Tag: regulation

Emotions Overload

thepinkrosediary

August 7th… I completely broke down.

My emotions completely took over my mind, and body.

Disgust with the chores that have to be done around the house.

Anxiety about all the little things that need to get done before baby Isabella arrives.

Guilt for doing a puzzle instead of checking items off my to do list. 

Worry about whether or not I would be a good enough mom. 

Overwhelm due to not being able to explain how I was feeling.

Helpless because all I could do was cry.

I just broke. 

I felt every emotion, and every emotion so intensely. 

I express most of my emotions through tears. I’m sad? I cry. I’m angry? I cry. I feel overwhelmed? I cry. I’m overjoyed? I cry. 

So when they all come at once, you can only imagine the amount of tears that came. It wasn’t the cute cry that can happen when I’m watching a sad movie, or feeling love so strong that tears come — it was a full on ugly, intense cry. Tears were streaming down my face mixed in with an abnormal amount of snot coming from my nose. I couldn’t stop. Hyperventilating started and my chest got blotchy. I started sweating profusely and could barely get a word out in-between blowing my nose and trying to catch my breath.

I told my fiancé that I felt overwhelmed with everything that we had to do before the baby comes. He instantly got up and started doing things in order to relieve some of those emotions for me. The thing was when he started to move around the house — I felt even more overwhelmed. There was so much I wanted to get done I didn’t know where to start. I couldn’t sit down and make a plan because that felt too overwhelming as well. 

So instead of accomplishing any chores or tasks of the to-do-list, I just cried.

My fiancé got me a coffee, my computer, and some water while I started to calm down. He reminded me we just need to take one day at a time, and one task at a time. We decided it was for the best that we both took a breather and when we were feeling more relaxed and in a calmer state, we would make a plan. 

…

I have been working on healing for quite sometime now. This includes figuring out who I am, why I say, do, and act the way that I do, and finding out who I want to be.

Looking back at my breakdown reminds me of something I have learned about during this healing process. A lot of my actions and reactions stem from childhood. The way I handle how I react to big emotions stem from childhood. You see, when I was a baby or a young kid… I was pretty innocent. I had a huge imagination, I would sing and dance without a care in the world, I would ask questions that were on my mind, and I would take in the environment around me.

When we are at a young age, we don’t have the capacity to understand emotions and feelings. We feel them, of course, but to understand what they are telling us is beyond our capacity of knowledge at such a young age. We do, however, feel them and remember the feelings. We then are taught how to cope with the emotion we are experiencing either intentionally, or unintentionally. 

For instance, when big emotions occurred for me when I was a child — I was pushed away. I was told to be quiet and be thankful for everything that I have. I was told by caregivers, and other adults that they were the adult and what they said goes. I was told not to make a scene. I was told I was being selfish. I was told by my caregiver “I’ll give you something to cry about.” 

I was being asked to make myself smaller and ignore these intense feelings that were coming up as if they would never occur again. I wasn’t sat down and talked through how to cope with them in a healthy way. I wasn’t reminded that big emotions happen to every single person on earth and that it’s okay to feel them. I wasn’t taught that talking about how I felt would help me understand the situation better. I wasn’t encouraged to feel my emotions, rather, I was taught to push them away and not show them.

The thing about this is that it carried on throughout my whole life. I’m 29 years old and still struggle to regulate my emotions. When the same feelings I experienced as a child come up, I feel them in my body, and then respond to them the same way I saw when I was just a kid.

I will go quiet, as if trying to shut out my emotions because I believe they aren’t supposed to be felt. I can hyperventilate until I’m almost puking because I’ve tried so hard not to feel the emotion that it has start to overtake my body. I will push whoever is close to me away because comfort was something that was foreign to me and it doesn’t feel safe when someone offers it. I will start talking negatively to myself. I’ll tell myself other people have it harder than I do, so I shouldn’t be upset. I’ll tell myself I’m being selfish. I’ll tell myself I’m not normal for feeling the way that I do. I isolate myself. I disassociate from everything and everyone. I do all of this because it’s all I know.

I do this because it’s what I saw and was taught to do as a child. Not out of lack of love or not caring about me. I was taught this because it’s the tools that the people that helped raise me had. Growing up they weren’t shown empathy or compassion when they experienced big emotions, either. They were told the same things that they eventually started to tell me. It’s generational trauma that will keep going until someone decides to stop it.

This scares me a lot when I think about raising a child. I worry that my big emotions will show too often and I will still be struggling with how to cope with them in a healthy way.

But, on the positive side, I’m thankful I am now aware of this. I’m thankful I can start to be kind to myself when I feel so overwhelmed that it’s as if my body is being taken over. I can start to train myself to take a step back when I notice my physical symptoms appearing, for instance, rapid heartbeat, sweating, clenched fists, fidgeting, zoning out, and more. When I notice these symptoms I can remind myself that a big emotion is festering and about to show. I can talk kindly to myself and not continue the negative self talk pattern that is all I know. 

With hard work and dedication, I can show my little girl that it’s okay to feel big emotions. It’s okay to feel out of control sometimes. It’s okay to cry. It’s okay to be angry. It’s okay to be scared. She can watch me talk to myself kindly while I work through big emotions, and by doing this, she will start to be kind to herself when she feels them as well. By practicing these I will be able to not only handle my big emotions, but Isabella’s as well. I’ll be able to show love and compassion instead of irritation and control. I can be the role model she needs growing up. 

ADHD and Adulting

thepinkrosediary

When I was younger the demands in my life weren’t as high. It was easier to fake finding daily tasks hard because there weren’t as many. I didn’t have a lot of responsibilities so I was able to hyper focus on the ones that I did have. I was able to focus on both trying extra hard to achieve things and hiding the personality traits I shamed myself for.

I didn’t really mind hiding who I truly was because I was ashamed of her. I was ashamed of needing more help than others did. I was ashamed that I interrupted people when they were talking and that I talked more than most people I knew. I was ashamed with how much of a burden I felt like I was. I was ashamed that things didn’t come easy to me and I had to put in 200% effort into every day tasks. I was ashamed that I misplaced my keys and phone at least a few times a day. I was ashamed that I always had a messy room with clothes everywhere. I was ashamed that more often than not I wanted to scream at someone for hurting me because I don’t know how to regulate my emotions. 

The thing is… as I got older, as I fell in love, as I grew as a person, and as I took on more responsibility at work — the demands became too much. The demands that I had when I was younger were so easy to push through because there were so little. I quickly have become overwhelmed with the amount of things I “need” to do. 

I started not being able to focus at work. I have a hard time following through with the dozens of ideas I want to execute at work. Once I tried to take on more responsibility, I wasn’t able to try to hide the fact that I was struggling. I’m not able to hide the fact that I am so burnt out at the end of every single day because I have to put 200% effort into everything that I do. 

As I grow as a person the demands became really high too. I have been focusing on parts of me that I have been ashamed of for years, and looking into the reason behind these feelings. There have been so many dark emotions that have come up, which puts a lot of demand on my well being. I get so excited to learn new ways to grow that I forget to use the techniques I am researching about. I get hyper focused on the end goal of my personal growth that I forget to congratulate myself for how far I have come. 

Another huge part of my self growth is trying to be able to regulate my emotions better. Not being able to regulate my emotions well is a trait that often times make me feel a huge abundance of shame and sadness. The demand I put on myself to not react the way I have to triggers for the majority of my life has become too much.

Being so hyper focused on personal growth has put so much demand not just on me, but my relationship too. 

The love I have for my partner is the purest love I have ever had. The ability we both have to come together to talk about what we need to work on has been the most beautiful, inspiring, and grounding experience. Not only is he my partner — he’s my best friend too. 

That being said, the demands on a healthy relationship can be really straining when you are also trying to work on yourself. I once again forget to appreciate the process of growth in a relationship that I get upset when we aren’t growing fast enough. 

The demands of trying to balance becoming a healthier person physically, emotionally, and mentally along with trying to be a better partner and worker has become too much.

Having ADHD is exhausting. I’m exhausted, burnt out, and overwhelmed.

The truth is — I feel very lost and don’t know what to do most of the time. I feel like the demands in my life are too much. The demands seem to be adding on and on and I feel as if I could break. At times, I still find it hard to accept certain parts of my ADHD. Not just because demands seem to be overtaking most of my life — but because of not being able to regulate my emotions. 

BUT! Do you want to know the toughest part about having ADHD? How misunderstood I am by others. 

When I tell someone that I am struggling to follow through with a task because of my ADHD — I get looks. The looks scream “she’s just trying to use her ADHD as an excuse,” and “she’s over exaggerating — the task that she’s trying to do is so easy. She’s just being lazy.” 

The thing is I’m actually sometimes embarrassed about having ADHD. The main reason is because when I disclaim that I have it and explain that it impacts my executive functioning — I feel hopeless, dependent, and reliable. I feel like a little kid going to my parents for help to reach something in the fridge because I’m too short. People look at me like if you just try a little harder you will be able to do this task.

I don’t think people understand just how hard I am trying every single day. Mainly to do every day tasks. Trying to put effort into a chore or project I have zero interest in can be nearly impossible somedays. I can stare at a sink full of dishes for 20 minutes trying to get my brain to stop focusing on the million other things running through my mind so I can focus on this one little task that will relieve a lot of stress. Although I’m telling myself that I will feel better once I’m done washing them, there are times I still can’t get the motivation to do it.

For a lot of folks it’s easy to see the sink full of dishes and go do them. Sure, a lot of people will dread doing them and may even get annoyed doing it — but it doesn’t drain them the way it drains someone with ADHD. My brain is constantly having thoughts overload, which makes it REALLY difficult to focus on one thing — especially when it’s something I have no interest in. Trying to shut down every single other thought in my mind so I can wash the dishes in the sink can actually be the hardest part of my day sometimes. 

I hope that someday ADHD gets more awareness. 

I know I am going to use my blog platform to raise more awareness. ADHD may not be all of me — but it is part of me. It’s a part of me that went unrecognized for 27 years, and I am most definitely not the only person out there that went / is going undiagnosed. Having answers to so many questions I’ve had for so many years has truly set me free. I hope the more I bring awareness to ADHD, the more people become familiar with it and can find compassion to those who have it. 

Emotionally Brainstorming

thepinkrosediary

My love to learn is one of my favourite ADHD characteristics that I have. One thing I am really into right now is learning about emotions. Learning about how emotions work, what physical signs are associated with them, repressed emotions, numbing emotions – you name it (and I will probably have notes about the topic in one of my dozens of notebooks). 

I thought that because I was learning so much about emotions lately that writing about them would be easy. I listened to my meditation about creativity, sipped on my coffee and water, and turned on the computer. An hour later I sat staring at the word document with bits and pieces of work that I typed up, feeling (and probably looking) completely defeated.  

The truth is, it’s hard to talk about emotions when I still struggle with mine on a daily basis. To try to write something personal about the topic I chose to write about this week but still struggle a lot with – almost felt wrong. 

When the doubt started to take over, I started to react to my emotions in a not so healthy way. I started to become cold and short with my partner. I started to lose my patience with the dogs. I started asking myself “You can’t relate to this topic, so how are you going to be able to write about it?” I kept telling myself that I wasn’t as far along my journey as I thought I was. I was tossing the idea around whether or not I should post my weekly blog or the idea to take a free pass because I had an emotionally hard week. 

When I was staring blankly at my blog, cursing myself out, cursing Spencer out, and honestly just cursing the whole world out – I could feel these intense sensations come on. I felt my body get tense, and my felt my heart starting to race. There wasn’t a chance in hell I was going to write anything else when all I could think about was how little I had written so far. That’s when I remembered my counsellor suggesting doing physical activity when I feel an intense emotion coming on (I love meditation but breathing deeply will not help me in a situation when I feel like I’m going to pull my hair out). Sometimes I need to get my tense body moving in order to feel grounded again. 

So, I mixed up my pre-workout and went downstairs to mine and Spencer’s mini gym we have been working on. I pressed play on my 30-minute workout and would rate my workout… a solid 6/10. Even though I didn’t give it a full 100%, I still felt better. Which brings me here, writing this with a clear head (and a very full happy stomach thanks to Spencer for bringing me home pad Thai). 

So now that my mind is clearer, and my belly is happy, I am going to write what I know about emotions, and my experiences with them: 

Side note: I don’t hold judgement to anyone that I was supposed to look up to for not talking about emotions. People can only teach you what they know. If they don’t know about emotions or how to regulate them themselves it’s almost impossible to help someone else understand theirs. 

Emotions weren’t really talked about in my childhood. Not by my parents, my teachers, my family, or even close friends. A lot of what I saw growing up was that in order to be happy you had to not feel negative emotions. I was taught to bury them so deeply because it was frowned upon to cry hysterically, or to be angry at the way someone treated me. I was shamed for crying at times because “someone had it worse than me” or “I was too sensitive.” This led me to a lot of confusion growing up when hard situations would arise. 

But, no matter how much I try to push away the anger I have, or the feelings of shame, guilt, sadness, fear, embarrassment, or any other emotion I try to avoid – they would come to the surface again.  

I still feel sad even when I try to push it away because I am guilting myself for being upset over something people have told me in the past that I have no right to be upset over. I still feel angry when someone cuts me off in traffic. I still feel shame when something triggers part of my past I haven’t resolved. No matter how many times I try to “look on the bright side,” the dark side finds its way to the surface again.  

I was so confused why growing up I would always see my parents so happy and when I would feel a negative emotion, I didn’t feel like I belonged.  

When my heart began to race, I didn’t realize it was my anxiety, and even if I had realized it… I wouldn’t have been able to cope with it because I didn’t know how. My only knowledge of emotions was that feeling happy is good and feeling sad is not good. 

I kind of found myself in a downward spiral. I was finding myself having more anger, fear, sadness, shame, guilt, and other negative feelings in my life than happy ones. I didn’t want to keep living a life full of anger and resentment so I began doing my research.  

I mentioned above that one of the things I’ve been learning about is physical symptoms of emotions and naming emotions. This was the beginning of starting to understand my emotions better.  

Starting to be able to recognize symptoms of emotions has helped me be able to name them. By naming the emotions in situations when they are about to become overwhelming – it helps me find clarity on why I am feeling that way.  

Examples: 

Emotion named: sadness  
After I name the emotion that I am feeling I try to recognize the physical symptoms: a heavy chest, crying, hunching over, having my lip pout. Then, I reflect on the possibilities that could be causing this sadness. Did something happen today or yesterday that isn’t sitting right with me? Is there a coping mechanism that works best for when I am feeling sad? 

Emotion named: Fear, anxiety, or anger: 
When I recognize my body tense up or feel my body temperature rising there are times that I am able to identify it as anger, anxiety, or fear. I then ask myself again, what happened before this emotion came into play? 

Emotion named: Shame or guilt:  
When I feel my heart sink down to my feet it usually means it is shame, or guilt. I once again become curious as to where this feeling is coming from. What has triggered the feeling of shame? What am I feeling guilty about doing or not doing? 

By digging deep into my emotions, it helps me find the best coping mechanisms. When my emotions aren’t too intense, for instance when I am feeling irritated, guilty, or sad – meditation can help me through those feelings. I know that physical activity helps when my emotions are on a more intense level like when I feel anger, frustration, or fear. 

Most of the time, even when I can name my emotions, I still feel them SO deeply. They feel as though they are going to take me over.  

In cases like this I forget about recognizing the physical symptoms I am having. I don’t notice that my jaw is clenched, or that my heart is racing. I don’t take the time to notice the signs of anger, anxiety, fear, shame, and guilt. I let the emotion take over my body and mind. I shut down. I disassociate. I get cold towards others. I cry. I say harsh things to myself that I wouldn’t say to anyone else.  

The thing is, there will be times when all I can do is feel an emotion and that’s ok. There will be times when I can’t name or identify physical symptoms… and all I can do is scream; it’s okay. Breaking out of old coping mechanisms and habits that have caused me more pain than joy is not an overnight solution. 

Being aware that this journey of exploring my emotions takes time has been a humbling realization that I have made along the way.  

Naming my emotions and noticing physical signs of emotions has helped me a lot. Something else that has helped a lot is feeling and accepting all of my emotions that come up. This has helped me judge less, empathize more, connect to others in a more meaningful way, and find my authentic self again. 

By being able to sit with an emotion for a while it helped me understand it more. By being able to understand it more – I am able to accept it more. 

It’s one thing to be able to name, and recognize emotions. It’s another thing to fully allow myself to feel them and accept them, too. 

The more I was able to accept myself for feeling emotions that I usually tried to avoid, the more I was able to empathize and accept those emotions in others as well. 

Not only expressing my emotions to others, but accepting my emotions more, has been so rewarding. And I don’t mean just the ones that feel good to experience. It has helped me feel more connected, whole, and authentic. To be vulnerable and say to myself “I’m stressed” instead of taking on another project even though I have a million on the go, and be kind to myself and accept it. Or to openly admit to my partner that I am overwhelmed with the laundry, writing, taking care of the dogs, working out, eating healthily, and getting enough sleep – brings me closer to him. It lets him know that I trust him to see me at my worst.  

By taking a step back and reflecting, I was able to realize what emotions I was experiencing and why. The guilt I had when I was unable to write. Or the anger I was experiencing when my guided meditation for creativity wasn’t working. Or the shame I was feeling when I was telling myself I wasn’t knowledgeable or experienced enough to write about emotions. And now that I can name these emotions, I can make the connection to the physical symptoms I was having, too. My heart racing; my fists being clenched; blaming others for how I was feeling; saying harsh things to myself that I wouldn’t say to anyone else; and disassociating myself from not only my partner, but my true self as well. 

I may have only been able to recognize sensation in my body today while I was trying to write BUT… being able to make connections afterwards? That is a HUGE win in my books. It doesn’t matter the order that I do this. I am growing every single day and need to remind myself how far I have come. 

Educating myself on emotions has been amazing. Not only am I getting better at identifying my emotions, I am also getting better at being kinder to myself when I feel down. I work on regulating my emotions often, and I am excited to continue to do so. I’m not an expert by any means – I just know that diving into understanding my emotions better has been one of the best risks I have ever taken. A risk that comes with a reward of feeling more whole, less confused, and more myself. 

I am starting to take control of my emotions instead of them taking control of me. 

Cheers,

K