This question comes up often in my consults with clients and our individual therapy sessions.
Overcontrolled clients are known for having stable, yet low and anxious moods. However, big and intense emotions can still happen internally. Sometimes, these emotions are displayed outwardly. Use this blog post to work through understanding how your emotions present for you, and what contributes to the emotions.
You are always feeling something: RO DBT teaches we are ALWAYS feeling an emotion, albeit sometimes a low level of the emotion. Clients may go from a state of numb (shut down) or empty to feeling an intense emotion like anxiety or depression. Sometimes they might report feeling happy and content, or excited. RO DBT teaches us that our 5 main neural substrates (safety, novelty, rewarding, threat and shutdown substrates) are activated within milliseconds, so we can quickly switch from one emotion to another. When big events happen in your environment, they create a body reaction.
Many overcontrolled clients are living with a threat system activation, which makes the nervous system struggle to process environmental sensory stressors. The difficulty with sensory processing furthers the threat mode activation, leading to increased agitation.
Many overcontrolled clients also find comfort in predictability, order, and structure. They may react poorly or emotionally to abrupt changes or criticism due to the overactive threat system.
Emotional leakage and anger: Overcontrolled clients can tolerate large amounts of distress before their breaking point. When an overcontrolled client has a big emotional display or outburst, we generally see a trend of the outburst occurring after long periods of stress and low levels of self-care.
Emotional leakage/emotional overflow or meltdown events may be triggered by a moral certitude, the idea there is a right or wrong way to behave. Examples may include fairness about finances, a coworker not upholding their part of a significant project, frustration that a child didn’t clean their room as expected, or a spouse not relaying important scheduling information.
Unfortunately, episodes of emotional leakage tend to result in behaviors to clamp down emotions further and get them “under control.” This can lead to a cycle of compressing emotions and eventual blow-ups.
Depression, self-harm, and suicidal thoughts: As mentioned above, clients tend to have a low mood. When an overcontrolled client engages in self-harm, we typically see the behavior used as a form of emotional control to alleviate the intense emotions of sadness they are experiencing and replace it with numbness (the same goes for substance use). With self-harm and suicidal thoughts, clients will often not share what they are feeling and will not be demonstrative of the emotions they experience leading to the behaviors.
Anxiety, social phobia, and OCD: Most clients endorse high anxiety as a core feature of their overcontrol. Overcontrolled clients will experience anxiety due to the threat system activation, which allows them to have high levels of detail-focused processing. They are anxious perfectionists with high standards for themselves and others. They tend to be closed to new situations and perspectives due to anxiety. Socialization can be difficult for clients due to their anxiety, as well as their type of social signaling and style of relating. Their social battery will quickly drain, leading to withdrawal or periods of rest.
OCD is another component clients may struggle with. The nature of OCD is that thoughts or uncertainty are highly distressing, and a compulsion alleviates the emotion. However, the emotion is only temporarily alleviated before it rears its head again, and the compulsion must be completed to alleviate the anxiety again. The emotion continues to build in intensity, creating heightened experiences of emotions.
Attachment: While most overcontrolled clients will identify with dismissive-avoidant or fearful-avoidant attachment, some clients will be anxiously-preoccupied in relationships. Attachment shapes how we think about ourselves within the context of relationships and what behaviors we do within those relationships. Whether your attachment leads you to pull away or to cling, you will experience emotions about how you handle relationships and criticism.
Trauma is sometimes a component for clients who have an insecure attachment. Trauma creates cognitive schemas that shape how we view ourselves, others, and trust. This creates more intense emotions for clients, and overcontrolled clients will internalize emotions and restrict the expression of their internal feelings.
You probably aren’t as emotional as you think: Since overcontrolled clients prefer being non-emotional, they may overreport how intense their emotions are. When compared to uncontrolled peers, they often realize their emotions are less intense, or they express them in a more subdued way by either expressing only positive emotions and avoiding expressing negativity or dampening the expression of positive emotions and avoiding expressing positivity. Family members or close friends may see a more unfiltered version of overcontrolled clients' emotions, as they tend to feel safer and let down their guard and masking.
References
Lynch, R.T. (2018). Radically Open Dialectical Behavior Therapy: Theory and Practice for Treating Disorders of Overcontrol. Reno, NV: Context Press, an imprint of New Harbinger Publications.
Lynch, R.T. (2018). The Skills Training Manual for Radically Open Dialectical Behavior Therapy: A Clinician’s Guide for Treating Disorders of Overcontrol. Revo, NV: Context Press, an imprint of New Harbinger Publications.
Kemp, J., Mitchelson, M., & Wise, S. J. (2024). The neurodivergence skills workbook for autism and ADHD: cultivate self-compassion, live authentically, and be your own advocate . New Harbinger Publications.