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Welcome to episode 206 of The Non-Anxious Leader Podcast. I'm Jack Shitama. Today's episode comes from an article by Sherry Van Dyke how to Calm Your Inner Storm. And while it's good to remain a nonanxious presence any time of year, during the holiday season, sometimes it gets a little bit harder. There's the stress of getting presents, of decorating, of hosting or parties or going to parties, and, of course, being around extended family. Van Dyke notes that emotions serve a useful purpose because they clue us to what's going on inside of us. But the problem is they're not reliable. They come from patterns of behavior that have been formed over long periods of time that result in automatic reactions. So when emotions trigger automatic reactions, then we get in trouble. She defines emotional regulation, which I would call self regulation in terms of three aspects. First, there's redirecting our attention from distress. This is the pause that helps us to begin the self regulating process. Second is changing how we think. And then third is changing how we act. This doesn't make the emotions disappear, but over time, it should enable us to respond differently to things that trigger our automatic reactions.

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One of the things that makes self regulating so challenging is that we learn to regulate emotions growing up, but some of us adopt unhealthy or unhelpful strategies. Van Dyke's article is based on something called Dialectical Behavior Therapy, or DBT, and it's based on so called biosocial theory. According to DBT, some children experience pervasive invalidation, end ". That is, they get messages that something is wrong with them, they're either punished for their thoughts and emotions, or those thoughts and emotions are ignored. And while not everyone has experienced pervasive invalidation as a child, I think it's fair to say that when we are reactive or adaptive, that is, when we are unable to respond in healthy ways, there are probably some experiences that are behind that, that have formed our patterns of coping, that have formed our automatic responses. Dialectical Behavioral Therapy was developed by psychologist Marsha Linihan to treat borderline personality disorders in people who experience extreme and or chronic emotional dysregulation. That is, the inability to selfregulate in chronic or extreme ways. And while most of us don't have difficulty selfregulation in extreme or chronic ways, I think the steps that DBT teach can be really helpful to those of us who are just trying to self regulate and anxious moments like times with family during the holidays.

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Van Dyke's article lists four steps to calming your inner storm using DBT. And I would say four steps to help you be more of a non anxious presence. The first is to self-regulate/reregulate. Of course, one of the things that I have said before that is also in the article is breathing, deep breathing, and to exhale longer than you inhale. So if you are going to inhale for a count of four, for example, then you want to exhale for a count of five or six. When I am having difficulty sleeping at night, I will inhale for a count of four. Then I'll hold my breath for a count of four, which actually slows the brain down, and then I will exhale for a count of six. Now, this is going to be difficult to do when you're in an anxious moment with another person, but I would suggest that you simply inhale and exhale deeply with a focus on the exhale. Another thing that the article recommends is to do a forward bend. So this is like touching your toes, but you don't actually have to touch your toes. It's the bend that matters.

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And while you're bending, to take a deep breath and try to do this for 30 to 60 seconds, which will activate your parasympathetic nervous system. Again, this is not going to help you in an anxious moment unless you can pretend to drop something and bend over and breathe deeply. But when you are finding that you're anxious by yourself, when you're thinking about something in the future that's causing you anxiety, or when you're reflecting on a mistake that you made that is causing you anxiety, you can slow your brain down. You can get your body more relaxed by making this forward bend while breathing deeply, and you can do both together. You can do the forward bend and exhale longer than you inhale. I will say that most of what is recommended in this article is best done during reflection and preparation, because it's going to be difficult to do in the moment. But if you spend time reflecting on those challenging moments where you didn't actually function in the way that you would have liked, or when you were preparing for anxious moments, you can get anxious and you may need to breathe deeply and do forward bends to help calm yourself down.

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I do believe what this will do is it will make it more likely that in those anxious moments, after you've had a chance to reflect on some of those and prepare for some of those, you may have an easier time calming yourself down simply by breathing deeply. The second step to calming your inner storm is to increase the awareness of your emotions. This starts with naming your emotions, which sounds simple, but we usually don't think about our emotions. So to this extent it is easy to misidentify what's going on inside of us. DBT uses what they call core mindfulness, and you've probably heard me talk about mindfulness before in terms of accepting what's happening without judgment or accepting what happened without judgment. Again, I think the strategy here is to practice identifying your emotions either after the fact, through reflection or in advance, when you're anticipating what you might feel like. That is preparation, and that will help you to get better at doing it in the moment. Van Dyke suggests some questions you can ask yourself, such as what prompted or triggered this emotion? How did I interpret it? What happened in my body?

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What urges was I noticing? And what were my responses after doing that? Van Dyke recommends using one of four simple emotions to try to identify what was going on, to try to increase your awareness of your emotions. And those are was I mad? Was I glad? Was I sad? Or was I afraid? Of course, this doesn't really cover the full array of emotions, but it's a good start. One thing you can do, especially if you're doing this during reflection and preparation, is actually to use a list of emotions or in nonviolent communications, what are called feelings. I'll post a link to a list of feelings that you can use from the nonviolent communication approach that will help you to be very specific about the emotions that you're experiencing. The nice thing about the NVC list is that it has both positive emotions that is, emotions that are feelings that you experience when you're satisfied, and also negative ones when you have needs that aren't being met. For example, under the negative ones, there's a whole list of afraid, like apprehensive, dread, foreboding, frightened, or embarrassed like ashamed, chagrined, flustered, guilty. This is probably more than most people need, but I think it's really helpful to have a list like this.

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And then some of the positive emotions, like undergrateful, are appreciative and thankful under, peaceful, calm, centered, fulfilled, and so on. The point here is to get better at identifying your emotions, so when you are in an nonanxious moment, you can say to yourself, I'm feeling angry or I'm feeling helpless or I'm feeling frustrated. Van Dyke writes, you might be wondering why this is so important, but as the American psychiatrist Dan Siegel says,"If you can't name it, you can't tame it." The third step in calming your inner storm, that is to help yourself be a non anxious presence, is to validate your emotions. This is where mindfulness comes in because you want to be able to maintain a non judgmental approach. Your emotions are not good, bad, right, or wrong, they just are. This challenge of managing our emotions becomes a problem when we judge ourselves and say that we shouldn't feel that way or that we should feel another way. It's also important to distinguish between emotions and behaviors. Feeling angry, which is an emotion, is different than yelling when we are angry, which is a behavior. And this is where the really hard work comes in, because we want to ask the question, where did I learn that it's not okay to feel angry?

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Van dyke suggests a process of writing down first, the emotion, for example, I feel angry. Then validate the emotion by writing down it's okay that I feel angry right now. Third, write down it makes sense that I'm angry right now because and then fill in where you learned that it's not okay to feel angry. And then finally write down, it makes sense that I have problems with my temper because of the environment in which I grew up. Now, this is not about blaming, it's just about understanding what your patterns of behavior are and how they were learned, how they became habits that happen automatically, especially in those anxious situations. This is not easy work, because what we're trying to do is undo years and years worth of automatic behavior habits that have been ingrained in how we respond to difficult situations. I think the hopeful thing is that if DBT can work with those who have extreme and chronic emotional dysregulation, then it ought to be helpful for the rest of us. The final step in calming your inner storm is to reduce the intensity of your emotions by acting opposite. Van Dyke writes "In DBT we have a saying emotions love themselves.They tend to get us to act in ways that keep them going or that even make them stronger. So the idea with this skill is that we interrupt the cycle by doing the opposite of what the emotion is telling us to do. We can reduce the intensity of that feeling." For example, if you are feeling angry and feel like fighting, then the opposite would be to avoid the fight, perhaps by going into another room, which might also give you a chance to practice identifying and validating your emotions. Another form of acting opposite when you're feeling angry is to think kindly of the other and to treat the other civilly and respectfully. What this does is flips the script on your emotions. Instead of having your emotions drive your behavior, you act opposite so that your actions help drive your emotions. Again, I don't think this is the kind of thing that just happens very easily in the moment. I think this is work that is done through self-awareness and reflection so that in the future we can be more intentional. One way to put this into practice is whenever you have an intense moment where you are reactive.

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You can take time later on when you've had a chance to calm down and you can work through this process. Now, the first step was actually calming down, and hopefully you won't need to do that, although just thinking about the situation might get you worked up again. And so you'll want to use that first step of just calming down through forward bends and deep breathing and then identifying and validating your emotions. I believe it's those two steps, being able to identify and validate your emotions in the moment, that will best help you to change how you respond, then if you're able to act opposite in the moment, you are actually acting paradoxically. You are avoiding a conflict of wills, you are avoiding getting reactive, and you are helping to bring the anxiety level down for yourself and for the situation. You've heard me say this before, but as Murray Bowen said, most of us are not able to self differentiated much more than a third of the time. So if we can get better at doing this and get our batting average up to 500 or so, we are going to be exceptional people. We're going to be a true non anxious presence, because in many anxious situations, we are going to be able to keep our cool and respond in ways that help others do the same.

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This is what non anxious leaders do. So whether you are managing stressful situations, anxious situations in the workplace, in the congregation, or in your family, my hope and prayer is that you will be able to put these tools into practice so you can be a non anxious presence personally and professionally. That's it for episode 206. You can find a transcript at thenonanxiousleader.com/206 and you can email me at jack@christian-leaders.com. Until next time, thanks and goodbye.

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