Healthy emotion regulation: Supporting clients with strong emotions in alcohol and other drug treatment
Knowing how to regulate your emotions is an important skill for everyone. Emotions are constantly changing in response to situations, triggers and goals. We can learn to adjust and manage which emotions we have, how intense they are, when we have them, and how we react to them.
Healthy emotion regulation involves:
- The ability to recognise an emotional response and understand where it came from
- Accepting that emotional responses are neither good nor bad, but just normal reactions to everyday situations
- Having access to effective strategies to reduce the intensity of emotions, including ability to recognise and reflect on the causes of the emotional response
- Separating emotions from behaviour and understanding how to control impulsive behaviours in response to strong emotions
- Looking after yourself to reduce emotional vulnerability through healthy eating, sleep, and exercise for example
People who are in alcohol or other drug treatment are more likely to have trouble with regulating emotions and can experience very strong emotions. Sometimes it's a result of alcohol or other drug use and sometimes it's the reason for it.
Knowing how to work with clients who have difficulty regulating strong or distressing emotions is a critical skill for practitioners working with people who use alcohol and other drugs.
Sometimes, we can inadvertently respond in unhelpful ways to people experiencing strong distressing emotions, escalating the problem. This can happen when practitioners feel ill equipped to provide effective responses to help people in distress.
At a minimum, effectively working with clients who experience strong emotions involves having the knowledge and skills to:
- Understand emotion and its role in alcohol and other drug use
- Work with clients to identify triggers and stressful situations
- Respond effectively to strong emotions during sessions
- Support clients to implement strategies to regulate emotions
The good news is that these skills are easy to acquire for practitioners and will make the work of therapy a lot easier and more effective.
With our Emotion Regulation: Skills for managing client distress workshop, you will learn strategies to support your clients to manage their emotions and improve their resilience so they can better participate in treatment and cope with life’s stressors. You will come away with increased knowledge of emotion regulation and the key skills to assist clients to manage their emotions in recovery.
Walk away with practical skills that you can implement immediately:
- Understand how lifestyle factors can impact on a person’s ability to regulate their emotions
- Know how to explain to clients how emotions work and how they interact with thoughts and behaviours
- Identify strategies to help your clients identify triggers to strong emotions and respond effectively
- Learn key emotion regulation skills and how to integrate them into your practice
Learn more about Emotion Regulation: Skills for managing client distress here.
