529 - Yes, You Can Think Your Way Out of Your Feelings (Sometimes)
What is cognitive reappraisal?
Cognitive reappraisal is the notion that we can change how we think and feel about a given situation. This can be a tricky subject, because we know it’s important to feel our feelings, not silence ourselves, and not hold back our emotions, but at the same time, if we’re in a functional adult relationship, we also have to recognize that we can’t let our emotions run the show the entire time.
It might not be appropriate, for instance, to let your emotions show if you find something extremely funny during a work meeting, or if you’re feeling sad but pull yourself together to go to a party you promised to go to.
James Gross, a professor of psychology, published research in 1998 that looked at different ways we manage our emotions. He was inspired to look into this by the apparent contradiction that science had been saying about emotional regulation: psychological literature suggested emotional regulation was beneficial to mental health, but physical literature suggested that emotional regulation was detrimental to health and increased physiological activation.
Gross concluded from his research on antecedent- and response-focused regulation that instead of lumping emotional regulation tactics together, different kinds might have different effects on the mind and body.
In real life, how does this look?
Some ways this might look in real life are:
Changing the way you think about a situation before you get emotional (antecedent regulation):
Thinking of or acknowledging other perspectives, i.e. “Maybe they are struggling with time management, and we can work on that together.”
Response-focused regulation, or suppression, can look like:
Holding back tears.
Intentionally setting a neutral or unfazed facial expression.
Choosing not to express negative feelings to a partner.
According to more recent research, cognitive reappraisal can act as an inhibitor of communication conflict, but only for participants with low levels of negative urgency.
At high levels of negative urgency, more cognitive reappraisal was less effective in reducing communication conflict. This suggested that when experiencing strong emotions, the more reflective process of cognitive reappraisal may be less efficient in preventing impulsive behavioral responses.
Sisson et al. (2022) found that partners who reappraised showed more motivation to change, greater effort, better success, and both partners involved noticed improvement.
It’s important to note that research also suggests that using cognitive reappraisal as a way to modulate conflict might not work if you’re in a bad relationship.
Some things to try
If possible, carve out some time when you’re noticing an emotional response and try some reframes:
“I have to remember I love this person and we’re on the same team.”
“They might be scared or overwhelmed right now too.”
Get to know your body
There is a lot of value in identifying the “wave pattern” of your emotional triggers. Learning to identify when you’re at a 2 versus not noticing until you’re at a 9 is important.
Slowing down helps with this. Meditation/mindfulness can help with this.
If the train has already left the station and you’re experiencing intense emotion, do not proceed trying to cognitively reappraise your way through a conflict.
Instead, have a toolkit of strategies for emotional regulation, such as:
Asking for time.
Letting your body move through it.
Journaling it out.
Talking it out with someone.
Having a good cry or punch, dancing it out (away from the other person).
Remember that there is a place for emotional suppression; don’t laugh out loud when you’re in the audience watching your metamour’s terrible performance art.
Do a reality check. If there is a consistent pattern where you feel like you have to suppress your feelings around your partner, where you are routinely disrespected, neglected or personally criticized, etc., no amount of emotion regulation tactics will change that.
Cognitive reappraisal can absolutely be a gamechanger in managing relationship conflicts, it’s vital to remember that it’s not about forcing yourself to feel differently. It’s about expanding your perspective to see the full picture. The goal isn't to gaslight yourself into happiness, but to approach conflicts with both emotional awareness and cognitive flexibility.
Transcript
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Jase: On this episode of the Multiamory Podcast, we're asking the question, can you think your way out of a negative emotional response? Imagine your partner has just done something that gets under your skin. They are running late again. They made an offhand comment that hit a nerve. They had to reschedule your date again. You can feel your emotions starting to swell, and you know that this could turn into a bigger conflict. You don't want to go down that path, but it also feels difficult to shift out of the emotional response you're having.
Today, we'll be diving into the concept of cognitive reappraisal, the notion that we can change how we think and feel about a given situation. We're going to look at what the research says, what this looks like in real life, and whether or not this borders on gaslighting yourself into feeling like your relationship is better than it actually is.
Before we get into that, if you're interested in learning about our fundamental communication tools that we reference on this show and that can help in so many situations in your life, check out our book, Multiamory: Essential Tools for Modern Relationships. It covers our most-used communication tools for all types of relationships. You can find links to buy it, as well as links to get our new audiobook version narrated by emily@multiamory.com/book or wherever fine books, eBooks, or audiobooks are sold.
Dedeker: Emily, when Jase read the intro, I saw you make a pufferfish face. What was that about?
Emily: Yes. I feel like I do this pretty often, and it's funny because you used to talk about how you used to Buddhist your way out of negative emotions. I do think that because the three of us have so much experience with so many different tools and so many different ways of self-soothing, feeling better, reappraising, and re-looking at, like, "Okay. What is underneath the baggage that that person just said to me, and how can I look at myself? Maybe I should have done something better in this situation. Maybe it wasn't them." All of those things, I just was like, "Woof. I probably do this on a daily basis." What about the two of you?
Jase: It's reminding me-- I guess the Buddhist thing reminded me of this, too, but this idea that when people who are raised Christian grow up, they have to somehow unlearn all the shame that they got brought up feeling. When someone's raised Buddhist, they have to learn to undo all the spiritual bypassing, but they were taught how to do when they were a kid, that kind of, "Oh, I'm just going to think my way out of my negative feelings." It's just interesting to see how that might show up in people who are more drawn to that, like, "I can just think it through. I can figure this out." Yes. Maybe we do gaslight ourselves.
Dedeker: I could see that being a byproduct of a particular type of person who's maybe been a little over therapized, potentially.
Jase: Oh, yes. That's a good one, too. Yes.
Dedeker: Right? Not that there's anything wrong with therapy, but that it could engender this sense that if I feel that burst of anger at somebody or annoyance or if I can't shake my sadness, I think, like you said, Emily, like, "Well, I have all these tools to deal with this emotion, so I don't actually have to be this miserable." Surely, I need to reach for a tool in order to deal with it.
Essentially, what we're getting at is all the many different ways that emotional regulation can look, but I want to look at a very particular flavor today. I am wondering if the two of you can think about times where you've been in a relationship conflict and you're very aware of the fact that you're having to hold yourself back emotionally, or another example of this could be when you're feeling really bummed out, but you pull it together because you have to go to this work event.
You have to go to this work party, and you have to show your face, and so you have to pull it together. I'm also curious on the other side of, for instance, if you find something really funny, but you're in a meeting, and so you can't express it. I'm just curious about these times where you notice that you're having to essentially pull yourself together and not express your emotions, even if they're positive emotions.
Emily: The positive emotion one is really an interesting question. Do you remember what I talked about on the show, how I was waiting on these two guys, and one of them pulled out their phone, and it was a headline that said that Joe Biden had decided to exit the race? I ran over because I was waiting on them. I'm like, "Oh, my gosh. Is that what's happening?" Then he pulled it out, and it was a dick pic instead. He clicked on the headline, and it ended up being a dick pic, and that was very funny.
Jase: His friend was pranking him.
Emily: Indeed. Yes. In the moment, I laughed, and it was very funny. We all were cracking up, even though I felt like maybe I needed to be a little bit more professional in that moment, but it was absolutely hilarious. In relationship conflict, I mean, certainly, I do feel the need to be the bigger person in the room, especially in my long-term relationship where I felt like the conflicts got heated very quickly and very intensely.
Often, I was being told that I was getting too emotional or too intense, even though I felt like, actually, no. I'm really, really making sure that I'm not doing that, and I can feel myself holding back, but my partner is doing that. I think that there is a projection onto me of, "You must be getting really emotional." Also, you must be really having an intense time here, but you want to be the bigger person, and you want to make sure that it doesn't get out of hand. It's like somebody has to do that, or else, this whole situation is going to get to a place that we can't move past from.
Dedeker: This idea, somebody has to be holding it together-
Emily: Yes.
Dedeker: -especially if the other person is really upset.
Emily: Exactly. I don't think that everyone does that. I'm sure that-- I've certainly not always done that, but I do think that later on in my relationship, in the last few years of my relationship, I really, really tried to keep the peace. Also, in those moments of volatility, which were fairly frequent, I really wanted to be as calm and rational as possible, even though I was being told that I wasn't acting calm or rational.
Dedeker: Sure.
Jase: Gosh, there's a whole lot of layers of extra stuff on top of all that, too, I think.
Emily: Yes. Yes. For sure. That was behind my face. That was the face that I made.
Dedeker: That was the pufferfish? Okay.
Emily: That was the one.
Dedeker: That was the spirit of the pufferfish coming out of you.
Jase: Thinking about this, what first came to mind is something that I feel like comes up in, not only my work, but also with Multiamory and various things where you're in a situation or where I'm in a situation where I'm going into a meeting knowing that the other person is already upset with me, or upset with my company, or upset with something. They're coming in upset.
Dedeker: You do a lot of, essentially, sort of customer-client support and stuff?
Jase: Yes. It's not quite support, but sometimes it is.
Dedeker: Sometimes, you're in that role?
Jase: Yes. Then, also, sometimes, with Multiamory, if someone's had a problem and they're like, "Can I talk to you about this?" Going into that sort of situation. I think also, I've definitely experienced it with partners, too, it's like, "We're going to have a talk in a sec," and I know that they're upset with me about something. Finding myself in each of those situations, going into it with this, like, "Okay. I have to somehow become water and bend with whatever they throw at me and try to receive it and hear it and not try to fight back against it because that's not going to make anything better."
It's definitely very intentional. I'm going to go into this call, and I'm going to try to make sure that person feels heard, that they feel taken care of without getting defensive, but also without just being a pushover and being like, "You're totally right. I was wrong." I do find, I often am in a situation like that, or where I'm just feeling tired and sick, getting a migraine or something, and then needing to be like, "No. I got to pull it together and be the charismatic person leading this call with a bunch of people," or something like that.
Definitely a lot of that feeling like I'm-- I almost feel like it's a metaphor of I'm dragging myself along by a rope or something like that. I've kind of got to haul myself along, like, "Okay. Haul you up onto this thing." Now, you've got to dance on stage or whatever.
Dedeker: What's interesting in what both of you are sharing is, at least what I hear, is I can see how pieces of this type of emotional regulation could be really helpful, and also could be maybe detrimental in our lives. I hear little pieces of that from both of you. That's the driving force of this episode. Specifically, I found the work of James Gross, who is currently a professor of psychology at Stanford. Back in 1998, Gross published this study called Antecedent- and Response-Focused Emotion Regulation: Divergent Consequences for Experience, Expression, and Physiology. Now don't get too--
Jase: I'm trying to parse that type-- Yes.
Emily: It's quite a lot.
Dedeker: Don't even pay attention to it. I shouldn't have even said it. Okay?
Jase: Okay.
Dedeker: Basically, what inspired his study was what he thought was this inherent contradiction in what science had been saying about emotion regulation. The psychological health literature all suggested that emotion regulation was beneficial for mental health and for stress reduction, but all the physical health literature suggested that emotion regulation could be harmful and actually increase your physiological activations.
Emily: Wow.
Jase: I see. By holding it all in and repressing-
Dedeker: Yes.
Jase: -with that whole idea? Okay.
Dedeker: I do think that's a really interesting contradiction to look at because I do think we, today, get this message that you shouldn't hold back your feelings. You shouldn't silence yourself. You should let yourself feel all of your feelings, while at the same time, knowing that if you're going to be a functional adult in relationships with other functional adults, you can't let your emotions just run the show the entire time. What do the two of you think?
Jase: 100%. Yes. I agree with that.
Emily: Yes. I think that absolutely, both of those things are true. I know that when I was growing up, something that my mom often talked about with me is that she wanted to give me a sense of control over my emotions to a degree. That she saw a lot of kids out there who couldn't control their emotions, and who ran wild a little bit, and that she very much wanted to instill in me the ability to be able to have some control over the intensity of emotions that I think a lot of young people feel.
Maybe that was a little bit more than the average young person, but I do think that in my daily life now, I appreciate the fact that I'm able to regulate pretty well. Although I do think that sometimes they can reach that boiling point where you've regulated so much, and you've held back so much that you just have to go into a room and fricking break down because you're finally letting that pressure valve off.
Dedeker: Totally.
Emily: I do wonder if that becomes less good from a physiological standpoint, I guess, than if you had allowed yourself to feel the real emotion in the moment.
Jase: This is just bringing back a memory of when I was in high school, actually, and I was involved in a lot of stuff with the music program and the theater program, and stuff like that. We had this time where the teacher, who was the director, was on leave, and a lot of students were trying to pick up the slack for that. There were a lot of changes and a lot of things all happening at the same time. I was in all of them and in a leadership role, because I was a senior at that time.
I remember at one point, our vice principal ended up coming in to lead our class one day, because it was just like we're so short on resources or whatever with what was going on. He was talking to me at one point, and I mentioned being stressed out about this, and he's like, "I never would've guessed. You seem cool as a cucumber-
Emily: Wow.
Jase: -about this. I wouldn't have guessed that you were stressed out." That was the first time that it clicked for me of like, "Oh, I am completely masking all these feelings I'm having inside," which I do think has been a really useful skill, but that was especially a time where I would have those-- just breakdowns in the evenings sometimes, and like fall apart. That's definitely continued through my life, too, of often people not seeing me as someone who's as vulnerable as maybe I actually experience myself to be.
Dedeker: See, that's funny, because I'm around you all the time, and I feel like you're very vulnerable, but I get the front rows. I get the front row seat-
Jase: Sure.
Emily: That's true.
Dedeker: -to everything that comes up.
Emily: Well, what about you?
Dedeker: Me? What about me? I don't need to share my emotions.
Emily: Exactly. No, because quite frankly, Dedeker, and I know that I have seen you in vulnerable moments, but I do think that you are extremely good at keeping your shit together, for lack of a better term. It really takes quite a lot to move you in a direction of seeming at all out of control.
Dedeker: Sure. I think that you, Emily, got maybe a similar flavor of parenting from our mothers around emotional regulation. Right?
Emily: Sure. Yes.
Dedeker: Of really a lot of pressure to keep it together. The way that my cake was baked in terms of parenting and nature and nurture, I definitely tend toward the side of you got to keep it together. You can't let your emotions run the show the entire time. It's not until I started going to therapy, doing somatic work, getting training, and somatic therapies, before I've become a lot more comfortable with like, "No. We need to actually feel our feelings and express our feelings in a particular way."
I want to bring it back to Gross's research because there's a distinction here that I think might help this conversation that we're having. Basically, Gross designed the study to look at two different ways that we might regulate our emotions. He called them antecedent-focused regulation and response-focused regulation. Basically, what he did is that, with his test subjects, he would show them a really intense, really graphic video of a medical procedure. It was specifically designed to elicit feelings of disgust-
Emily: Interesting.
Dedeker: -to bring him a really strong emotional reaction of disgust. He had his control group, and then he had one group where he told people to try to think about the content objectively ahead of time. It's kind of like he gave him a preview of what the content was going to be. That's the antecedent-focused regulation. It's an ahead-of-time change the way that you're going to think about it. Try to think about it more objectively.
Then he had another group where he told them, "You can feel whatever it is you want to feel about it, but just hide your reactions while you're watching. Don't express your disgust." That's the response-focused group. What he found was fascinating that both groups looked calmer on the outside, but their internal experiences were completely different. The antecedent focus group, the people who tried to think about it objectively ahead of time, they actually felt less distressed.
While the people who were instructed to suppress their reactions, they felt just as much distress, plus their body showed physiological signs of stress, like increased heart rate and sweating. Gross came to this conclusion that this contradiction that he's seeing in the science, he thinks that maybe we're just lumping all emotional regulation tactics together, when there's actually many different ways that we might regulate and manage our feelings that have different effects on our minds and bodies. Essentially, this idea that--
Jase: Yes. It seems so obvious when you say it.
Dedeker: No. I know. Changing how you think about a situation before you have the emotional response can be positive for your mental health. It can prep you for a distressing situation and make it so that less distress arises for you. If you're already having the emotional response, and then you regulate by trying to suppress it or hold it back, that can lead to the long-term negative physical health outcomes.
Emily: Can I ask? What do you mean exactly by changing how you think about a situation before the emotional response happens? Sometimes, you are presented an emotional situation that you can't predict that's going to happen.
Dedeker: Totally. Often, that's part of the emotion, is like if something catches you off guard, and you weren't expecting it. Yes. That's just a fact of life. To talk about some examples of what maybe that antecedent-focused emotional regulation might look like. Let's imagine that you do have the warning ahead of time, you have a sense that I'm going to walk into a situation that I feel like might be emotional. I'm going to have a difficult conversation with my partner about an awkward subject.
In our intro, we talked about my partner's been like canceling dates a lot, or having to reschedule our dates a lot, and I want to talk to them about it, and I realize it can be maybe uncomfortable, awkward. Maybe we've talked about this before, and they've gotten defensive. This is a situation where you have that preemptive sense of what you might be expecting. That's a situation where you could choose to change how you think about the situation before you're in the middle of the situation and having the emotional response.
This makes me think of things like the Gottmans talk about-- they call it preemptive repair, this idea of maybe you head into that conversation already saying to your partner, "I know we've talked about this before. I see that you've been trying to work on this. Also, can we try X, Y, Z?" It might be heading into that situation and telling yourself something like, "Okay. Maybe it's that they're struggling with time management. Maybe that's something that we can work on together." "Okay. I know. I know that they love me. I know they want this relationship to work. I know that we're on the same team." Those kind of things, essentially, to prepare yourself for going into this emotional situation. Does that make sense?
Emily: Yes.
Jase: Yes. Now, I'm thinking about my previous example about getting on a call or going into a conversation knowing that there's going to be criticism and going into it being like, "Okay. I want to come into this open-minded and able to receive that and not be combative." I think actually I do pretty well in those situations, but then, yes, there are also other situations where that comes out of nowhere and catches me off guard. Those are the ones where, often afterward, I have that feeling of like, I just need to get this off of me. I need to shake this out or something of that, and maybe kind of a sweatiness that comes on. That's really interesting hearing that. I can vividly picture being in both of those situations within the last two days.
Emily: Wow.
Dedeker: Well, yes, then there's the flip side of where maybe you don't have the opportunity to really reappraise things ahead of time or to think about it ahead of time, something catches you off guard. Then we're only left with a choice to regulate your emotions after the emotional response has already started. Now, for some people, and in some situations, this looks just straight up like suppression because sometimes we have no choice. You're headed into the work call. You have to hold back your tears. You're totally enraged by what your coworker just did or said, but you have to intentionally set a more neutral or unfazed facial expression.
Jase: Or you're out in public at a gathering with your partner, and you learn something really upsetting, but now's not the time to
Dedeker: Now is not the time. Right. You just choose not to express those negative feelings to your partner in that particular moment. We think of emotional suppression, and we think that, "Oh, that must be all bad." It also falls on a spectrum. With this study, Gross clarified that there's no single emotion regulation strategy that's going to be uniformly superior across all contexts. He just emphasized the importance of knowing when to use which strategy and understanding there's costs and benefits to both of these strategies. I wanted to pose to the two of you is what do you think about something like HALT, calling a pause in a heated conversation? Do you think that counts as a suppressive technique? Where do you think this falls?
Emily: I think it falls-- maybe suppressive is a word to use to describe it, but I think that it's simply a way in which to help the situation not escalate further. I think that's one of the reasons for it, or it's like a reset button. It's the game is not going well, and so you're rage-quitting. No. I'm kidding.
Dedeker: For some people, it could be that.
Emily: That's true.
Jase: That's true. Yes.
Dedeker: Essentially, that you need a moment to stop it from getting more heated because right now, there is that potential for it to fly off the handle, and if you don't call HALT, then it probably will. It's saving yourself and the person in front of you from that potential to actually happen.
Jase: Since the whole idea of HALT is it's identifying that you're Hungry, Angry, Lonely or Tired, there's this other factor that's contributing to how you're feeling. The point of it is to go address that, not to say like, "Don't feel what you're feeling." It's like, "Go take care of the other things." I don't think it would be a suppression technique. I suppose anything could be weaponized into that or weaponized against yourself into that.
I think it's addressing a different issue, where it's looking at the cause of it, or maybe even giving you the time to scream into a pillow or shake it out or go for a run or something to get the intensity out. Even as I'm thinking about it, it also means when you do come back together to continue the conversation, you've also had time to maybe do that preemptive, that antecedent space way of coming back to it.
Emily: That's true.
Dedeker: Yes. To get really granular with it, when I think about times when I know that I need to pause or take a HALT, it's like there's two seconds of suppression, because it's like I need to suppress. If I can feel my blood is boiling and I can feel like I'm going to slam a door or I'm going to raise my voice, it's like you need to have that suppression reaction come online for that two seconds that it takes you to, through gritted teeth, be like, "Hey, I need to take a walk. Can we meet back here in 20 minutes?"
There does need to be a little bit of this suppressive piece, but then I could go for a walk, and yes, I can sigh, I can cry, I can take angry notes in my phone, or I can just, again, try to jog, and just move that energy through my body. I don't know. I do feel, for me, there needs to be that little piece of suppression. I think that's why HALTing can be so difficult for people is because it really--
Jase: Absolutely.
Dedeker: -requires you to clench that muscle really hard at the beginning before you can unclench it a little bit when you're on your own.
Emily: See, HALTs often for me happened after a really nasty thing was said, and then somebody called a HALT.
Jase: I see. You already got to that point and then called a HALT.
Dedeker: Sure. I think that happens, too.
Jase: It at least stops more of it from happening, though.
Emily: I guess
Jase: That's the idea.
Emily: Yes.
Dedeker: Yes. For sure. Jase, you also highlighted that you feel like when you take a pause and you're able to release some of that emotion that then you have more of an opportunity to do this antecedent-focused, what the researchers now call cognitive reappraisal, before coming back to the conversation.
Jase: Yes. That's because you know you're coming back into that same conversation. Like you said, you already have that preview of what's going to be involved. When a HALT fails is when you just spend that time getting more worked up. You come into that situation even more upset than before. Then maybe you actually did need to take more time or actually get sleep or something like that.
If that's not the case, and I find usually, you'll be in that state for the first 10, 15 minutes, and then after that is when you'll tend to just naturally, your body will regulate itself a little bit, and then you'll be able to come back. Generally, it really varies, but I do think it gives you that chance to know like, okay, I'm coming back in and I can approach this better.
Dedeker: We've already been teasing this a little bit, but we're actually going to get into what the research says as far as using cognitive reappraisal as a technique in your relationships and relationship conflict specifically. Since the '90s, there's been a lot more research into specifically how cognitive reappraisal plays out specifically within the context of romantic relationships. This first study is a 2024 study by Poole et al. It's titled The Interplay of Negative Urgency and Cognitive Reappraisal in Couples Communication Conflict. This was published in the Journal of Marital and Family Therapy.
Their sample size, they tracked 1,240 majority low-income couples specifically, and they tracked these couples' emotional regulation tactics via a scale that was developed by Gross, who did the original research. On this emotion regulation scale, I pulled a couple of examples. I ordered them from what sounded to me more healthy to less healthy.
Jase: Oh, interesting.
Dedeker: For instance, when I'm faced with a stressful situation, I make myself think about it in a way that helps me stay calm. When I want to feel less negative emotions such as sadness or anger, I change what I'm thinking about. I control my emotions by not expressing them. I keep my negative emotions to myself. You can see that even within cognitive reappraisal, there is a spectrum of what I think is healthier versions of it versus less healthy versions of it.
Jase: Well, not specifically just an emotion regulation scale, so it's unclear if-- It seems like that included things both from the antecedent beforehand focused as well as in the moment.
Dedeker: In this particular scale, I think folks are mostly on the antecedent stuff on the reappraisal.
Jase: Okay.
Dedeker: They found that participants who had high cognitive reappraisal skills, that would inhibit communication conflict in the relationship, but only for actors with low levels of negative urgency. Let me translate that for you.
Emily: Yes.
Jase: Yes.
Dedeker: Negative urgency is the tendency to act rationally in response to intense negative mood states. As in, this ability to rethink ahead of time, how you want to see the situation, to change your thoughts in order to change your emotions, it works if you're not somebody who has this very strong urge to act out when you're in a negative mood, basically.
They found that people with high levels of negative urgency, the cognitive reappraisal wasn't really that effective in reducing conflict, which suggests that when we're experiencing really strong emotions, this very deliberate, very cognitive process is not as efficient in helping to prevent us from these impulsive behaviors. Which again, when you say it out loud, I'm just like, "Yes. That makes sense." If you're blowing your top, you're not going to be able to sit and be like, "I should actually sit and rethink this and think about this in a way that makes me feel less angry."
Jase: It's interesting, though, if they're talking about this cognitive reappraisal beforehand, though, this idea that even if you try to prepare for it, if you're someone who has a tendency to just go hard as soon as you feel something, that it's like-- even planning ahead doesn't seem to make as much of a difference. Am I reading that correctly, that's what they're getting at?
Dedeker: Yes. It's like if you don't also have this response-focused emotion regulation tactics that work for you, it seems like it's not going to matter how much reappraisal you do ahead of time, is what my takeaway is here.
Jase: Almost like you need a little of each.
Emily: I did want to point out, because we talked a little bit about therapy and the over-therapizing, kind of, that some people get into. I do think that a lot of therapists out there are very much in the mindset of, "I just have to affirm my patient and all of their feelings that they have. Period. I think that while there's benefit in that, it can also sometimes teach a person that their feelings are valid regardless, that they should be affirmed, and that it doesn't necessarily teach them the ways in which they can more appropriately act based on those emotions.
When I look at something like this, I do think about situations that I've been in with people who just allow their emotions to simply run the show instead of stepping back and pausing and thinking about, "How can I better look at the situation, or think about the situation beforehand?" Then act after that, after that thought process has occurred. I don't know. I'm not sure how much that necessarily ties into this, but we do sometimes live in a land of both of those things being the case, where some of us are very much taught to suppress/control our emotions. Some of us are taught your emotions are valid. You have to act on them regardless of how difficult or painful it is for anyone else.
Dedeker: Sure.
Jase: Yes. I think not just from therapy, but I've definitely seen people who-- it feels like they were brought up that way-
Emily: Exactly.
Jase: -about how expressing their emotions was received, whether they were taught to really emphasize keeping it under control, or whether they were taught, "Yes. Anything you say and feel is treated as valid," and so they always expect everyone's going to receive them that way. I've definitely encountered that. I feel like it tends to happen, at least from what I've seen, less often because of therapy, but more often just because of how they were raised, and what it was like for them growing up.
Emily: Yes, or a combination of multiple things. I'm just thinking about a particular person who, after therapy, felt very emboldened by being told, "Your emotions are valid. You need to feel them. You need to act on them." Blah, blah, blah, which--
Dedeker: That you felt like they just puked them all over you.
Emily: I do think that it had a negative effect. I understand where they were coming from because they, at one point, really suppressed their emotions, and then they were told to go in the opposite direction. In doing so, it created these situations where the conflict that I had with them ended up being way more emotionally charged than I think it needed to be, just because there was a lack of that thinking beforehand, and let's try to emotionally regulate to a degree so that we can come at this with less volatility.
Dedeker: I want to keep diving into how this shows up in relationship. I found this interesting research from 2022 by Sisson et al called When We’re Asked to Change: The Role of Suppression and Reappraisal in Partner Change Outcomes. This was published in the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships. I've actually written a whole other episode about this particular research.
Jase: Wow. Okay.
Dedeker: About this idea of what happens when somebody asks us to change. I don't want to spoil too much about it, but essentially, they did these short-recorded interviews with about 100 couples where one person was given one minute to think about something they wanted their partner to change, and then they were given one minute exactly to tell their partner.
Then the partner, who in the research is referred to as the change target, was given one minute to respond to that request. Then they were both given two minutes afterwards to speak freely. They recorded these interviews immediately afterward, the change targets, the partners who were asked to change, were given a survey to measure both their motivation to change as well as what emotion regulation tactics they used during the discussion.
They found that specifically, this cognitive reappraisal helped partners actually successfully make the changes that their partners requested. They found that the people who used cognitive reappraisal showed not only more motivation to change, but they put in greater effort, they had better success, and both partners actually noticed the improvement more. Again, I'll get more into this in the dedicated episode that, I think, especially, in a vulnerable situation like that where somebody is asking us to make a change. Hopefully, in an ideal world, they do it in a non-shitty way when they bring.
Jase: Hopefully.
Dedeker: This seems like a very controlled situation where the person was given time to think ahead of time. It wasn't like a knee-jerk just yelling at your partner for never doing the dishes or whatever, but it does seem like this set people up for success more. However, there is a lot of research that also suggests that this doesn't work if you're just in a bad relationship straight up.
Emily: Sure.
Dedeker: Then, it really doesn't matter. There's this 2018 study, Relationship Quality and Cognitive Reappraisal Moderate the Effects of Negative Urgency on Behavioral Inclinations Toward Aggression and Intimate Partner Violence. This is in Psychology of Violence. The long story short is that, kind of like what we saw with the earlier study, that cognitive reappraisal, it really only goes so far. Specifically, it only goes so far if you're in a relationship that is low quality, has low trust, has low satisfaction, or is abusive. It's this thing where I do think that-- and this is why I started with this question of, can we just gaslight ourselves into a better relationship? If a relationship is bad, can we just--
Emily: We certainly have tried to do so.
Dedeker: We certainly have all tried, haven't we?
Emily: Yes.
Jase: Yes. Definitely.
Dedeker: Is this actually effective? Just think your way out of interpreting what you think is a partner's negative action into thinking more positively about it. It's like, "Yes. We can, but with limitations."
Jase: It's just really making me think a lot about this balance between your feelings being real and being valid, but also not being truth, and not necessarily being the truth for anyone else, not even yourself really. It's some people come in, like you were saying, Emily, you had that person you knew who had originally felt like, "Oh, none of my feelings are valid, so I need to keep them inside." They needed to learn, "No. These are real. These are valid."
Then they maybe swung too far the other way to feeling like, "These are truth that everybody needs to hear and that everyone should have to accept." I think we have people who start on the opposite side of feeling like, "Oh, all my feelings are truth." Then, for them needing to find that balance, the other direction of these aren't truth, but then you also don't want to go so far that then you don't feel like your feelings are valid or that they're real. That balance seems like a key part of this here.
Dedeker: I think this leads into, again, thinking about the limitations of this is, I think this is why when people are in actually abusive situations, so things like couples therapy are contraindicated. I think it's because of this is that a therapist can give you a lot of ways to reframe a situation and can swoop in with like, "Okay. This really mean thing that I heard your partner say, what I think they're actually trying to say is that they love you and they care about you, and that's why this is so hard for them, or whatever," that it can inject this kind of cognitivizing(ph) to a situation where the ship has maybe sailed on that.
Emily: It does beg the question, how do you know, and how do you figure out what is the appropriate amount of cognitive reappraisal versus when is it time to cut and run?
Dedeker: Totally.
Emily: I do think that it's that delicate dance that we all go through, especially in long-term relationships where we've put a lot of time and effort into them, and maybe they were good at one point, or it was easier, and then, it just goes sour over time. That's really fascinating, talking about the couples counseling stuff, and trying to reframe what the meaning behind someone saying something really unkind to you, triggering something, pushing a button.
Of course, those things may be true. They may have meant something else, what they're longing for, or whatever it might be, but they just said it to you in a very unkind way. If it is that pattern of behavior that seems to happen all the time, I think that that's when we get into a situation where this is better to not just try to Buddhist your way out of it, as it were.
Dedeker: I don't want to discourage anybody from not trying to put on some cognitive reframe, especially if they're heading into a relationship conflict with a partner or they're noticing that something their partner did or said got under their skin, because I do think it's still quite useful. I'm wondering about if you're in a situation where you already have an emotional groove that's worn into your reactions with a particular partner, do you think it's still possible to implement something like this and helpful?
Emily: It can be helpful, but I do think it's difficult. If it is too difficult, I think that that's telling about the state of the relationship in general. If the two of you're willing to try, because again, as we've said, especially the longer that you know someone, sometimes, the less you actually know about them because your cognitive biases surrounding all of the things that they used to do are the way in which you see them rather than perhaps the person that they've become or the changes that they've made.
Jase: Something that I've thought about a lot with these ingrained patterns is I'll see couples do this thing where one of them will try to make a change, but the other doesn't receive it. That person ends up feeling more hurt and then ends up falling back into the way they were before. Then that other person, I've seen them try to change something, try to repair something, but by that point, the first person is not ready to receive it.
I remember first seeing this, actually, with my parents long ago. There are lots of years of ingrained behaviors and stuff there, but I've seen it in a lot of other cases and sometimes in my own relationships, where looking back, able to see this, what was missing was a big enough shakeup and change where both people were on the same page about it at the same time.
I think that's one of the reasons why I've been such a big proponent of radar, as our way of having these check-ins, is so that you're making it less likely that you miss each other's attempts at things, that you're able to check in regularly enough, that it's not just, "Let's decide to do a thing," but it's, "Let's make a decision again every month, or every couple of weeks, or every couple of months, or however often we're checking in."
Then I also think that doing something to really shake up how you approach things is often a way that I want to approach it. I know we've done some of that, the three of us, if there've been things in doing multiamory, where we keep getting frustrated over certain things or there keep being types of friction there of this, "Not just let's say. Let's do it differently, or let's try to handle that differently." It's like, "Okay. How can we totally change the way we do this thing as a way of breaking out of those ruts?"
Thinking about if there are ruts on the road and your tires fall into those, it's like trying to just sort of scooch to the side, it's going to be hard because you fall back into it, but just turning 45 degrees and going a different direction, or going down a road that's a few feet over, you're not going to be as close to those ruts to fall back into them.
Dedeker: How do you think that plays out here?
Jase: Kind of like even before the cognitive reappraisal, is this like, "What could we do to make the conditions that we associate with these emotions that we have, to make less of those exist?" If you think about like with HALT, the Hungry, Angry, Lonely, Tired thing, it's like if any of those are going on, you're going to be more likely to be upset.
Maybe it's also we're more likely to be upset when we talk about money after a long day at work, or something that's-- this is a constant argument we get into. It's always when we talk about chores at the same time that we're changing the baby's diaper and trying to get ready for work, or like that there's this place in time, we notice this pattern coming up of saying like, "How can we change that?" "Let's maybe commit to we're not going to have that conversation at that time anymore.
We need to plan a different time to have that conversation and also have some discipline for both of us to not bring it up at that time," which is maybe where a micro script or something to kind of short-circuit that pattern could help. It almost feels like if you could remove more of the other triggers, it might be easier for that cognitive reappraisal to work as well as that little bit of emotional regulation and suppression that seems to be required to let that cognitive appraisal in advance actually do its job.
Dedeker: Sure. It's like you got to create enough breathing room for your brain to even show up in the first place.
Jase: I'd say even in your body, too, not just your brain, but yes, the whole system, the whole association to try to do something to change that up. I think that could look lots of different ways.
Emily: I will say some of those seem like the nothing fights, perhaps, that we get into. I am wondering about smaller disagreements versus ones that are larger and more global in the relationship that might cause friction because it's not going to necessarily ever change or ever be better. It's those perpetual problem-type things versus everyday issues that are potentially going to be able to change or grow or something along those lines.
Dedeker: If you are actually able to HALT or you actually do have time heading into a situation where you're anticipating that you might have an emotional response, or maybe you're starting to notice that you're having an emotional response to a particular conflict, like Jase's example of like, "I need to bring up this money conversation because literally, we need to pay the credit card bill by six o'clock today." It's like, "We can't keep putting it off. Unfortunately, it's happening right now."
I think a cognitive reappraisal for yourself might look something like reminding yourself, "Okay. Yes. My partner is probably also going to be feeling scared and overwhelmed by this conversation, too." Telling yourself, "Okay. I have to remember that I love this person and that we're on the same team and that ultimately, we want the same goals." I really do think this is very simple. I don't think you have to sit down and meditate for half an hour, just repeating something to yourself about how, "I'm not going to get angry. I'm not going to get angry. I'm not going to get angry." I really do think it just takes that little bit of cognitization(ph) heading into it.
Jase: I think that's also easier when you change up the circumstances around it of like, "We're going to go into this, but let's make sure we both make tea beforehand." We kind of have made a little ritual, just like something to change the association from like, "Oh, I'm half distracted while we're trying to talk about this thing." That I think can also make it easier to react emotionally when you're not totally present, like you're a little bit distracted thinking about other things at the same time.
Emily: You're changing the container for the ways in which the two of you approach the conversation and trying to break the unhealthy pattern that you usually get into when that conversation starts.
Dedeker: Well, speaking of that, if I can come skidding in to defend Buddhism, finally.
Emily: Oh, okay.
Jase: Okay. You're good.
Emily: We've been dunking on it this whole episode.
Dedeker: To raise a defense of mindfulness, meditation, Buddhism. Like you were saying, Emily, there's a lot of value in identifying your patterns, your wave pattern of your emotional triggers. There's a lot of value in learning to identify what it feels like in your body when you're at a level two versus you don't even notice until you're at a level nine and you're about to yell, or throw something, or slam a door, or something like that.
I do think that having some kind of mindfulness practice can help with that of learning to notice when those processes are starting earlier in your body, but also, with your brain, because there's a certain amount of this is like you have to notice what thoughts you're having before you can choose to reappraise those thoughts and put it in a different thought, I think.
You have to, when you're heading into that money conversation, there has to be a part of you that notices, "I'm already playing out this script." "I'm feeling tension in my body." So in response to that tension in my body, I'm already playing out this script of like, "This is going to be hell. This is going to be difficult. He's probably going to give this same argument that he always does, and I won't be able to stand it. If he tries to see that--" Right? I think you have to notice that that's where you're starting to go before you can make the decision to be like, "No. You know what? I'm going to try this reframe so that I can hopefully set us up for success heading into the conversation." There. That's my defense.
Emily: It's good.
Jase: Yes. We did dunk on it a lot. I also think it's great and a really powerful skill to have and an important thing to have, because it's really Buddhism isn't really about just suppressing your feelings in the moment. It's more about that reappraisal, more of that preemptive, changing the way that you look at life and your own feelings and your own existence and everything. I do think that's really helpful.
The thing I keep coming back to that's really baking my noodle is this idea that you need both of these types of emotional regulation for the other one to function well. It's like by doing this preemptive antecedent-focused reappraisal, you're able to be in a better control of those emotions when you're in that situation. Also, you have to at least have some ability to control them in the situation.
It's like you're almost you're setting up an ability beforehand. Like you said, with the HALT where you need to suppress enough to do the HALT, it's almost like in the moment, you need to have enough ability to delay your expression of the feelings or suppress them just a little bit so that your cognitive pre-appraisal work helps you to then not get as upset about it. That, to me, is really interesting, that interplay between those two different ways those go.
Emily: I think in non-monogamy, both of those things are extremely important, especially when, for instance, you hear, "Okay. My partner just slept with someone new for the first time, and I'm hearing about it after the fact." You realize this has happened before, I maybe even knew that they were going out and going to have a fun time, so the possibility of that was going to happen. I'm setting myself up for knowing beforehand this is a possibility, so I can come out this situation a little bit more easily when I hear about it.
Then, when it does happen in the moment, you have that reaction set up in your brain, "Okay. I'm not going to react to this negatively. I'm going to be able to just listen and hear and be like, 'Okay. How did it go? I hope everything--'" "We were safe. We were doing all the things that we agreed upon kind of thing," and hearing more about the facts, that you're using, again, all of these tools in your toolkit and that one of them is understanding that you can suppress maybe negative emotions that you're having, as well as helping yourself preemptively with understanding that this might be a possibility, so I'm able to come to the situation more easily and rationally and carefully.
Dedeker: Then, also, it sounds like in your description that it's like, that you also have these tools on hand where even though you did the reappraisal, it's like maybe you still have the squishy feeling that comes up in the moment, even if you did all the reappraising of like, "I know this is a possibility. Also, I know I'm in a non-monogamous relationship and I'm consenting to this." All that stuff, but it's like you still have the skills to also hold steady with yourself, soothe yourself, even when the squishy feelings still come up.
Emily: There are so many skills. This is just yet another, I think, tool in the toolbox to be aware of. I appreciate that we're learning how beneficial this can be, how beneficial both skills can be. For sure. Especially in something like non-monogamy, that you don't always know what you're going to get, and you have multiple people involved. There's the potential, I think, for more unknowns to occur, and therefore the possibility for you to need to have these skills available to you because there may be emotions that come up that are squishy, that are challenging.
Jase: Something I'm curious to hear from you, Dedeker, since you've done some training in somatic practitioner work, that a lot of times when we talk about somatic therapies, it's expressing stuff that's held in your body, but way after the fact. I think something that I'm curious what your thoughts are on this as well, but that idea of learning to notice these changes in your body earlier.
I think I've talked about this in the past of-- What was it? Setting the sensitivity of your detector lower so that it gets triggered earlier on in the process of getting upset or of getting stressed out, so that you earlier can go, "Oh, I need to do something to handle this or regulate this," instead of waiting until you're screaming to realize "I'm angry." I'm curious to your thoughts on that or if there's any particular techniques or things you've learned in that training.
Dedeker: Yes. Well, I think I've had to learn for myself, when do I know that the train has left the station already? In the sense of this emotional response is underway, and it's intense. Even though I may have the temptation to be like, "I can just think my way through this. I can just cognitize my way through this. I can think my way out of this," that I have to understand for myself, "Okay. No."
I can just feel that my heart rate is at a particular speed, and I can feel that I'm at a particular level of sweatiness or shakiness. Where I'm just like, "I know I'm not going to think my way out of this. I'm not going to reappraise my way out of this. It's just going to turn into rumination." That's what I know for myself is I need to switch into finding a way to just feel it.
Now, ideally, I'm in a situation where I'm able to ask for some time away. I'm able to take some time away, or I'm in a space where I can just move my body around. I can roll around on the floor if I want to, or I can just curl up in a child's pose on top of my bed if I want to, or I can sit down and just journal it all out or whatever, or I can have a cry. That's the ideal. Obviously, it's a little bit more tricky if it's, "Oh, wow. I just had a bomb dropped on me, and now I need to go present a workshop for whatever."
Jase: Sure.
Dedeker: I just sit on this client call, which has happened sometimes. That's a little bit harder. I think those are the situations where then it's just a little bit of whatever it is that you need ground, just immediately ground to get through the next hour or whatever, until you can actually go and let yourself feel it. Did that answer your question?
Jase: Yes. I guess what I'm wondering about is, it's one thing to say, be aware of your body and how it's feeling to try to detect this earlier on, but it's another thing to say how do you learn to do that? I guess that's the thing I'm pondering. The only thing that's coming to mind for me is if you find yourself after a situation where you felt like you really had to hold it in, and that afterward is to go--
When you're at that moment of like, "Okay. Now is the time I can break down. I can freak out afterward." What is it that my body wants to do? Is it that I want to hit something? Is it that I want to wave my arms around? Is it that I want to shake myself or is it, like you said, Dedeker, I want to curl up in a corner of maybe actually taking a moment afterward to then see if you'll start noticing that feeling come up earlier? That's what came up for me in my mind when thinking about this. I was just curious if you had any other things you've noticed working with people.
Dedeker: I think, at least in my work with people, it involves a lot of slowing down, really slowing down and actually creating space to feel things, because honestly, our day-to-day lives are set up so that we really don't have to feel much if we really don't want to. In your pocket, you have the instant distraction machine that will take you away from having to feel anything, the thing that you're feeling right in that moment. There's a lot to hide behind.
At least for myself, my journey has involved needing to have a lot of time and space, whether that's sitting with a therapist who's going to let me sit and actually feel things and maybe guide me through that, or I'm that person who will go on the 10-day meditation retreat and just sit with only myself and my feelings. That really makes your instrument very sensitive very quickly. I don't know.
I think some of it is an awareness of what are the things that we hide behind so that we don't have to notice that we're feeling these things. It can be very benign, though. I still have to catch myself when I'm going about my day, and I'm realizing I'm starting to get irritated about this thing that my partner said an hour ago, but I'm only letting myself actually notice that I'm feeling irritated right now because for some reason before, I was just like, "I can just power through."
I just force myself to, I don't know, just do whatever it is that I'm focused on doing right in that moment and not even acknowledge, "Hey, I'm feeling this way." I find for myself sometimes I don't even have to say it out loud to anybody. If I just have to notice, "Huh, my chest is tight, and I know it's in response to this one thing." I see that and I can acknowledge that, and I feel like I'm at a level one, but there's something about putting that attention on it is really important.
Jase: I like that. Yes. Maybe practicing in situations where you might be at a level one or two, and never go past that. I'm only mildly irritated by this thing, but taking a pause to be like, "Oh, I got a little irritated at that." What did it feel like to attune you to recognizing that later on? That's an interesting one.
Dedeker: I also want to say, again, there is a place for these moments when we have to emotionally suppress because seriously, though, don't laugh out loud when you're in the audience watching your metamours horrible performance art. That's a good time for you to emotionally suppress and let it out somewhere else or express it in some other way. If you're about to sit down at dinner with your partner's family and you're really annoyed about, I don't know, the way that they were driving on the way over there, that's probably a good time for you to pull yourself together and suppress so that you're not just puking all over your partner and their family.
Jase: Metaphorically speaking.
Dedeker: Metaphorically speaking, and it doesn't mean you have to do that all the time, but it does mean this is just one piece of the puzzle, and it is part of the toolkit. On the flip side, it's also good to have the reality check that if there is a consistent pattern in your relationship where you feel like you have to constantly suppress your feelings around your partner, where you can never actually express them or feel them where you're routinely disrespected or neglected or personally criticized, that's a situation where no amount of your emotional regulation tactics are probably going to change that. You always have to put in that disclaimer.
Jase: No. That's a good way to think about it, too, of seeing, is this just a pattern of reaction, or is this more of a problematic pattern of I'm continually not able to express these things, no matter how hard I try? Then yes, maybe that is a bigger thing to look at.
Dedeker: In closing, I think emotional regulation tactics, and specifically this cognitive reappraisal, it can be a powerful tool for managing the way you show up in relationship conflicts or emotionally intense situations. It's important to remember that none of this is about forcing yourself to feel differently. It's about expanding your perspective to be able to see the full picture and allow for different possibilities. The goal isn't to gaslight yourself into thinking you're in a better relationship than you are or gaslight yourself into happiness, but it's to be able to approach conflicts with both that emotional awareness and that cognitive flexibility.
Emily: All right. Well, this was a really fascinating episode, just interesting to look at how we all tend to, I think, do this, and how there can be great parts of this cognitive reappraisal. Then, also, how maybe sometimes you need to actually feel your feelings and be sure to understand that there is value in knowing what's going on there and not just constantly suppress everything, because I think some of us are taught to do that, and that's not always the healthiest way to go about being in relationships with other people.