Quick Guide: Emotional Regulation

Emotional regulation is also referred to as  “down regulation” or reducing the intensity of emotions. There are typically two ways to down regulate: reappraisal and suppression.

Reappraisal is changing how one thinks about something in order to change one’s response. This typically has healthier, more positive outcomes than suppression. Suppression includes ignoring the emotion(s) and avoiding similar circumstances in order to keep oneself in check. Suppression leads to people bottling up their emotions and experiencing a decrease in well-being and decreased satisfaction in their relationships due to not feeling heard.

There are other strategies to help with downregulation – one can select/change a situation in order to influence their emotional response or one can shift what they choose to pay attention to and work on trying to accept their accompanying emotions.

Adults are often expected to respond to and manage their emotions in a socially acceptable way. People that struggle with emotional regulation can say or do things that they later regret due to being in a heightened emotional state. This can have a negative impact on wellbeing and social relationships. They can potentially harm  relationships due to overreactions that can cause unnecessary suffering. Additionally, people may forego opportunities due to situations that appear too daunting due to uncertainty and a limited ability to control emotions.

People’s beliefs about negative emotions can also lead them to further suppress their feelings and avoid situations that evoke particularly strong emotions. This leads to limited development of emotional regulation skills. Additionally, some people suffer from alexithymia, an inability to describe their feelings with words. This can lead to people having a harder time processing their feelings due to not being able to properly identify them. It can lead them not paying attention to them or making an attempt to describe them.

Emotional regulation skills can be learned in therapy and with regular practice they can help increase sense of self, increase life satisfaction, and increase relationship satisfaction.

I often explain emotional regulation as a three prong approach: what can we do day to day to help keep emotions in check, what can we do when we are starting to feel angry/anxious/overwhelmed to help us regulate, and if we go from zero to one hundred what do we do to come back to baseline.

Additionally, how do we ensure that we sit with and process our feelings and not just let them pile up and explode when we have hit our breaking point? Psychoeducation around these topics can help and regular practice inside and outside of therapy will assist with results.