Being able to keep your reactions, tone of voice, behaviour and thinking constructive allows disagreements or misunderstandings to not escalate or become damaging. This can sometimes be a tall order when we are triggered.

In those difficult moments it helps to know of ways we can look after ourselves by staying calm and regulating our emotions. Of course self-soothing will be specific to you and what works for you.

TAKE A TIME OUT - If you can feel yourself getting too angry, irritated or hurt, or you can see your partner might be, it is far better to gently end, or pause, the conversation, as continuing to engage will generally only escalate into unhelpful, potentially damaging exchanges. This is probably your most important tool. Recognise that when things get too heated, nothing but damage will ensue. I am a big fan of damage limitation. Relationships are too fragile to use them as bunching bags continually and not think it’s going to negatively impact you and your relationship.

Also a quick note: Taking a time out is not the same as withdrawing. I suggest agreeing that you will return to the conversation later, the following day or at the weekend. Withdrawing is abandoning. Taking a time out is the height of maturity. Big difference.

DAY-TO-DAY

- Yoga
- Meditation / Mindfulness
- Cooking
- Regular exercise
- Eat healthily and mindfully
- Get enough sleep
- Stick to a routine
- Try not to rush / slow down
- Take up hobbies and stick to them
- Be creative
- Offer to help someone else
- assess if your workload is too much
- Avoid draining or difficult people
- Prioritise yourself and your self-care

WHEN TRIGGERED

- Breathing 
- Yoga stretching
- Meditate
- Go for a walk
- Go for a run
- Go to the gym
- Have a nap
- Eat a nutritious meal
- Punch a pillow
- Call a (supportive) friend
- ‘Dump’ your angst into an email and then delete it
- Distract yourself
- Have a cry
- Write a gratitude list

SELF-SOOTHING AND EMOTIONALLY REGULATING EXERCISES:

STAY GROUNDED - As we’ve gone over earlier adrenaline and stress triggers our ‘fight or flight’ response, making us aggressive or hurtful. We can dilute and reduce the adrenaline with deep breathing and slowing down the exchange. Pause between sentences. Breathe together for 3 full minutes. Only proceed if you both feel in control of your responses.

MODERATE YOUR NEGATIVE THINKING - When our ‘fight’ response is triggered it will put us on the attack, not useful for constructive discussions and negotiations. If you find yourself becoming negative, critical or defensive, bring your focus back to the here-and-now: you are with someone you love who loves you. Don’t jump to the worst conclusions about your partner.

COMMUNICATE WITH INTEGRITY - Be honest, be real, but do it without the edge. Useful phrases are: “It hurts my feelings when…” “I know I look angry but I’m really just sad / hurt / upset / scared…”

In many of my teachings I talk about stress and trauma. I talk about being triggered and reactivity. Nowhere is this more evident than in our relationships.⁠

COMFORTING OURSELVES

When we soothe a child we recognise an upset that requires love and soothing. We rock our children, we hold them and comfort them, we make reassuring noises, offer affection and warmth and create enough safety for the upset to gently and compassionately be calmed away.

Adult soothing is pretty much the same thing.

Self-soothing is crucial for our well-being. We need to *deactivate* our nervous systems.⁠

In our relationships we must recognise when we have been triggered. One of the biggest and most important tools in managing this is learning how to self-soothe.⁠

Often we are tempted to do the opposite of self-soothe. We pour fuel on the fire of our highly negative activated emotions. We work ourselves up. We think more and more damaging negative thoughts. This exacerbates our relationship difficulties and it puts a huge physical strain on our bodies.

When we’re triggered, we go into catastrophising. Our heads start to project very negatively into the future. Our thinking becomes extreme, we use words like “always” and “never” and - as my old mentor taught me - ‘Our heads tell us lies’. We go into our scripts and we can tear ourselves or our partners apart.⁠

Self-soothing is the opposite of that. We consciously and lovingly take ourselves in hand. We tell ourselves we’ve been triggered and therefore cannot trust our thinking. We comfort ourselves with calming words and phrases like: “Yes, this is a difficult moment but it doesn’t mean my relationship/partner is all bad”, “I will figure this out”, “I am okay, and I will always be okay”, “This too shall pass”, “I am strong and can handle this”.⁠

And we can add other sources of comfort: relaxing music, a cuddle with a pet, a hot bath, a nap with a soft blanket… these are the very real things that calm our nervous systems and restore us. Like I said: we care for ourselves with the same tenderness we would a precious child.⁠

In our relationships we must recognise when we have been triggered. One of the biggest and most important tools in managing this is learning how to self-soothe.⁠

REDUCING UPSET

When we are upset we are in danger of falling into a big trap: Emotional Reasoning.

Emotional Reasoning is when we make sense of the world based on how we are feeling. If we feel hurt, we think and believe the other person doesn’t care about us. If we feel angry, we believe the other person was intentionally trying to hurt us and we need to defend ourselves.

Emotional Reasoning can make us behave in many unhealthy and unhelpful ways. It is part of us being triggered. It is important to recognise that feelings are not facts.

We need to Emotionally Regulate and reduce our upset, so we can return to a calm and rational state of mind that we can trust more.

Some Emotional Regulation techniques Are:⁠

Self-Awareness - knowing what your triggers are and what your reactions can be is half the battle. Then you can recognise them as they are happening and deal with them that much quicker.

Breath Work - Whether you’re really into mindfulness or meditation, simply focusing on our breathing and restoring a calm and steady breath is going to help us.

Cognitive Reappraisal - Thought Replacement and Situational Role Reversals work well. Think about your most unhelpful thoughts, and replace them with ones based on appreciation and hope. Also, do a role reversal and put yourself in your partner’s shoes, knowing his or her history and what they are dealing with.⁠

Adaptability - Imagine someone you really loved was in this situation. What would you advise them to do? How would you like them to behave so they maintained their dignity?⁠

Journaling - Writing our thoughts and feelings out is a great way to make them feel more manageable and for us to understand what might be happening for us. It uses a part of our brain that is specifically interested in problem-solving. So we can acknowledge and validate our feelings whilst also thinking about what would be the next best step.

Emotional Reasoning can make us behave in many unhealthy and unhelpful ways. It is part of us being triggered. It is important to recognise that feelings are not facts.

STAYING TRUE TO OURSELVES

When we are triggered, in toxic relationships, or in prolonged periods of emotional upset, we can lose sight of who we are due to all the upset and all the trauma/drama.

As humans it is very important for us to have a value system. We all have one and are operating from it whether we realise it or not. In our reactivity we can start behaving and thinking in ways that go against our value system. Boundaries can be crossed and this will create significant discomfort in us. Over a period of time this requires a numbing out of sorts in order to stay in that specific situation. This results in us disconnecting even further from ourselves. Which can trigger further reactivity... it can become a vicious cycle.

By making it really explicit and clear to ourselves what our value system is, and who we wish to be, we are then able to recognise very quickly when we are needing soothing and emotional regulation so we can return to ourselves - and remain true to ourselves.

We sometimes need to see we have travelled quite far from our own integrity. This serves to guide us and act as a compass about who and what is right for us. If we are able to be truly who we are in the situation, it is then an affirming and healthy scenario.

If, however, it becomes almost impossible to maintain who we are, and that we instead have to become distorted versions of ourselves not in keeping with our own values, we need to deeply question why we are putting ourselves in that situation. I suggest reflecting on this. Think about what your values are. What is fundamentally important to you? What do you not want to embody?

Think of a time in your life you felt confident within yourself, you were proud of who you were, and you could stand tall. That is the person we need to strive to always be. Returning to this truth will often tell us all we need to know about what (and who) we choose. We must emotionally regulate and self-soothe so this part of us is front-and-centre in everything we do.

As humans it is very important for us to have a value system. We all have one and are operating from it whether we realise it or not. In our reactivity we can start behaving and thinking in ways that go against our value system. 

CREATING A CONTAINER / SETTING BOUNDARIES

When we are triggered and emotionally dysregulated, we are uncontained and we are boundaryless.

Creating a container means creating a safe space for our feelings and thoughts, that serves to contain them so they do not feel overwhelming. Examples of containers can be: therapy, support groups, mentors and teachers. It can also be journaling, writing an angry email and not sending it, writing everything on a balloon and then popping it, a visualisation done with deep breathing, or it can be meditation or mindfulness.

The need to set boundaries acknowledges that your emotional reactions are due to lines being crossed either within you or outside of you. Boundaries speak of your needs. And when we become emotionally dysregulated, that is a sign that we are not meeting our needs.

If we have challenging relationships with people, we need to put in boundaries to protect ourselves. This might be a time limit on phone calls or visits, it might be subjects that we choose not to discuss because the conversations are seldom helpful, it is adjusting our expectations of other people, it is putting whatever we need in place so we can be who we are and we can let them be who they are - without all the angst and drama.

The need for internal boundaries becomes evident when we are extremely negative in our thinking, we go into unbridled self-expression, or we work long hours and neglect our self-care.

The appropriate boundaries might look like us challenging any negative thinking, breathing and self-soothing so we can speak to others respectfully, acknowledging we are overworking and manage our time better (delegate and take regular breaks), prioritise our self-care and get back to basics.

Creating containers and having boundaries are incredibly important practical tools to look after ourselves and self-soothe ourselves through the difficulties of life and our relationships.

The need to set boundaries acknowledges that your emotional reactions are due to lines being crossed either within you or outside of you. Boundaries speak of your needs.

GIVING OURSELVES THE GIFT OF TIME

How do we soothe ourselves with time? When we are hurt, angry or distressed the hardest thing in the world to give those emotions is time. We want to fix them, get rid of them, project them out or use them to hurt others or ourselves. Allowing these emotions 'in' so they may teach us and tell us what we need, is a great gift to ourselves.

In the very short term, when engaging in a heated argument for example, giving ourselves time (sometimes just seconds) before retaliating or going into reactivity, will allow us to stay composed and dignified. In the long term, time offers us space. Space to heal, space to grieve. Space to process, and space to understand.

Our feelings have become so intolerable to us that the last thing anyone wants to do is be left with them. We will distract ourselves, lose ourselves and divert ourselves in any way possible. We don’t have time for ourselves and we don’t have time for our feelings.

Taking time to reflect, journal and process what we’ve gone through, allows us to bring choice to our decision-making. We can understand our unconscious desires, we can notice where we sabotage, we can observe our patterns playing out and we can fully appreciate when we handle something well, Acknowledging ourselves in this way is deeply comforting and it develops a calm, strong confidence and resilience in ourselves.

We can not only tolerate our difficult emotions, we can learn from them and tend to them. So when we go out into the world, our needs are met and we stand tall.

When we are hurt, angry or distressed the hardest thing in the world to give those emotions is time. We want to fix them, get rid of them, project them out or use them to hurt others or ourselves. 

RESTORING RESILIENCE

Often we can have limiting beliefs that we don’t realise are *maintaining* our upset, anxiety or hurt.

We tell ourselves over and over how weak we are, how we can’t cope, how it would be unimaginably bad if things went wrong. If we made mistakes. If we were not perfect. If we don’t have a perfect relationship. If our partner doesn’t behave in exactly the way we want.

We emotionally catastrophise and it is not healthy. Things become disproportionate and dramatic, out of perspective and imbalanced. This impacts our emotional state hugely. Building resilience has at its core an ability to tolerate difficulty and distress.

So building resilience means developing a greater tolerance of discomfort, disappointment, things not working out, making a human error, doing something wrong, dealing with conflict, handling difficulty and enduring hardship. In other words, the stuff of life.

Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapy (REBT) teaches us a way of building resilience is to develop new rational and supportive beliefs. We recognise what our unhelpful scripts are, our self-sabotaging language and vocabulary, and our negative inner critic, and replace them all with affirming and supportive beliefs. We repeat these over and over. Slowly they become new beliefs.

Healthy new beliefs might be:

- I would prefer for things to be easy all the time but appreciate that is not realistic.
- It might be very difficult, it might even be unbelievably hard, however it is not the end of the world.
- I may feel uncomfortable, but I can cope with it.
- Even if what I imagined happened or is happening, I can figure out what to do.
- No matter what happens, literally no matter what, I am a worthy human being. I am a fallible human having a human experience.
- Yes, it may be extremely challenging! But I am strong and I will tolerate it.
- It may be unpleasant, and I may hate every minute of it, but I can get through it.

Resilience isn’t the absence of challenges, it’s having the robustness to deal with challenges.