Dr. Ramani Reveals How Healthy People Manage Their Emotions

Hey everyone, it's Dr. Romani. So we always have lots of people talking about emotional regulation, emotional regulation. Let's talk a little bit about that. One thing we know is that narcissistic people cannot emotionally regulate. And one of the biggest problems, and I'd say the biggest issues in narcissistic relationships originate from the fact that narcissistic people are so dysregulated. They either scream and yell if they don't get their way, or they give you the silent treatment. And long story short, that is how we end up with the eggshell walking, the balancing on a razor that characterizes just about every antagonistic or narcissistic relationship. If you have been in a narcissistic relationship for long enough, or you grew up with a narcissistic parent, you never really got healthy models of regulation. And as a result, raging, screaming anger can become normalized, or any form of anger can become terrifying. Alternately, your fears of abandonment may have been stoked by a parent who expressed their anger through withholding or withdrawal anytime the parent didn't get their way. So from a very early age, you became masterful at completely and utterly catering to the needs of other people. So that may leave you wondering, if all I've ever seen, or most of what I see is dysregulation or unhealthy regulation, what exactly does healthy regulation look like? Now, if you've never really been in a relationship where that is happening, or you even struggle with it yourself, that may be a big question. By and large, most survivors of narcissistic and antagonistic relationships over-regulate. You keep it all bottled up, right? And that definitely is going to take a toll on your physical and your mental health. It's not a bad strategy, right? There's no point in speaking out in the relationship. So the over-regulation may be the only way to stay safe. And in fact, speaking out may even make things worse. So maybe for a lifetime, you learn to push it all down and even find that you're not even able to cry or let out emotion in any way. And you may feel quite distanced from how you feel or even what you're allowed to feel. But that again, begs the question of what this video is about. What exactly then qualifies as healthy regulation? Here are some thoughts on that. In a person who is healthfully regulated, you actually express the emotion appropriately. You give yourself permission to identify the emotion and to respond to it. Maybe you'll cry if you're sad. Take a break and maybe some time to work to yourself, to work through some anger. Laughing when you're happy and you're able to articulate the emotion. I feel really angry right now. And then articulate what you need. Like, I just need a minute to sit with this. Though, got to keep this in mind. Just because you regulate and express the emotion, it doesn't mean that the other person you're with will either hear it right or cooperate. But whether you do it alone or with someone else or in a place where you can share it, you name it, you express it, you feel it, you process it. Not any way you want, that's what I mean by the sort of appropriate, but you express it, you feel it. The second way is you recognize that your emotion is yours and it may not necessarily be someone else's. Healthy regulation means owning your emotion as your emotion. Sort of this idea of, I feel this, but I recognize that someone else may not. And not shove your emotion down someone else's throat. You wouldn't say things like, how can you not be angry? How are you not sad right now? That's not good regulation. Third, you express your emotion appropriately. You do not scream and frighten people because you're angry. You do not threaten because you're really angry. You don't engage in violence. You don't break things. You don't just walk away. You don't just hang up the phone without explaining that you're stepping away for a moment. People who hang up phones are often dysregulated. Number four, you read the room. We aren't two years old anymore. We can't just express emotion the way we want, anytime we want. Now listen, you may not start sobbing in the middle of a staff meeting or start making someone else's conversation or stuff about you and your friends solely, for example. We don't turn off our feelings, but we also cannot expect the world to stop for our feelings. So it's knowing them, feeling them, identifying them, but also reading the room. Number five, we figure out techniques. We figure out techniques that work for us to manage emotion. Meditation, mindfulness, breathing exercise, the things that help us manage these feelings that we identified. And we need to feel, but we can't just spew our feelings all over the place whenever we want. Listen, three deep breaths could change the world. Allow you to stop before you respond or react. Number six, we view both sides of the situation. We feel the feeling, but we also account for the idea that there are two experiences. I know what you're thinking. Oh, the narcissistic people never do this. They're not regulated, but regulation requires knowing that we are not the center of the universe, that other people are indeed having an experience too. It doesn't mean that you don't have your feelings. It also means, yes, your feelings are valid, but we are also able to take some perspective, breathe. We remain angry. We can remain sad, disappointed, whatever it is we're feeling, but also know that not everyone else is having your experience. Number seven, we also need to remember that not expressing your feelings is not regulation. That's a common myth. And we often praise people for being stoic and keeping their feelings to themselves, toughing it out and never crying. When I see that, in essence, I see a psychological time bomb that may end up coming back to harm the person in terms of physical illness, physiological wear and tear, self blame, anxiety. It's important that you break out of that myth because many survivors of narcissistic abuse may believe that they're doing a great job of regulating because they aren't saying or doing or feeling anything because they aren't making noise. They aren't talking about it. They aren't disrupting and they're just keeping it all in. But it's, it's the indoctrination of the narcissistic relationship, right? That your emotions are not valid or in fact wrong. So you smoosh them down. In fact, some survivors may find that after weeks, months, or years of keeping it all in, that they may find that they hit a boiling point and they'll blow even during a smaller interaction with a narcissistic person, which only fuels the narcissistic person's gaslighting and painting the other person as being overly emotional and dramatic and all of that fuels the experience of any narcissistically abused person. And it fuels their self blame, their self doubt, and even the sense of, yep, it's me. I'm the problem. I'm too sensitive. I'm too reactive. Maybe it's not even that they're narcissistic. I'm beginning to think I'm the problem. Now, poor regulation is something that we may even see as part of various mental health issues, personality disorders, substance use, some mood disorders, some anxiety disorders, impulse control disorders, complex traumas, all of these patterns do have dysregulation as part of their picture. And treatments for many of these things will also work on the dysregulation or the over regulation that people experience. However, for narcissistic people, the lack of self-awareness means that they do not see their dysregulation as a problem. So they're rarely going to change. For other folks, it's a combination, they can address regulation through a combination of therapy, regulation techniques, and in some cases, medication. It's tough when you've always been around a lot of narcissistic relationships because you're surrounded by dysregulation and you never got a mirror for what healthy regulation is. Regulation is identification, expression, and actually feeling feelings and emotion in a way that is honest, but also self-aware and empathic. You may have a strong feeling about a child spilling milk on a busy day, but you don't start screaming at them. You may clean it up and even with a trembling voice may say, hey sweetie, it's okay, I just need to go to the bathroom. And when you go to the bathroom, you cry it out a little. Regulation may mean that the narcissistic person gaslights you for the thousandth time and you don't tell them that they're in a hole or rage at them, but you take a moment, you recognize that this person's behavior is reprehensible, that you're angry. You may not tell them, but you let yourself inside of you call it anger rather than, I can be strong and stoic, or maybe they're right, or maybe I'm to say things like, I'm so dumb. It's not an easy line to walk in a narcissistic relationship and it requires daily recalibration. But if you can get this regulation stuff worked out for yourself to be one of the healthiest things you do for your mental health. And as we talk about this, all these things related to these relationships, I wanted to tell you something. I've got some good news. I'm going to take a moment, let you know my exciting news. I have a new book coming out in February called It's Not You, Identifying and Healing from Narcissistic People and it's available for pre-order now. Just click the link in the video description to check it out. Please check it out. Please pre-order it. You're one of the first ones to get it and all the kinds of stuff I talk about on this channel is all here in a format that you can read, listen to, whatever works for you. So hope you can pre-order it and thanks again.