Lacking the skills to emotionally regulate in a healthy way can cost us a lot, especially in our adult years. I suppose it’s more socially acceptable & understandable to watch an 7 year old have a meltdown vs a 40 year old, right?

Avoiding strained relationships and regretful adult fits is my aim for bringing up the topic of emotional regulation.

What is emotional regulation?

emotional regulation is the ability to exert healthy control over one’s emotional reactions and general feeling state.

When we can successfully emotionally regulate we’re able to:

restrain from acting impulsively due to behaviors related to strong positive or negative emotions
organize ourself for positive action to meet an external goal
self-soothe strong emotional responses
refocus our attention regardless of the presence of strong emotion

The opposite of emotional regulation is emotional dysregulation. As you might have guessed, this is when we lack the skills to be able to control our emotions in a healthy way. With an inability to regulate our emotions comes reactions that will seem (and usually be) out of proportion compared to what we’re reacting to. In short your reactions will, more often than not, not match the event.

When we’re in a state of emotional dysregulation we often will say or do things we later regret, causing self shame and creating strain in our relationships. An inability to regulate our emotions can result in significant mood swings and shame cycles out of regret or embarrassment around our “big” reactions or presence of extreme and exaggerated emotions.

Lacking the skills to emotionally regulate goes beyond our inability to control our reactions. It can compromise our self confidence and sense of self trust causing us to feel more frustration than need be.

Why Controlling Our Emotions May Be Difficult

With all that said, there’s usually reasons why someone whose a grown adult has arrived into their maturity struggling to emotionally regulate. Sometimes, we weren’t taught how to calm and soothe ourselves by our primary caregivers/parents while growing up. Perhaps we had home environments that didn’t encourage emotional expression, so we didn’t learn how to feel, experience and process our emotions in a positive manner. Maybe our primary caregivers, our main models for teaching us how to react and respond to our emotions, modeled unhealthy coping themselves. * This is not to point the finger of blame; it’s to understand why we might be reacting how we react.

Sometimes during our pivotal developmental years events occur that compromise our ability to learn how to cope with our emotions, stunting our mental/emotional development An example of this might be suffering from a mental health condition, like a serious eating disorder or depression. Serious mental health conditions or unexpected events (like the loss of a significant caregiver figure) has the ability to sidetrack our emotional growth.

3 Reasons Why Emotional Regulation Can Be Difficult

1. We were never taught how to cope with our emotions in a calm and healthy way.

2. Mental health issues such as depression and anxiety inhibit our ability to cope with our emotions and can greatly impact the way we respond to life events and stressors.

3. Our general level of stress & overwhelm is so great that it interferes with our ability to respond to life in healthy ways.

Whatever the case may be, I’m confident that with your awareness and desire for learning new skills you can improve your ability to emotionally regulate. If you’re discovering that you’re having trouble regulating your emotions, I want you to know that you can learn how to do so.

You’re not broken. You’re not damaged.

There’s always the option to learn how to shift and change for the better, which is what this post is offering you.

Having a better grasp on your emotions will help you work through difficult circumstances and handle life situations with more grace and with a more balanced perspective. Having healthy control of your feelings allows you to better conflict resolve and, overall, have the capacity for healthier relationships.

bring on the healing.

3 Tips for Healthy Emotional Coping

Ultimately, the way toward a more healthful way of emotionally responding & reacting is learning the tools to help you cope with your emotions in a more balanced & mindful way.

Here are 3 tips to help you do just that:

1. Get out of your head and into your body

Increasing your awareness around how your emotions “speak” to you through your physical body can strengthen your unique mind/body connection.

Trauma is stored in your body; not your mind.

If you take a moment to pay attention to your body when you’re stressed, you will notice tightening in your muscles and a sense of closed off and rigid energy. If you notice how your body feels when you’re relaxed; you will experience a loosening throughout your body and a sense of lightness and openness.

With the body mind connection always at play, we can use our physicality to help push through and process our emotions. I know for me the rhythm of my breath or footing when I’m running is meditative and many long runs have helped to calm and reduce my stress levels. Not a runner? Not an issue. Any form of intentional physical movement can support the process of your emotions being felt, processed and pushed through.

Positive physical action & movement is a path to great healing. How you take care of your physical self impacts the level of your emotional and mental self; this will always be connected and true.

You can’t be a cohesively healthy person without practicing healthy mind, body & soul health.

2. Practice Mindfulness

In dialectical behavioral therapy, which is based around the concept of mindfulness, there’s the concept of the wise mind and the emotion mind. I really like to use these two terms to help my clients learn how to better emotionally regulate.

wise mind

The wise mind is a state that encompasses your logical, fact based mind. When your acting from your wise mind your able to access a deep logical place within where your intuition and inner knowing live, which are designed to help you to take effective action.

emotion mind

When your acting from your emotion mind your thoughts are being controlled by your emotions, which makes any sort of logical thinking difficult. When we’re in our emotion mind we often distort the events to be bigger and worse than they are.

Having awareness & understanding that there’s a distinction between your “wise” mind & “emotion” can give you context for when you’re really “in your feelings.” With practice and intention your awareness of knowing that your caught in your emotion mind and learning to pause before you react can help you react better when big emotions surface.

It’s best not to make decisions when we’re consumed in our emotions that don’t necessarily see a situation for what it is.

3. Look Toward the Root issue

If our inability to emotionally regulate is due to an external factor, then tending to any outside issue that’s blocking our growth could be an important place to focus. Any mental health symptoms such as depression, anxiety or general overwhelm that is contributing to your inability to react and respond in a healthy manner deserves your attention.

If the root issue is not considered and given the proper attention, getting your emotions under proper control will remain a difficult ongoing task. Beyond mental health issues, I invite you to consider any outside interference or situation that could be adding to your inability to cope with your emotions in a healthy way.

Reflective Questions for further self exploration around possible root issues

Do you have a stressful living or work environment?
Are you experiencing issues within your close interpersonal relationships? your partnership? family? marriage?
Do you feel stress & worry around your finances & way of living?
Do you have any chronic health issues or injuries that are impacting the way you feel and function?

4. Pause -Breathe - Proceed

I love this catchy short mantra to help you focus on being less emotionally reactive:

PAUSE / BREATHE / PROCEED

To some extent, being controlled by our emotions and reacting from a heated emotional place is merely a bad, conditioned habit. To help you break this habit, these three words offer you a mindfulness tool when you’re feeling really “in your feelings.”

step 1 -Pause (remind yourself to not react with your emotion mind leading)

step 2- Breathe (take a moment to deep breathe when triggered to avoid a impulsive reaction)

step 3 - Proceed (after taking the time & space you need to center & calm; proceed)

As I said earlier, the most important thing that I want you to know is that you can learn skills that can help you to emotionally regulate better. Even if you’re reactions have always been over the top, heated and from an emotional place; if you want to change, you could change.

With a desire to respond & react to your life in a healthier and more productive way change is on the horizon. Your willingness to learn the skills to shift the way you react will help you to feel more in control of your emotional reactions so they don’t keep controlling you.

Good luck my friend. I believe in you.

Blog | Licensed Therapist | Self Discovery | North County San Diego, CA