Have you ever felt like you were emotionally spiraling?  It’s a helpless feeling and can be exhausting, disruptive, and affect the people around you.   Whatever the type of feeling, whether sad or angry or worried, it seems to grow and build in intensity in a way that feels out of control.  Today’s post is about a tool from a form of therapy called Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) that emphasizes techniques for managing our emotional spirals, balancing being aware of and accepting our experience with using skils to regulate them (hence the dialectic) .  (Can you tell I am doing a DBT Training?)

While spirals seem to come out of nowhere, they actually develop from a series of choices and responses.  Spirals are made up of feedback loops between our thoughts, feelings, and our behaviors.  For example, if you’re feeling depressed, you tend to see the word in a negative light and have thoughts such as “nobody cares” and that you are “unworthy.” These thoughts and feelings lead to staying home and isolating yourself, which then confirms and reinforces your loneliness.  Being home alone, you might overeat or indulge in alcohol as a way of numbing the painful feelings, which then leads to more self critical judgments and depressed feelings.

The “Opposite Action to Emotion” technique, also known as Opposite Action or O2E, takes advantage of our emotions as motivators to action, but directs our behavior in a manner that  breaks the chain of a downward spiral.  The first step in O2E is to identify and acknowledge the emotion we are experiencing and the action urge associated with it.  For example, when we’re scared, we may have the urge to escape or avoid what is making us anxious.  If we’re angry, we may have the urge to attack or go on the offensive.  

The next step is to ask ourselves if the emotions we have identified fit the facts of our situation and if the action we feel the urge to engage in will be effective in resolving the situation.  Sometimes our emotions and/or the intensity may be out of proportion for the situation we’re in.  For example, being afraid and running away is a helpful emotion and action when encountering a bear, but being afraid and running away may not be a good career move for the presentation we have to give at work.

Once you identify how your emotions may be fueling actions that are unhelpful, you take control by actually doing the opposite action instead.  For example, if you’re feeling sad because your romantic relationship has ended, you might have the urge to stay at home and cut yourself off from the world.  Instead, you choose the opposite action, and choose to do something outside of the house, like going for a hike or buying a gift for a friend at the Farmer’s Market. In this way, going out and being with others breaks the cycle of the downward spiral.  

O2E is not about ignoring or denying emotions.  In fact, the point is to actually work to label and identify what you’re feeling and how it’s affecting you and then to be proactive in managing it.  Rather than passively letting it spiral, O2E is about gaining awareness of your feelings and then actively putting some separation between these feelings and how you behave.

Like most skills, Opposite Action to Emotion is a tool that takes some practice to implement, but you must also start with a willingness to try it.  Some people actually find it can be a fun challenge to try to think of a behavior that might be counterintuitive to what they’re feeling.  Like how about signing up for the Open Mic night when you’re home obsessing about that work presentation or asking that  neighbor you worry doesn’t like you to go out for coffee?  Now wouldn’t that put a halt to your spiral?  If nothing else, you’ll build your confidence at taking risks and not letting yourself be controlled by your fears and feelings!  The ultimate power of O2E is to highlight the ability we always have to choose how we respond to our feelings – it’s the ultimate tool for psychological de-spiralizing.