Online Therapy Las Vegas: Emotional Regulation Range
When I’m providing online therapy in Las Vegas, I always discuss baseline emotions. There is a normal range of emotions. Every single person should experience a range of emotions throughout their life. Everyone should experience happiness, sadness, disgust, fear, surprise, and anger. Then there are different intensities for each emotion. Examples of different intensities include joy to ecstasy, anger to rage, and sadness to grief. There are no bad emotions. All emotions are natural and normal. Mental health issues start when we stay outside the normal range.
Online Therapy Helps Normalize Emotions
Disturbing experiences or trauma is defined as when a person perceives a situation as a threat and is unable to complete a satisfactory fight, flight or freeze response. When a person experiences such an event, they may be ‘stuck on’ or ‘stuck off.’ Below is a picture of Dr. Peter Levine’s explanation of symptoms of undischarged traumatic stress.
Breaking this down, within the dotted lines is the normal range of emotional regulation. If you can regulate your emotions, you stay within the normal range. When you experience a stressor, you will be emotionally activated. You will experience your emotions. They can be intense. As you process and complete the stress response cycle, you will return to baseline levels. This is the ebb and flow of the gray line. You will always experience stress in your life. The goal of life isn’t to stop experiencing stress. It’s to be able to regulate your emotions.
When we experience a disturbing or traumatic event, and we are not able to complete the stress response cycle successfully and regulate our emotions, we may experience symptoms of traumatic stress. That is the red line in the picture. If you are “stuck on,” you may experience anxiety, panic, hyperactivity, exaggerated startle, inability to relax, restlessness, hyper-vigilance, digestive problems, emotional flooding, chronic pain, sleeplessness, hostility, and rage. Examples of being ‘stuck off’ include depression, flat affect, lethargy, deadness, exhaustion, chronic fatigue, disorientation, disconnection, dissociation, pain, low blood pressure, or poor digestion.
Online Therapy in Las Vegas
So how can we actually tell if we are outside of the normal range of emotional regulation. The answer to this is duration, frequency, and intensity. How long have you been feeling this way? How often does this feeling come up? How intense has this feeling been? I’ll use the example of a person experiencing sadness due to a death. Have they been feeling sadness for the last 12 months? Is it continuous or does it come and go? Has the intensity of their sadness decreased, increased, or stayed the same? They have been experiencing sadness for the last 6 months. The feeling comes in waves. This feeling has decreased as time has progressed. They may be progressing through the stages of grief appropriately. This is where talking to a professional can help.
If you feel like you are outside of the normal range of emotions, have been feeling off for a while, or have continued explosive emotions, you might be outside the normal range. Go talk to someone about it. Make the change today.
Reach out for Online Therapy in Las Vegas
When you want to make a change, get online therapy in Las Vegas with Chris Rabanera. Get started with a free 15-minute consultation today. Offering online therapy in California, Michigan, and Nebraska, I specialize in addressing physician burnout, grief counseling, anxiety, depression and providing tailored mental health treatment for men. Let’s get to work to make lasting positive changes.
