Emotional Regulation: 9 Skills & Strategies to Regulate & Manage Emotions
We know that emotions are a regular part of daily life. It’s holiday time and we may feel happy (and anxious) to see friends and loved ones and we may feel sad when we miss loved ones or angry when someone lets us down.
While we, consciously, know and expect to feel these emotions, some of us may experience emotions that are more volatile, with higher highs and lower lows. These ups and downs can impact your life and your relationships.
Some folks are genetically predisposed to rapid changes in emotion and may never have seen good emotional regulation modeled or learned the skills.
Some people who have had trauma or lots of stress, may lose control when they experience triggers for negative situations that happened in their past.
There are also physical changes that may cause someone to lose control of their emotions, such as exhaustion, a drop in blood sugar and more.
The GOOD NEWS:
No matter what the reason is for intense emotional changes, we can learn better self-regulation and strategies to manage and control our emotions.
Emotional regulation is the ability to better control our emotional state. We want to have the ability to exert control over our emotions through different approaches.
Regulating our emotions is important because, as adults, we must learn to manage our emotions so that they’re socially acceptable and help us navigate our lives in a healthy and helpful manner. We know that emotional volatility can negatively impact our relationships and can decrease our well-being (ie: overwhelming sadness, fear).
Here are 9 SKILLS to Help us Self-Regulate our Emotions:
1)Create space, a pause.
Pause; take a breath. Slow down the moment between trigger and response.
When you do this, you give time for your prefrontal cortex and executive functioning to come back online and you can make a more reasoned response, instead of a purely emotional reaction, to a trigger.
2)Tune into physical sensations & Name what you feel.
Body is first. Be curious about your physical sensations and reactions. Is your stomach churning? Or your heart racing? Are you feeling tension in your neck, shoulders, head?
These physical symptoms are clues to what you’re experiencing emotionally and when you focus on these physical sensations, you may find their intensity fades.
It’s helpful to name your emotion or emotions; it can help you get control of what’s going on.
You may then want to become more curious and look deeper, “What am I afraid of?” or “What am I angry about?”
REMINDER: fear is a strong emotion that often hides beneath others.
3)Accept the Emotion(s).
We all experience many emotions. This is a natural part of being human. Have self-compassion and try not to judge yourself.
When you accept an emotion and allow it to ‘wash over you’ (feel it), then it goes away more quickly and more easily and you can move on.
Suppressing emotions doesn’t allow them to come up and out. When they fester for a long time and deeply, they can make you ill: physically, mentally, emotionally.
4)Identify Triggers.
You can’t avoid negative emotions or be afraid of them. But you don’t have to seek them out either.
Start getting curious and honest about how you feel in certain situations that bring on unpleasant emotions for you. When you start figuring out what’s triggering you, you can start to explore and excavate why they carry so much weight, and bother you and see whether you can reduce their importance (in the present moment).
5)Self-Talk.
Be curious and consider what story you tell yourself when, ie: someone is late or doesn’t get back to you right away, etc. It could be that there was traffic or they were busy at work or at home……
You might ask yourself if this is a person with good intentions or one who doesn’t often follow through on commitments.
By looking from various angles, and maybe adding “just like me” to the action or motive you’re assigning to the other person, this reminds you that both you and they are imperfect human beings.
All of us engage in negative self-talk and when you do, it’s good to remember to treat yourself with empathy and encourage yourself; ie:”I try so hard,” “I’m doing the best I can……..and so are others.”
6)Make a conscious choice about how to respond.
In most situations, we can choose how to respond, instead of react.
Become your own ‘objective observer.’ If you tend to lash out when you’re angry, can you pause, take a breath and ask yourself if you can tell someone you’re angry at them, rather than speaking harshly?
The more aware and curious you are about this, the more your relationships will positively benefit.
7)Practice Positive Emotions.
An exercise I often give my clients is doing a daily practice of both NTT: negative thought time and PTT: positive thought time.
We all have a natural negativity bias, which really means that we attribute more weight and importance to negative emotions than positive ones.
So, when you take a few minutes (5-10 minutes) daily, to let your mind go wild with negative thoughts, then stop and later on, let your mind go with positive thoughts (much harder to accomplish), you will start training your mind to also focus on the positive.
8)Practice Mindfulness.
It helps us ‘live in the present moment.’ Use your 5 senses to notice what’s going on around you (consider naming 2 things for each sense) in a nonjudgemental way. This is a great way to ground and calm yourself, so that you can avoid engaging in more negative thought patterns as they occur (ie: with emotional pain, upset, etc.).
9)Get Help.
It’s so helpful to seek out a coach, therapist or other health professional, who can be your partner on this journey to emotional self-regulation. Managing our own emotions can be difficult and it can be so nice to have a partner you trust to be there for you.
In our next blog post, we’ll go over what causes and what it’s like to have dysregulation, which is a poor ability to manage emotional responses or keep reactions within an acceptable range. Those of us who have anxiety or a history of trauma may recognize this in ourselves. We’ll talk about ways to manage and regulate our emotions and our nervous systems.
With smiles & love,
Dr Gigi
PS: Yes; the holiday season can bring on lots of emotions (and triggers). Please join me and sign up for your Free e-guide & Free clarity call @www.gigiarnaud.com
Let’s get you from reacting (and anxiety) to responding and grounded.
See you soon 😊
Change your Thoughts, Change your Mind, Change your World