emotional Storm a few months ago, I kept finding my mind return to it. I realized that was largely because rather than engaging in the book fully I jumped right into Reality Acceptance. Even while that was useful, I didn't take the in depth notes on it that I should have. Calming the Emotional Storm has so many good and helpful strategies for people like myself who have found ways to suppress and invalidate their "negative" emotions. As the book says, so very often in rephrased ways:
The paradoxical nature of the mind is challenging for people who charge through their problems with willpower and determination. People who ask questions like how do I make it go away. The book has in depth strategies, but I do appreciate the reminders like this one:
So following a second, and more thorough, read through, I'm upgrading this book to a full 5 stars because it deserves it.
My previous review
"...the more you try to resist something or push it away, the stronger it will get, so with obsessive thoughts, the more you try to stop thinking about them, the more you'll end up thinking about them. Instead you have to accept that is the thought that's present right now — don't judge it, don't push it away — and just acknowledge its presence."
The paradoxical nature of the mind is challenging for people who charge through their problems with willpower and determination. People who ask questions like how do I make it go away. The book has in depth strategies, but I do appreciate the reminders like this one:
Oh, if I had a dime for every time someone asked me the question 'How do I get rid of these thoughts?' Usually people don't like the answer: the way to get rid of a thought is to stop trying to get rid of it.
So following a second, and more thorough, read through, I'm upgrading this book to a full 5 stars because it deserves it.
My previous review
September 28, 2014
I've been applying these techniques all of my life naturally as self-soothing techniques to keep my sanity. Highly recommend but not a quick fix. Like long term health routines, these techniques have to be used consistently throughout the day until it becomes a natural habit. Forgive yourself if you fall off the wagon now and then.
December 21, 2021
This potentially could be very helpful, but I had a really hard time connecting with the framework of mindfulness. As a social work student training to serve survivors of DV, I am trying to work on my own emotional regulation so that I can be a stable and effective practitioner. This book promises a lot but ultimately I felt like I didn’t get much out of it.
If mindfulness simply means focusing one’s full attention on the present moment/task and checking in to see how one feels, I think I could do that. But the author also uses mindfulness to mean an almost obsessive kind of self-monitoring and cognitive labeling of emotions that didn’t appeal to me at all. Because all the skills depend on mindfulness, I was never sure if I could successfully implement them if I was not obsessively monitoring myself like an outside observer and labeling my emotions in a way that is difficult because of my alexithymia.
I think the general skills outlined in this book are helpful and certainly are a good guideline to assess in what areas one is routinely emotionally dysregulated. I will keep assessing myself and see if I can benefit from practicing these skills.
I really did not appreciate the individualistic, blaming tone of many of the chapters. People’s real experiences of suffering (racist comments, sexual abuse, being denied insurance coverage for needed medical care) were used as examples of realities that they needed to “accept.” An anti-oppressive framework is missing. These skills will have limited utility for persons in oppressive situations.
If mindfulness simply means focusing one’s full attention on the present moment/task and checking in to see how one feels, I think I could do that. But the author also uses mindfulness to mean an almost obsessive kind of self-monitoring and cognitive labeling of emotions that didn’t appeal to me at all. Because all the skills depend on mindfulness, I was never sure if I could successfully implement them if I was not obsessively monitoring myself like an outside observer and labeling my emotions in a way that is difficult because of my alexithymia.
I think the general skills outlined in this book are helpful and certainly are a good guideline to assess in what areas one is routinely emotionally dysregulated. I will keep assessing myself and see if I can benefit from practicing these skills.
I really did not appreciate the individualistic, blaming tone of many of the chapters. People’s real experiences of suffering (racist comments, sexual abuse, being denied insurance coverage for needed medical care) were used as examples of realities that they needed to “accept.” An anti-oppressive framework is missing. These skills will have limited utility for persons in oppressive situations.
July 17, 2019
As a primer on DBT skills, from my limited background, this seems to work pretty well. Van Dijk has a much longer textbook available, and one could always go to the source in Marsha Linehan, but for those interested in a cursory overview of the basics this does seem to me like a good starting point. It's short and clearly organized. I think more and better examples could've been employed, but of course that would make a thin book less so.
February 5, 2014
First, in March 2013, I felt my life spin out of control a little so I got this book at the book store. I chose this book above the others because it was very short and I didn’t have much time to commit to reading it. I began reading immediately, but after the first or second chapter, I put the book down.
I picked the book pack up, and the following is my findings. Before getting to spiritually relevant information, I want to discuss the writer’s voice. I did not like the jumpiness of the chapters or the feeling of rambling, because I was scared that without meticulous organization in the writing, the lessons would be lost. If I read through it like a novel and did not stop to reflect or re-read chapters at a time, then the lessons may very well have been lost on me. Instead, I actually wrote about my findings, completed the exercises, and reflected on the concepts. Therefore, I had a great experience overall with this book.
Before I go into specific thoughts on the book, I’d like to say: if you only read two chapters in the book, read Ch 5 (nonjudgment) and Ch 9 (positive thinking)–they are the quickest and easiest and most relate-able. The excerpts I have below are not necessarily from these chapters, but if I were limited in time and picked up this book, I would read Ch 5 and Ch 9. I truly think those chapters were the most powerful and least over-thought.
(1) Ah, So
In Jivamutki Yoga, there is an “Ah, So” story, accessible here http://mylitworld.wordpress.com/2011/... .
The following quotes reflect the meaning of Ah, So, to me:
“It’s okay that you feel like this. You’ve felt like this before, and it doesn’t last forever. You’re going to get through this.” (VanDijk 39)
Regarding judgments, “Ideally, the goal is to be nonjudgmental, or neutral. In other words, the goal is to be neither positive nor negative.” (VanDijk 96)
(2) Long-term v. Short-term
Recently, my man and I had an interesting discussion. We currently live and work in different cities, but we both hope that one day we will settle down with jobs and personal lives in the same city. He said something super-brilliant to me (to make me stop whining/crying about being apart from him): Lady, this is only temporary, look at our current jobs and cities as short term issues, and hold out for the long run.
It thrilled me, of course, to find that same sentiment reflected in the VanDijk book:
In the Leave the Judgments Out of It Section, VanDijk writes, “When you’re being nonjudgmental, you’re saying what you really mean rather than just sticking a short-term label on something. Being nonjudgmental is a more effective way of communicating.” (94)
In the How to Be More Effective in Your Life Section, VanDijk asks What does Being Effective Mean? and answers, “The skill of being effective refers to doing what works, doing what moves you closer to your long-term goals, and doing what you need to do to get your needs met” (103, citations omitted)
She further states, “…it can help if you take some time, slow yourself down, and give some thought to setting a goal before acting…when you have conflicting goals…you need to access your wise self to help you decide which goal is most important to you…” (109)
(3) Sit in the Shit/ Be Content Whatever the Circumstances
In the fall, I had a prayer group study of Calm My Anxious Heart, and we discussed Christian scripture. One verse includes St. Paul saying that he has learned to be content whatever the circumstances. A lady in our group explained that she has recently learned to “sit in the shit.” What? We all looked at her, aghast, did you just say “shit”? Yes, she replied, I have to learn to just sit with all the bad things and get used to them because they may be here a while.
For me, painful emotions feel like “shit.” In an attempt to accept the “shit” in my life and “be content whatever the circumstances,” I can now utilize VanDijk’s emotional recognitions.
In the Learning About Your Emotions Section, she suggests to name the emotions, saying “It’s a well known fact that people who are able to identify their emotions are more able to manage them…over time and with practice, you’ll become more familiar with your emotions and better at identifying them.”
She offers an exercise: ”Ask yourself the question ‘What emotion is here?’ and just allow your attention to be drawn to whatever emotion makes itself known. Be open to it and curious about it. Describe it in as much detail as you can. Can you put a name on it? If you can, name it. Don’t judge it if it’s a painful emotion, just acknowledge its presence.”
In the Quieting Your Emotions Section, she states “Validating your emotions means that you accept them and have the ability to understand them; not that you like those emotions or want them to hang aground, but that you acknowledge their presence, and give yourself permission to feel them. (82-83)
I picked the book pack up, and the following is my findings. Before getting to spiritually relevant information, I want to discuss the writer’s voice. I did not like the jumpiness of the chapters or the feeling of rambling, because I was scared that without meticulous organization in the writing, the lessons would be lost. If I read through it like a novel and did not stop to reflect or re-read chapters at a time, then the lessons may very well have been lost on me. Instead, I actually wrote about my findings, completed the exercises, and reflected on the concepts. Therefore, I had a great experience overall with this book.
Before I go into specific thoughts on the book, I’d like to say: if you only read two chapters in the book, read Ch 5 (nonjudgment) and Ch 9 (positive thinking)–they are the quickest and easiest and most relate-able. The excerpts I have below are not necessarily from these chapters, but if I were limited in time and picked up this book, I would read Ch 5 and Ch 9. I truly think those chapters were the most powerful and least over-thought.
(1) Ah, So
In Jivamutki Yoga, there is an “Ah, So” story, accessible here http://mylitworld.wordpress.com/2011/... .
The following quotes reflect the meaning of Ah, So, to me:
“It’s okay that you feel like this. You’ve felt like this before, and it doesn’t last forever. You’re going to get through this.” (VanDijk 39)
Regarding judgments, “Ideally, the goal is to be nonjudgmental, or neutral. In other words, the goal is to be neither positive nor negative.” (VanDijk 96)
(2) Long-term v. Short-term
Recently, my man and I had an interesting discussion. We currently live and work in different cities, but we both hope that one day we will settle down with jobs and personal lives in the same city. He said something super-brilliant to me (to make me stop whining/crying about being apart from him): Lady, this is only temporary, look at our current jobs and cities as short term issues, and hold out for the long run.
It thrilled me, of course, to find that same sentiment reflected in the VanDijk book:
In the Leave the Judgments Out of It Section, VanDijk writes, “When you’re being nonjudgmental, you’re saying what you really mean rather than just sticking a short-term label on something. Being nonjudgmental is a more effective way of communicating.” (94)
In the How to Be More Effective in Your Life Section, VanDijk asks What does Being Effective Mean? and answers, “The skill of being effective refers to doing what works, doing what moves you closer to your long-term goals, and doing what you need to do to get your needs met” (103, citations omitted)
She further states, “…it can help if you take some time, slow yourself down, and give some thought to setting a goal before acting…when you have conflicting goals…you need to access your wise self to help you decide which goal is most important to you…” (109)
(3) Sit in the Shit/ Be Content Whatever the Circumstances
In the fall, I had a prayer group study of Calm My Anxious Heart, and we discussed Christian scripture. One verse includes St. Paul saying that he has learned to be content whatever the circumstances. A lady in our group explained that she has recently learned to “sit in the shit.” What? We all looked at her, aghast, did you just say “shit”? Yes, she replied, I have to learn to just sit with all the bad things and get used to them because they may be here a while.
For me, painful emotions feel like “shit.” In an attempt to accept the “shit” in my life and “be content whatever the circumstances,” I can now utilize VanDijk’s emotional recognitions.
In the Learning About Your Emotions Section, she suggests to name the emotions, saying “It’s a well known fact that people who are able to identify their emotions are more able to manage them…over time and with practice, you’ll become more familiar with your emotions and better at identifying them.”
She offers an exercise: ”Ask yourself the question ‘What emotion is here?’ and just allow your attention to be drawn to whatever emotion makes itself known. Be open to it and curious about it. Describe it in as much detail as you can. Can you put a name on it? If you can, name it. Don’t judge it if it’s a painful emotion, just acknowledge its presence.”
In the Quieting Your Emotions Section, she states “Validating your emotions means that you accept them and have the ability to understand them; not that you like those emotions or want them to hang aground, but that you acknowledge their presence, and give yourself permission to feel them. (82-83)
May 12, 2016
A very slim book, mostly into mindfulness. Doesn't go into the skills or acronyms of DBT at all. Not even good for a pocket guide. Was very disappointed.
December 29, 2018
3:80
كتاب جيد
اتوقع انهومن الكتب اللي يبين اثرها مع الوقت
مو الحين
كتاب جيد
اتوقع انهومن الكتب اللي يبين اثرها مع الوقت
مو الحين
February 27, 2016
Concise, helpful book with suggestions for coping with sadness, anger and grief. Only three stars because much of the information is not new or even presented in a fresh manner.
December 22, 2019
I've had a long, stressful year, and found myself getting frustrated and angry very often.
This book definitely helped me bring awareness to those moments and gave me some tools to deal with the situations more effectively.
This book definitely helped me bring awareness to those moments and gave me some tools to deal with the situations more effectively.
December 8, 2021
I found this book insightful and appreciated the succinctness, clear applications and exercises to practice, and helpful summaries at the end of each chapter. The examples were sometimes weak, and the way the book was organized made it feel repetitive at times, but overall I still found it useful enough to earn a 5 star rating. I highlighted throughout and actually bought a copy so that I can refer back to this book in the future (which is rare for me).
November 22, 2019
I listened to this book and have purchased the Kindle version so I can work through the book. I am going to begin using DBT exercises with my counselor, as well. I already practice meditation daily, so I’m familiar with part of the process. I am looking forward to leveraging that to make progress in managing my emotions and having my wise self lead me. (Wise is going to be my word for 2020, in fact.)
May 27, 2014
Excellent, no-nonsense book about how a person can use Dialectical behavioral Therapy DBT skills to cope with stress, anger and emotional disregulation. Although this book is written for a wide variety of audiences, mental health practitioners can find a lot of useful information here. At the end of some of the chapters there are useful summaries that list how a person can use a particular DBT skill. The book is very well written and concise.
November 21, 2021
Wow, there is so much wisdom in this book. I would recommend if you are a therapist learning to work with DBT or you’re someone who struggles with emotional regulation (in other words you’re a human!). It’s a very client friendly book with really useful exercises that could make such an impact on people’s lives.
March 23, 2021
Affirmed some skills I've learned, reminded me of some I'd forgotten. A worthwhile read - I wrote 40 pages of notes... Not too many convoluted stories or exercises; one per chapter to illustrate the point. 8/10 would recommend.
October 19, 2019
Succint and cohesive.
It’s far from being a perfect book. But the fact that it comes to me when I need it the most make it such so profound.
It’s far from being a perfect book. But the fact that it comes to me when I need it the most make it such so profound.
October 27, 2022
It's important to note that not every therapy is suited for every individual and just because something has worked for a friend or colleague of yours, unfortunately it doesn't mean it will work for you.
I have spent a lot of time researching and reading about different behavior therapies, I have tried a few of them and up until now I hadn't found one that resonates with how I feel.
Calming the Emotional Storm is a short but extremely helpful book that breaks down clearly the issues that people face when trying to understand and manage their emotions. Not control, understand, manage, and of course accept. The author's clearly structured book takes you on a journey through yourself, calmly and gently pointing out all the harmful and unhealthy ways you have been dealing with your emotions up until now and ways to begin and change that.
Dialectical behavior therapy focuses on mindfulness as the main pathway to calm the emotional storm that sometimes engulfs you. It places high importance on expressing your emotions, whatever they might be in a healthy way, on being gentle and forgiving with yourself, on altering your inner voice to a kinder one, on rethinking your stance on judgments, on choosing effectiveness and acting from your wiser self, on accepting reality and not fighting it or judging it, on being patient and understand with yourself, on gently acknowledging your thoughts and even more gently letting them go.
It sounds easy and straight forward but more often than not we are so caught up in the moment that our automatic thoughts and behaviors are hard to catch and we just end up doing the same thing over and over and over again, even though we realize it's not good for us.
What struck me the most, which is also a concept from Mark Manson's books, is the topic of pain. Sometimes we get so obsessed with avoiding pain that we hide in our unhealthy coping mechanisms, denying our emotions, denying ourselves the chance to experience these emotions, denying our own reality, that we end up disconnecting from ourselves completely. Pain is inevitable, everyone experiences pain in their lives, but suffering, well suffering is optional. I need to carve this out somewhere.
An additional concept I found thought provoking is the author's pledge to remove motivation from your vocabulary. More often that not people don't do a certain activity because they feel low, or as they say, because they have no motivation. According to the author, motivation has absolutely nothing to do with it. When you are at your lowest it's kind of understandable that you don't want to do anything. But if you wait until you do, you might be waiting a long time. And strikingly, we don't have to feel like doing things that we actually enjoy doing. Read that again and let that sink in.
I absolutely loved the book. I took notes vigorously while reading but I feel I need to read it a couple of more times just to get the messages stuck in my mind. Highly recommend to anyone struggling with an emotional storm in their lives.
I have spent a lot of time researching and reading about different behavior therapies, I have tried a few of them and up until now I hadn't found one that resonates with how I feel.
Calming the Emotional Storm is a short but extremely helpful book that breaks down clearly the issues that people face when trying to understand and manage their emotions. Not control, understand, manage, and of course accept. The author's clearly structured book takes you on a journey through yourself, calmly and gently pointing out all the harmful and unhealthy ways you have been dealing with your emotions up until now and ways to begin and change that.
Dialectical behavior therapy focuses on mindfulness as the main pathway to calm the emotional storm that sometimes engulfs you. It places high importance on expressing your emotions, whatever they might be in a healthy way, on being gentle and forgiving with yourself, on altering your inner voice to a kinder one, on rethinking your stance on judgments, on choosing effectiveness and acting from your wiser self, on accepting reality and not fighting it or judging it, on being patient and understand with yourself, on gently acknowledging your thoughts and even more gently letting them go.
It sounds easy and straight forward but more often than not we are so caught up in the moment that our automatic thoughts and behaviors are hard to catch and we just end up doing the same thing over and over and over again, even though we realize it's not good for us.
What struck me the most, which is also a concept from Mark Manson's books, is the topic of pain. Sometimes we get so obsessed with avoiding pain that we hide in our unhealthy coping mechanisms, denying our emotions, denying ourselves the chance to experience these emotions, denying our own reality, that we end up disconnecting from ourselves completely. Pain is inevitable, everyone experiences pain in their lives, but suffering, well suffering is optional. I need to carve this out somewhere.
An additional concept I found thought provoking is the author's pledge to remove motivation from your vocabulary. More often that not people don't do a certain activity because they feel low, or as they say, because they have no motivation. According to the author, motivation has absolutely nothing to do with it. When you are at your lowest it's kind of understandable that you don't want to do anything. But if you wait until you do, you might be waiting a long time. And strikingly, we don't have to feel like doing things that we actually enjoy doing. Read that again and let that sink in.
I absolutely loved the book. I took notes vigorously while reading but I feel I need to read it a couple of more times just to get the messages stuck in my mind. Highly recommend to anyone struggling with an emotional storm in their lives.
January 6, 2024
My general impression from this book is that DBT is really great, but this book isn't so great, so I'd recommend another introduction to DBT.
Issues:
- I had several problems with this book. Basically it's an overview of emotional management, and so the beginning is very basic stuff, like if you're hungry or tired you'll be more emotionally unstable. The first major issue I ran into was that the author gives medical advice that she is not qualified to give in those early sections. The author is a therapist, not a doctor, and especially not a sleep specialist who is the only one qualified to weigh in on this, but she recommends that if you're tired after 8hrs of sleep then you try cutting a quarter hour off, then another, to try to find the right amount of time for you to feel awake. As someone who has a sleep disorder and knows a lot about sleep, this is not just bad advice for people generally, but could potentially be super harmful to someone. She should have just given general advice (get enough sleep) and deferred to medical practitioners for the rest - that the editor let this through is quite troubling to me.
- She also sets her own definitions for certain words, including for "mindfulness", which she defines as doing one thing at a time with full attention, rather than the more common, "paying full attention to the moment" (so by her definition writing this review is mindfulness, and so are most things in life), which is hard enough to adjust to, but then she is also inconsistent and contradicts her own definitions.
- She also does a bit of victim-blaming. She tells someone feeling overwhelmed because they're trying to be mindful and face their feelings that they're overwhelmed because they aren't accepting their pain enough, and they should just stop thinking of it as unbearable.
- If you aren't a White Western Christian, or otherwise of dominant Western culture, you might also struggle with some assumptions she makes, like assuming the reader struggles with self-hate, and separating emotion from reason, etc.
Pros: All of that said, my other takeaway from this book is that DBT is really great, and the DBT stuff in here was helpful. There's some great discussion here of just paying attention to how you feel and what that's telling you, and sitting with your feelings on a regular basis so they don't overwhelm you.
Overall: I don't really recommend this book, but I do recommend looking up another DBT book because the great parts of this book were all the general DBT knowledge and exercises.
Issues:
- I had several problems with this book. Basically it's an overview of emotional management, and so the beginning is very basic stuff, like if you're hungry or tired you'll be more emotionally unstable. The first major issue I ran into was that the author gives medical advice that she is not qualified to give in those early sections. The author is a therapist, not a doctor, and especially not a sleep specialist who is the only one qualified to weigh in on this, but she recommends that if you're tired after 8hrs of sleep then you try cutting a quarter hour off, then another, to try to find the right amount of time for you to feel awake. As someone who has a sleep disorder and knows a lot about sleep, this is not just bad advice for people generally, but could potentially be super harmful to someone. She should have just given general advice (get enough sleep) and deferred to medical practitioners for the rest - that the editor let this through is quite troubling to me.
- She also sets her own definitions for certain words, including for "mindfulness", which she defines as doing one thing at a time with full attention, rather than the more common, "paying full attention to the moment" (so by her definition writing this review is mindfulness, and so are most things in life), which is hard enough to adjust to, but then she is also inconsistent and contradicts her own definitions.
- She also does a bit of victim-blaming. She tells someone feeling overwhelmed because they're trying to be mindful and face their feelings that they're overwhelmed because they aren't accepting their pain enough, and they should just stop thinking of it as unbearable.
- If you aren't a White Western Christian, or otherwise of dominant Western culture, you might also struggle with some assumptions she makes, like assuming the reader struggles with self-hate, and separating emotion from reason, etc.
Pros: All of that said, my other takeaway from this book is that DBT is really great, and the DBT stuff in here was helpful. There's some great discussion here of just paying attention to how you feel and what that's telling you, and sitting with your feelings on a regular basis so they don't overwhelm you.
Overall: I don't really recommend this book, but I do recommend looking up another DBT book because the great parts of this book were all the general DBT knowledge and exercises.
June 15, 2021
If you've never utilized DBT/CBT or are looking for a refresher on those skills this is a great book! It's approachable and I think perfectly presents the theories and beginner to moderate skill building in a way that people of varying familiarity will enjoy. I wish I could get everyone I know to read this book! While I don't believe there is truly a "stand in" for traditional therapy if resources to see a therapist are ever lacking this would be a good tool to use for those who are looking to do some self work.
December 24, 2024
Read via audiobook. This one is rather surface-level and obvious and I don't feel I've gained much clarification from a clinical point of view. That said, I think it's good for me to look over material like this so I can recommend it to clients. It's certainly more suited for laymen looking for self-improvement than it is as a DBT manual for therapists.
That said, the section about non-judgement and actively choosing to be non-judgemental was very well-put, I'm going to use that in my future work.
That said, the section about non-judgement and actively choosing to be non-judgemental was very well-put, I'm going to use that in my future work.
May 3, 2019
Three stars because, despite reading it recently, I struggle to recall much if anything about the book. To me, that is a sign that this book was either not actionable enough or simply offered impractical advice to begin with.
However, I'm not sure I struggle with Emotional Disregulation, so perhaps I was the wrong target for this audience. For someone just aiming to elevate their EQ, I would instead recommend other books.
However, I'm not sure I struggle with Emotional Disregulation, so perhaps I was the wrong target for this audience. For someone just aiming to elevate their EQ, I would instead recommend other books.
May 22, 2023
One of the best self help guides I have read in a while. It feels like an honest conversation with a very helpful and skilled therapist. The exercises are simple yet meaningful, there's many helpful tips and strategies. This book is also excellent for those new to DBT skills. There are many examples of how to use these skills without overwhelming the reader. It has helped me a lot in my own life. So for anyone who is tired of their emotions taking over, read this!
September 12, 2017
This is a good book for people who are wanting to get into DBT. The book is good for clinicians who don't have much understanding of DBT (particularly how to regulation emotions) or clinicians who simply want to refresh themselves on DBT and get ideas of how to better talk about emotion regulation and mindfulness to clients. Also, this book is a quick and easy read- always a plus for me!!
June 9, 2018
A book with many good points about managing your emotions, but it was too short to like it. In each chapter I expected to elaborate more, provide more examples, explain more about the logic. It seemed to me that it was just a guide to follow the DBT method.
I would recommend this book as a starter for someone that wants to start managing their emotions.
I would recommend this book as a starter for someone that wants to start managing their emotions.
July 14, 2018
This was an interesting primer on the topic, but it had so many citations to Linehan's work that I found myself wanting to read that instead. I'm glad I picked it up, but I'm also not sure I'd recommend it.
The concept of willfulness was genuinely helpful -- I realize I act this way a lot without having had a name for it.
The concept of willfulness was genuinely helpful -- I realize I act this way a lot without having had a name for it.
July 5, 2019
This is a good beginners guide to DBT (dialectical behavioral therapy) & how to calm your emotions using DBT skills.
I rated this four stars only because I'm already familiar with DBT & didn't gain a whole lot of new information. However, this is an excellent book for people who are trying to learn new skills on how to calm their emotions or for people that want to learn more about DBT.
I rated this four stars only because I'm already familiar with DBT & didn't gain a whole lot of new information. However, this is an excellent book for people who are trying to learn new skills on how to calm their emotions or for people that want to learn more about DBT.
June 15, 2022
SO GOOD. doesn’t mention all dbt skills but does go into detail about a few and makes them easy to understand with tips on how to implement them. Recommend to everyone struggling with mental illness.
🖤
Pages I love: 35, 37, 63, 67, 69, 70, 71, 78, 80, 83, 91, 92, 95, 98, 110, 111, 114, 137, 146, 148, 163, 164, 166, & 170
🖤
Pages I love: 35, 37, 63, 67, 69, 70, 71, 78, 80, 83, 91, 92, 95, 98, 110, 111, 114, 137, 146, 148, 163, 164, 166, & 170
May 18, 2024
I read this as a clinician and this is definitely written to clients. It is accessible and simple, with great explanations of the core DBT skills. The chapters do start to become repetitive, as the core skills are not exactly exclusive of each other. Overall, it is a book I would recommend to clients to read.
November 28, 2024
might seem silly to people who have high emotional intelligence but personally speaking, it helped a bit in finding ways to regulate my emotions/handle them. I do think some of the "tips" here are too obvious. For example, distracting yourself when you're experiencing a lot of emotional pain is not something out of the box.
Overall, quite helpful.
Overall, quite helpful.
April 12, 2025
One of the fee good things my mother ever did was get this book for me. It helped me learn that my wild emotional swings aren't normal or bipolar, they are me unable to regulate my emotions due to what I see as an injustice. I get extremely angry when I see them and can barely control myself.
It's great for anyone having emotional struggles.
It's great for anyone having emotional struggles.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 74 reviews