Before diving into the process for emotional regulation, I want to discuss how to recognize when we've got emotional dysregulation behaviors and the golden rules to healthy emotional regulation that we should be honoring.

Healthy emotional regulation doesn't mean that every thought, feeling, or perception needs to be shared. On the contrary, it means recognizing when something is and is not for sharing, and how to go about sharing it in a way that is both clear and receptive to feedback.

If you struggle with expressing your feelings, you probably justify it with one, or more, of the below statements (or so many others that I'm not including):

The first problem with justifications like these is that they minimize your authenticity, which, in turn, keeps misaligned relationships and behaviors in your life out of your fears of abandonment or peer invalidation.

The second problem is that they assume the people in your life don't have your best interest at heart - which may be true, and leads back to the first problem whereby you should want to remove those types of people from your life since they don't truly care about you if they don't want the best for you.

Emotional regulation is hard for a lot of people because we're often taught to keep the peace at our own expense, rather than potentially rock the boat for the sake of self-expressive authenticity.

And that pattern makes it so, time and again, we shut down or ignore our intuition, engage in argumentative or reactive communication styles, and betray our spiritual guidance system with defensiveness or suppression.

The reality is that by practicing healthy emotional regulation skills we build self-trust, eliminate misaligned relationships from our path, and cultivate deeper connections with those who matter most to us.

But if you've been operating from a space of emotional dysregulation, it's hard to recognize when and how to express yourself. You might find that you live in a pattern of avoiding the reality of a situation because you just don't know how to otherwise operate authentically within it.

So before we dive into the do's and don'ts of how to emotionally express yourself once you've decided "now's the f*cking time," let's look at the 5 golden rules for what makes an emotional regulation moment healthy:

In summary: remain calm, recognize when an emotion is for you to work through individually or with someone else, it's not your job to manage the feelings of others, and seek understanding.

Pretty simple stuff when you lay it out.

Now let's move on to how to process difficult feelings that often lead to emotional dysregulation.

I use a simple, 6-step process for when I feel overwhelmed, upset, sad, depressed, etc., to quickly work through my feelings and guide myself back to the primary meaning of the golden rules: do I share this moment or not?

I went through two phases of emotional dysregulation before I learned what's healthy: the first was where I didn't share anything - I got walked all over, I kept my tears to myself, I had zero boundaries, and zero interest in being vulnerable with anyone; the second phase was where I shared everything - no filter, no thought to it, just spewing what felt honest in the moment.

Both phases were wildly dysregulated. Where the first phase was built from my childhood household, the second phase was a direct reaction to that experience and me trying to seek safety through vulnerability.

The problem with the first phase was obvious: I didn't have a single relationship in my life where anyone truly knew me.

The problem with the second phase took me a little longer to realize: not everything I felt or thought was expressed in a healthy manner, or being shared in worthy relationships.

Because I was so dysregulated, I was building relationships with people who were equally dysfunctional. The outcome was sheer toxicity, with me in overreactive mode and them often feeding off of that with an empowered sense of self-expression, but with equally no sense of sensitivity or grace in delivery.

Therapy and research led me to realizing a quick and effective way for me to regulate my emotions and properly decide what and how to share without living out of reactivity.

Tying back into the diarrhea metaphor from the title (Why this metaphor?! I don't know. But is it effective in remembering how to manage difficult emotions? You betcha!): much like you wouldn't sh*t in public, you shouldn't be sharing difficult emotions the very moment they pop up - until, of course, you feel regulated and able to do so with graceful composure.

Find a safe, private space where you can calmly let loose your emotions and then do what comes naturally - let 'em ripe. Pay attention and honor whatever comes up for you. In that way, you can get the reactive expressions off your chest without taking it out on others.

[NOTE: Once you've gotten the hang of healthy emotional expression, this part can usually be done quickly and internally, without the need for walking away to a private space. That said, sometimes you may find that privacy is exactly what you need in order to productively process what to and to not share, and what is and is not important.]