At Saber Psychiatry, even our name is purposeful: Sleep, Attention, Behavior, & Emotional Regulation. We provide assessments and treatments for the whole family, and we have both in-person and telehealth appointments available. Call us at 615.678.7839 to get started on a plan that helps you feel and operate at your best. We look forward to working with you.
- We see clients on Mondays from 10:00 am to 5:30 pm and Wednesdays through Fridays from10:00 am to 4:00 pm
- Telehealth appointments are also available
- Board Certified
- Children, adolescents, adults
- Family therapy and family training
- Conservative medication management
- Sleep disorders: studies/assessments and treatment
- Anxiety, phobias, panic
- Attention, including Attention Deficit Disorder with or without Hyperactivity
- Behavioral and emotional regulation
- Psychotic disorders
- Family therapy and family training
Saber Psychiatry: Working with Individuals and Families for a Better Life
Emotional regulation does not mean that individuals need to either not feel or not express their emotions. It means that we need to understand our emotions and that we need to regulate how we express them.
Emotional regulation is both conscious and unconscious. Any situation can trigger both unconscious and conscious processes; for example, an adult who is startled by a loud noise may jump or shout, but she or he is unlikely to cry or run away. A young child, however, may do all these things.
People who understand their emotions and their responses have healthy emotional regulation. Healthy emotional regulation allows us to figure out which actions are okay to express (jumping) and which are not (running away).
Skills that help us cultivate healthy emotional regulation are:
Self-awareness – knowing whether we feel embarrassed, sad, or hopeless. We may think we’re angry when we’re really embarrassed. We may not even have a good reason to be embarrassed. Naming an emotion is a good first step to understanding it.
Mindful awareness – the process that lets us control how the emotion feels in our bodies, for example, we can do deep-breathing exercises or unclench our jaws or other muscles if we feel angry.
Cognitive reappraisal – allows us to alter the way that we think, for example, a driver may not have been paying attention, but she/he was not trying to ruin your day.
Adaptability – we all live and work in different situations and spend time with different people who have their own preferences, so it’s part of being a social animal. We can use this skill to think about how else we can react to a different situation or emotion.
Self-compassion helps us to regulate our emotions and behaviors by reminding ourselves of our value. We deserve to feel something other than anger or misery.
Emotional Support – When self-directed care isn’t enough, seeing professionals – such as our team at Saber Psychiatry – is a great way to get emotional support. Just as you can’t always work through an illness or an injury without medical help, you can’t always work through emotional or behavioral challenges without help.