Important to note: Acting on your observations of a feeling is different than acting on a feeling itself. All that said, asking what an emotion is trying to tell you can lead you in so many helpful, illuminating directions.

A lot of the time, a good strategy is expressing the emotion somehow instead of keeping it inside you. Do you need to talk about it with a friend? Do you need to write it out in your journal? Do you need to have a good cry? The list goes on: Paint something. Rip up a piece of paper. Dance around to a cathartic song.

Physical sensations are often useful antidotes to strong emotional distress. In fact, the mind-body connection is a core tenant of dialectical behavior therapy DBT , a form of therapy that is focused on distress tolerance and emotional regulation.

com , or the old trick of holding an ice cube to ground myself. When in doubt, ask yourself how you can engage your senses and go with whatever sounds doable.

Sometimes it really is totally fine and healthy. Who has the bandwidth to engage with and express their emotions all the time? Especially in the middle of a literal pandemic when our emotions are constantly all over the place. Talk about exhausting. More than that, Bonior says giving yourself permission to enjoy some restorative distraction can go a long way.

So just… enjoy a few hours of TV if you need it. All of this sounds like a lot, I know. But the thing is, the more you do it, the more automatic it becomes. Just like many of us condition ourselves to respond to strong emotions by running away from them, if we practice facing them head-on, that will start to stick too.

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Most Popular. Do I Need to Worry About Getting a Measles Vaccine as an Adult? Resist judging your feelings. Be smart and intentional about using distractions. Anna Borges is a writer and a former senior health editor at SELF.

She's the author of the book The More or Less Definitive Guide to Self-Care and can be found writing around the internet about mental, emotional, and sexual health.

Most importantly, she's also a Virgo sun, Aquarius moon, Read more. Dysregulation lies on a spectrum between underregulated and overregulated styles. Both make it hard to self-soothe and return to baseline emotional states. Having poor emotional regulation often comes from childhood.

Below are some possible causes for why someone may struggle with regulating their emotions:. A temperament is mainly determined by genetic inheritance and is usually stable across time and situations.

It may be possible that some children develop poor emotional regulation due to their temperament. Differences in temperament can be observable very early in life.

Some infants are calm and even-tempered, while others tend to have more intense and longer stress reactions which may contribute to poorer emotional regulation. The overwhelming intensity of feelings can automatically freeze or shut down consciousness.

Many people who experience trauma, especially as a child, are likely to have poor emotional regulation.

Someone who experiences trauma may have inflexible strategies to help with emotions — often one way of reacting to negative emotions. The more trauma someone has experienced as a child, such as experiencing or witnessing abuse, the more likely they are to have severe emotional dysregulation.

Early attachment experiences shape emotion regulation abilities. Infants need caregivers to help modulate their affects through attuned bonding. Without this, children fail to develop self-soothing capacities and instead rely on external regulation. Insecure attachment styles involve suboptimal parental attunement.

Caregivers may be inconsistent, unavailable, extreme, or invalidating. Children internalize these dynamics, learning unhealthy regulation habits like suppression or dramatic emotionality.

The encoded patterns persist into adulthood as emotion dysregulation. Low emotional intelligence EI can lead to poor emotion regulation in several ways:.

Poor emotion regulation in childhood may increase the likelihood of developing other mental health disorders. Likewise, having a neurodevelopmental condition may come with symptoms associated with poorer emotional regulation. People with this disorder often have emotional sensitivity, heightened and changeable negative moods, a deficit of appropriate regulation strategies, and a surplus of maladaptive regulation strategies.

This condition is often diagnosed in adults or children who have repeatedly experienced trauma such as violence, neglect, or abuse. In CPTSD, emotion regulation involves difficulty self-calming when distressed and chronic emotional numbing. This childhood condition can involve experiencing extreme moods and intense temper outbursts.

There is often a lot of anger with this condition, irritability, and strong behaviors in response to negative emotions. Poor emotional regulation is a common symptom of autism.

Poor emotional regulation is a key symptom of ADHD. Individuals with this disorder may have strong reactions to small setbacks, feel their emotions more intensely than others, have difficulty calming down, and have a low tolerance for frustration or annoyance.

This model explains that self-harm is primarily maintained by negative reinforcement in the form of escape or avoidance of unwanted emotional experiences. This effectively levels out the rollercoaster of emotions until the next time. This can be applied to any unhelpful coping strategy that people use instead of regulating their emotions.

When people use these unhelpful strategies, they do not feel good about using them despite their short-term effectiveness.

These tend to add to a larger sense of shame or failure that sets the stage for the whole process to begin again. This is how it can become a vicious cycle. Changing any part of the cycle can interfere with the pattern and lead to more positive thoughts and feelings.

Techniques such as those employed in cognitive behavioral therapy CBT can help you learn how to understand and work with the relationship between your thoughts, feelings, and behaviors.

Learn to pay attention to the way the thought-emotion-behavior relationship works for you, then ask yourself some questions:. It is important to note that there can be a variety of strategies that are used to deal with emotions, even overwhelming ones.

What happens most often is that these strategies are not applied flexibly, and someone may use the same unhelpful strategy in every negative situation. Putting effort into questioning what thoughts you have and what coping strategies you gravitate towards is an essential step toward ending the distress cycle.

Learning emotion regulation skills will help us learn to effectively manage and change the way we feel and cope with situations. Attempting to avoid unpleasant thoughts and feelings can actually result in more unwanted negative thoughts and feelings.

Rather than avoiding unpleasant emotions, acknowledge their presence and name them specifically. Naming the emotion often leads to the emotion losing its power. It can allow us to let go of some of the pain and discomfort that accompany the unpleasant emotion.

It makes sense to believe that people who are unclear about their emotions are also less aware and less clear about their psychological needs. A way in which you can become more aware of what you are feeling is to pay attention to what you are experiencing physiologically in your body.

For instance, you may have an unsettled feeling in your stomach when feeling anxious, or you may feel a tightness in your chest if you are feeling sad. It is key to recognize that your emotions are present for a valid reason and that they are telling you something. Practice self-compassion and give yourself support for the unpleasant emotions you are experiencing.

Understand that feeling strong negative emotions are a normal part of life. Try to breathe into the experience of your emotions. You can soothe hurt feelings by placing a hand over your body where you feel this experience, then breathe slowly into this area.

Inquire within as to whether there may be something you can do to address this feeling without any expectation that something needs to be done.

Often, we may have an interpretation of a situation that can trigger a strong emotional reaction. To help with regulating our emotions, it is key to learn to recognize emotional triggers.

By identifying triggers, you can address the underlying issue and change your emotional response. Remember that you always have a choice on how to respond and what to do with the information you have.

Another technique that can aid emotion regulation is chair work dialogues Greenberg, This involves imagining a conversation between different parts of yourself. For example, you can externalize an internal critical voice by giving it a chair. Notice when this part attacks vulnerable emotions, making you feel flawed.

Dialogue with the critic, expressing the pain it causes. Work to uncover the unmet needs or shame driving its harshness. Chair work also allows compassionately soothing distressed parts of yourself. Comfort a scared inner child and provide the safety it lacked. Or encourage an angry part to express its frustration adaptively.

By making inner dynamics explicit through role play, you gain awareness of what triggers painful states. The parts can then integrate, resolving inner conflicts that dysregulate emotions.

Imagery is another effective strategy for modulating emotions Greenberg, Visualization accesses right-brain processes, evoking feelings rapidly. Imagine revisiting a scene where you felt overwhelmed, like childhood mistreatment or rejection.

See yourself as a vulnerable child in this situation. What emotions arise? Fear, loneliness, shame? Stay with these painful feelings briefly. Now visualize your current self entering the scene, ready to intervene.

Offer the child protection and meet their unmet needs. Provide the safety and comfort they lacked. Dialogue with the child to understand their distress.

This imaginal process transforms difficult memories by accessing core hurts then symbolically resolving them. New empathy and care emerge, encoded as healthy emotional responses. Old triggers lose their power. With practice, vividly revisiting scenes activates self-compassion automatically.

Past wounds heal, and present emotions become more regulated. Aldao, A.

She loves to help others through her work as a researcher, writer, and blogger and reach as many as possible. How useful was this article to you? Not useful at all Very useful 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Submit Share this article:. Hi there!

Of all the articles I reviewed on this topic for our Workplace Well Being project, this was my favourite. Would it be possible to receive a PDF of the article to print and post on our Well Being Board?

Thanks for your consideration 🙂. Just one note if I may. Quite different indeed 😉. This was a highly informative article which managed to be comprehensive without being overwhelming.

It offered specific techniques and paths to emotional regulation and even included a little neuroscience. I loved the worksheets and ordered the recommended DBT Workbook.

Thank you for such a wonderful article. Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment. Almost one in five adults globally may have been neglected as a child, and it most likely happened unintentionally Stoltenborgh et al.

Parents or [ Anger is a universal emotion. It can be a natural response to perceived threats, generating the energy required to protect ourselves and obtain justice.

However, [ Emotions are important messengers about our relationships and wellbeing. Home Blog Store Team About CCE Reviews Contact Login. Positive Emotions.

Emotional Regulation: 6 Key Skills to Regulate Emotions. Scientifically reviewed by William Smith, Ph. This Article Contains: What is Emotional Regulation? A Definition 6 Most Useful Emotional Regulation Skills for Adults Science-Based Emotion Regulation Strategies What is Emotional Regulation Disorder?

Download 3 Free Emotional Intelligence Exercises PDF These detailed, science-based exercises will help you or your clients understand and use emotions advantageously.

Download PDF. Download 3 Free Emotional Intelligence Tools Pack PDF By filling out your name and email address below.

Email Address Required. Your Expertise Required Your expertise Therapy Coaching Education Counseling Business Healthcare Other. This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged. References Aldao, A. The future of emotion regulation research: Capturing context. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 8 2 , Bohus, M.

Effectiveness of inpatient dialectical behavioral therapy for borderline personality disorder: A controlled trial. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 42 5 , Connelly, M. Emotion regulation predicts pain and functioning in children with juvenile idiopathic arthritis: An electronic diary study.

Journal of Pediatric Psychology, 37 1 , Davidson, R. Affective style and affective disorders: Perspectives from affective neuroscience. Davis, J. The effects of BOTOX injections on emotional experience.

Emotion, 10 3 , Fresco, D. Emotion regulation therapy for generalized anxiety disorder. Cognitive and Behavioral Practice, 20 3 , Gross, J.

The emerging field of emotion regulation: An integrative review. Review of General Psychology, 2 3 , Emotion regulation: Current status and future prospects.

Psychological Inquiry, 26 1 , Individual differences in two emotion regulation processes: Implications for affect, relationships, and well-being. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 85 2 , Hariri, A.

Modulating emotional responses: Effects of a neocortical network on the limbic system. Neuroreport, 11 1 , Heiy, J. Back to basics: A naturalistic assessment of the experience and regulation of emotion. Emotion, 14 5 , Kleindienst, N.

Dissociation predicts poor response to dialectial behavioral therapy in female patients with borderline personality disorder. Journal of Personality Disorders, 25 4 , Lee, K. Deerfield Beach, FL: Health Communications. Levenson, R. The intrapersonal functions of emotion.

Lieberman, M. Putting feelings into words. Psychological Science, 18 5 , Linehan, M. Cognitive-behavioral treatment of chronically parasuicidal borderline patients.

Archives of General Psychiatry, 48 12 , Nolen-Hoeksema, S. Rethinking rumination. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 3 5 , Ochsner, K. Functional imaging studies of emotion regulation: A synthetic review and evolving model of the cognitive control of emotion.

Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, , E Sheppes, G. Emotion-regulation choice. Psychological Science, 22 11 , Siever, L. A psychobiological perspective on the personality disorders.

The American Journal of Psychiatry, 12 , Singer, S. Predictors of emotional distress in patients with head and neck cancer. Toub, T. Guided play: A solution to the play versus learning dichotomy.

Geary Eds. New York, NY: Springer. Troy, A. A person-by-situation approach to emotion regulation: Cognitive reappraisal can either help or hurt, depending on the context. Psychological Science , 24 12 , Van der Kolk, B. The body keeps the score: Memory and the evolving psychobiology of posttraumatic stress.

Harvard Review of Psychiatry, 1 5 , Webb, T. Dealing with feeling: a meta-analysis of the effectiveness of strategies derived from the process model of emotion regulation. Psychological Bulletin, 4 , Wegner, D.

Ironic processes in the mental control of mood and mood-related thought. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 65 6 , About the author. Madhuleena Roy Chowdhury holds a postgrad in clinical psychology and is a certified psychiatric counselor.

If you value helping others, it will allow you to help a coworker with a project, even if you are on a tight deadline yourself. In its most basic form, self-regulation allows us to be more resilient and bounce back from failure while also staying calm under pressure.

Researchers have found that self-regulation skills are tied to a range of positive health outcomes. This includes better resilience to stress, increased happiness, and better overall well-being. Self-regulation can play an important role in relationships, well-being, and overall success in life.

People who can manage their emotions and control their behavior are better able to manage stress, deal with conflict, and achieve their goals.

How do problems with self-regulation develop? It could start early, such as an infant being neglected. A child who does not feel safe and secure, or who is unsure whether their needs will be met, may have trouble self-soothing and self-regulating.

Later, a child, teen, or adult may struggle with self-regulation, either because this ability was not developed during childhood, or because of a lack of strategies for managing difficult feelings.

When left unchecked, over time this could lead to more serious issues such as mental health disorders and risky behaviors such as substance use. If self-regulation is so important, why were most of us never taught strategies for using this skill?

Most often, parents, teachers, and other adults expect that children will "grow out of" the tantrum phase. While this is true for the most part, all children and adults can benefit from learning concrete strategies for self-regulation.

According to Jon Kabat-Zinn, PhD, founder of Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction MBSR , mindfulness is "the awareness that arises from paying attention, on purpose, in the present moment and non-judgmentally. By engaging in skills such as focused breathing and gratitude, mindfulness enables us to put some space between ourselves and our reactions, leading to better focus and feelings of calmness and relaxation.

In a review of 27 research studies, mindfulness was shown to improve attention, which in turn helped with regulating negative emotions and improving executive function. Cognitive reappraisal, or cognitive reframing , is another strategy that can be used to improve self-regulation abilities.

This strategy involves changing thought patterns. Specifically, cognitive reappraisal involves reinterpreting a situation in order to change the emotional response to it.

For example, imagine a friend did not return your calls or texts for several days. Rather than thinking that this reflected something about yourself, such as "my friend hates me," you might instead think, "my friend must be really busy.

In a study examining the link between self-regulation strategies i. Some other useful strategies for self-regulation include acceptance and problem-solving. In contrast, unhelpful strategies that people sometimes use include avoidance, distraction, suppression, and worrying.

You can improve your self-regulation skills by practicing mindfulness and changing how you think about the situation. If you or your child needs help with self-regulation, there are strategies you can use to improve skills in this area. In children, parents can help develop self-regulation through routines e.

Routines help children learn what to expect, which makes it easier for them to feel comfortable. When children act in ways that don't demonstrate self-regulation, ignore their requests.

For example, if they interrupt a conversation, don't stop your discussion to attend to their needs. Tell that that they will need to wait.

The first step to practicing self-regulation is to recognize that everyone has a choice in how to react to situations. While you may feel like life has dealt you a bad hand, it's not the hand you are dealt, but how you react to it that matters most.

Start to restore balance by focusing on your deeply held values, rather than those transient emotions.

Look beyond momentary discomfort to the larger picture. Recognizing your options can help you put your self-regulation skills into practice. Focus on identifying what you are feeling, but remember that feelings are not facts. Giving yourself time to stay calm and deliberate your options can help you make better choices.

Once you've learned this delicate balancing act, you will begin to self-regulate more often, and it will become a way of life for you. Developing self-regulation skills will improve your resilience and ability to face difficult circumstances in life.

However, if you find you are unable to teach yourself to self-regulate, consider consulting a mental health professional. A trained therapist can help you learn and implement strategies and skills specific to your situation.

Therapy can also be a great place to practice those skills for use in your everyday life. You can practice self-regulation staying calm and thinking carefully before you react. Engaging in relaxation tactics like deep breathing or mindfulness can help you keep your cool while deliberately considering the consequences of your actions can help you focus on the potential outcomes.

Emotional intelligence refers to a person's ability to recognize, interpret, and regulate emotions. This ability plays an important part in self-regulation and also contributes to the development and maintenance of healthy relationships.

You can help teach your child self-control by managing your own stress, remaining calm, and modeling effective self-regulation skills. You can also strengthen this ability by helping children recognize their emotions, teaching problem-solving skills, setting limits, and enforcing rules with natural consequences.

Gillebaart M. Techniques such as those employed in cognitive behavioral therapy CBT can help you learn how to understand and work with the relationship between your thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. Learn to pay attention to the way the thought-emotion-behavior relationship works for you, then ask yourself some questions:.

It is important to note that there can be a variety of strategies that are used to deal with emotions, even overwhelming ones. What happens most often is that these strategies are not applied flexibly, and someone may use the same unhelpful strategy in every negative situation.

Putting effort into questioning what thoughts you have and what coping strategies you gravitate towards is an essential step toward ending the distress cycle. Learning emotion regulation skills will help us learn to effectively manage and change the way we feel and cope with situations.

Attempting to avoid unpleasant thoughts and feelings can actually result in more unwanted negative thoughts and feelings. Rather than avoiding unpleasant emotions, acknowledge their presence and name them specifically. Naming the emotion often leads to the emotion losing its power.

It can allow us to let go of some of the pain and discomfort that accompany the unpleasant emotion. It makes sense to believe that people who are unclear about their emotions are also less aware and less clear about their psychological needs. A way in which you can become more aware of what you are feeling is to pay attention to what you are experiencing physiologically in your body.

For instance, you may have an unsettled feeling in your stomach when feeling anxious, or you may feel a tightness in your chest if you are feeling sad.

It is key to recognize that your emotions are present for a valid reason and that they are telling you something. Practice self-compassion and give yourself support for the unpleasant emotions you are experiencing. Understand that feeling strong negative emotions are a normal part of life.

Try to breathe into the experience of your emotions. You can soothe hurt feelings by placing a hand over your body where you feel this experience, then breathe slowly into this area. Inquire within as to whether there may be something you can do to address this feeling without any expectation that something needs to be done.

Often, we may have an interpretation of a situation that can trigger a strong emotional reaction. To help with regulating our emotions, it is key to learn to recognize emotional triggers.

By identifying triggers, you can address the underlying issue and change your emotional response. Remember that you always have a choice on how to respond and what to do with the information you have. Another technique that can aid emotion regulation is chair work dialogues Greenberg, This involves imagining a conversation between different parts of yourself.

For example, you can externalize an internal critical voice by giving it a chair. Notice when this part attacks vulnerable emotions, making you feel flawed. Dialogue with the critic, expressing the pain it causes.

Work to uncover the unmet needs or shame driving its harshness. Chair work also allows compassionately soothing distressed parts of yourself. Comfort a scared inner child and provide the safety it lacked. Or encourage an angry part to express its frustration adaptively.

By making inner dynamics explicit through role play, you gain awareness of what triggers painful states. The parts can then integrate, resolving inner conflicts that dysregulate emotions.

Imagery is another effective strategy for modulating emotions Greenberg, Visualization accesses right-brain processes, evoking feelings rapidly.

Imagine revisiting a scene where you felt overwhelmed, like childhood mistreatment or rejection. See yourself as a vulnerable child in this situation. What emotions arise?

Fear, loneliness, shame? Stay with these painful feelings briefly. Now visualize your current self entering the scene, ready to intervene. Offer the child protection and meet their unmet needs. Provide the safety and comfort they lacked. Dialogue with the child to understand their distress.

This imaginal process transforms difficult memories by accessing core hurts then symbolically resolving them. New empathy and care emerge, encoded as healthy emotional responses. Old triggers lose their power. With practice, vividly revisiting scenes activates self-compassion automatically.

Past wounds heal, and present emotions become more regulated. Aldao, A. Emotion-regulation strategies across psychopathology: A meta-analytic review. Clinical psychology review , 30 2 , Chapman, A. Solving the puzzle of deliberate self-harm: The experiential avoidance model.

Behaviour research and therapy , 44 3 , Dunn, E. Developmental timing of trauma exposure and emotion dysregulation in adulthood: Are there sensitive periods when trauma is most harmful?.