Master Emotional Regulation: Tools to Manage Emotions and Build Resilience

Introduction

Emotions are a very important part of life. We all experience common emotions of  joy, sadness, fear, anger, and so on. While it may not occur to us from time to time, emotions are even very much needed for our survival. They detect rewards and threats and enable our day-to-day functioning in more ways than one.

However, the thing with emotions is that it is not good for them to spiral out of control, lest they overwhelm us and create adverse circumstances in our lives. In this blog, we shall explore emotional regulation – what it means, how we can achieve it, and the ways in which we can manage our emotions.

What Is Emotional Regulation?

Emotional regulation or emotion regulation, in simple terms, means managing emotions. It is the ability to control emotions so as to reduce the intensity of these emotions. For instance, if you are stressed out, redirecting those negative emotions to something more relaxing and joyful helps calm the mind and deal with the stressful conditions in a productive manner.

Emotional regulation must not be confused with denying or suppressing emotions. No, that is unhealthy. Emotional regulation is a healthy tool and has its basis in emotional intelligence. Emotional intelligence is the ability to recognize and manage your own feelings as well as those of others. If you are high in emotional intelligence, you will be better at regulating your emotions as well. This is the general understanding.

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The Role of Emotional Regulation in Recovery

Emotional regulation has a great role to play in recovery from behavioral health challenges like substance use disorders. When recovering from a substance use disorder, either in therapy or as part of a 12-step recovery program, emotional regulation is one of the fundamental skills that is learned.

Emotions can get too much at times, and this is something that often leads people to turn to negative, self-destructive behaviors like substance use to soothe these intense emotions. In recovery, clients learn emotional regulation to handle distress in their lives without resorting to dangerous behaviors. With emotional regulation comes healthy coping mechanisms that stop them from reaching out for a drug or a drink and instead manage their emotions and cope with the distressing events in life in healthier ways.

Moreover, within recovery itself, emotional regulation is one of the tools that is necessary for building emotional resilience. Emotional resilience, in turn, can help navigate the vulnerable periods in life and manage the entire scope of emotional challenges without giving in to cravings or urges.

Key Emotional Regulation Skills

As we transition into adulthood, we are expected to keep our emotions in check. However, it is not always possible and when emotions get out of hand, chaos ensues. Emotional regulation prevents this from happening, and some key emotion regulation skills that help in fostering and maintaining emotional regulation are as follows:

• Cognitive Restructuring – It is a technique wherein negative feelings are reshaped into something healthy and productive. It is mainly used to challenge unhelpful emotional patterns.
• Building Adaptability – Emotional regulation requires adaptability, and objectively appraising a certain event or emotionally-heavy circumstances in life can help build adaptability.
• Self-Soothing Techniques – Self-soothing can reduce the adverse impacts of negative emotions. Some ways to practice self-soothing are self-care and self-compassion.
• Breathing Exercises – Breathing exercises, which sound pretty simple like breathing in and breathing out, breath count, and so on are great ways of emotional regulation.
• Mindfulness – Mindfulness connects with the present and builds self-awareness. It allows you to look inward, identify the emotions, and calm them down.
• Grounding – Grounding allows you to control and detach from emotional pain. It involves physical grounding (focusing on the senses), mental grounding (focusing on the mind), and soothing grounding (talking to yourself in a compassionate manner). Grounding helps stay centered and keep your body in a relaxed state.

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The Importance of Emotional Regulation

Emotional control comes with emotional regulation. Controlling emotions is not something that is a social requirement, it is a life skill. The reason being, over a period of time, emotional dysregulation can give rise to mental health conditions, impede personal well-being, and damage social connections.

While positive emotions like joy and happiness hardly need any control, negative emotions are the ones that are truly damaging. This is not to say that negative emotions do not have any place in life, from time to time, it is only natural for us to feel sad or angry. However, when sadness, anger, and resentment, these kinds of emotions build up, they can lead to suffering and other health concerns. They may even lead to mental health conditions like depression or borderline personality disorder. Hence, emotional regulation becomes a necessity.

With emotional regulation comes balance and peace in life. It also helps build emotional resilience, which helps face different challenges in life.

How To Control Our Emotions?

Emotional regulation usually involves up-regulation and down-regulation. Up-regulation is when there is a need to amplify emotions. This may especially be in cases where you can do with a boost of emotions. However, usually, with emotional regulation, down-regulation is what is associated. Down-regulation decreases the intensity of emotions. For instance, if you are overly stressed, then perhaps redirecting emotions to something funny, like watching a comedy show, can help in reducing the intensity of the emotions experienced.

Usually, there are two basic ways of controlling emotions. One is reappraisal, wherein you change the way you think about what gave rise to an emotion. This changes the way you react to it. While reappraisal is healthy, the other way of controlling emotions is suppressing them. This only leads to bottled-up emotions, pent-up frustrations, and so on.

How Do I Learn To Regulate My Emotions?

How to regulate emotions is something you might be wondering at this point. There are some ways in which you can do this,

1. First, recognize your emotional triggers. These are like those buttons if pushed can see your emotions spiral out of control. While avoidance is usually advised against, avoiding these emotional triggers can help you control your emotions to a great extent.
2. Presumptions and assumptions can play with and wreck emotions. Especially when you do not have the full information, it is only natural to assume. However, assuming does not lead to anything and it is best not to go down this route.
3. Pay attention to your body, what is it telling you? Sometimes, even if it seems like emotions are going out of control, it might be that there is a physical explanation for it. For instance, hunger can intensify emotions.
4. There is a choice. It might seem like you do not have control over how you emotionally react to persons or events in life, but there is always a choice. Choose how you want to react to your emotions.
5. Feeling negativity in life is not uncommon. However, to balance it out, focus on the positive emotions as well.
6. Engage in positive self-talk. Be compassionate and empathetic to yourself.
7. Seek therapy. If managing emotions is becoming difficult and you think you need help, this is when you might want to seek out a therapist who will help you learn better emotion regulation skills.

What Are Emotional Self Regulation Skills?

Emotional self-regulation skills are those skills that you use when you take some time between feeling something and then reacting to it. This time is really crucial in getting your emotions together and not reacting in a way that you might regret doing later on. For instance, displacing frustrations from work onto one’s child and yelling at them for the slightest mistake indicates poor emotional self-regulation. Instead, when one chooses to think or talk about these frustrations with their spouse or any other trusted person, it might lead to something more productive. What this needs is emotional self-regulation skills, and they are as follows:

• Build Self-Awareness – Identify and name your emotions objectively, without any judgment. Simply focus on what you feel at a given moment.
• Mindfulness – Practice mindfulness with techniques like breath control and sensory relaxation. It allows you to stay connected to the present and build awareness regarding emotions.
• Cognitive Reappraisal – Reshape negative feelings into something more positive and flexible. This will help you change the way you react to them.
• Adaptability – Objectively weigh circumstances in life, ask yourself what kind of advice you think you can give to someone who came to you with a similar challenge.
• Self-Compassion – Do not be your harshest inner critic. Practice self-care and positive self-affirmations to nurture emotional regulation and well-being.
• Emotional Support – Lean on yourself and others, especially through positive communication.

Common Obstacles to Emotional Regulation

Emotional regulation is not an easy skill to master. It needs time and work, and can have some challenges on the way:

Acting without thinking is one of the most common obstacles to emotional regulation. Emotions, positive or negative, can get overwhelming. This can make it very difficult to regulate emotions.

Avoidance, impulsivity, and cognitive distortions are some general behaviors that can impede emotional regulation. They tend to increase stress and lead to irritability and agitation, making it very difficult to regulate emotions.

Uncertain and threatening conditions can lead to poor emotional regulations. One of the primary purposes of emotions is to detect threats in the environment, and while this is necessary for many things including survival, it can spiral out of control some other times. This is known as emotional flooding when it all gets too much.

If you think you are finding it difficult to master emotional regulation, then at the NuView Treatment Center, our licensed and skilled mental health practitioners can provide you with the support you need to control your emotions. One of the therapies we use is Dialectical Behavioral Therapy, which focuses on distress tolerance as well. Building distress tolerance is one way you can increase your emotional regulation skills and learn how to calm yourself down.

The Long-Term Benefits of Emotional Regulation

Emotion regulation is the ability to control and manage your emotions, which, in turn, helps control your thoughts, words, and actions as well.

The long-term benefits of emotional regulation are that it,

• Reduces the intensity and effect of negative emotions

• Reduces stress

• Improves performance

• Improves interpersonal and social connections

• Enhances overall health and well-being