Examples of Emotional Regulation (and why it’s only part of the issue)

Throughout our daily lives, we can encounter a multitude of interactions, experiences, and circumstances that invoke an emotional response – sometimes little, sometimes big. Emotional regulation indicates our ability to calibrate our emotions effectively within a given situation. Below is an example of the thought process in which you can engage to regulate your emotions.

For instance, you have texted your friend about a possible hangout, and she hasn’t responded in a couple of days. You begin to feel anxious and start combing through all of your most recent interactions, wondering if you did anything that could’ve upset her. As your day continues, your ruminations become more consuming, and your anxiety elevates when you become convinced that your friend must be mad at you. You begin to text her a long, elaborate text asking if there’s anything that upset her.

In this instance, the sequence in which we emotionally regulate might look like the following.

Identifying and Acknowledging Emotions: Engaging in mindfulness can first help us break up the rumination by identifying and acknowledging that we are anxious. In naming the emotion, we can detach from its hold and start to look at it from a more zoomed-out lens, as teasing out the minutia rarely aids in effectively handling either our emotions or the situation.

Breathing: After identifying and acknowledging your emotions, you can apply stress or anxiety-reducing techniques, such as breathing exercises. One example of a breathing exercise is box breathing (e.g., breathe in for four seconds, hold the breath for four seconds, and breathe out for four seconds). This technique can help calm dysregulated nervous systems that are sensitive to anxiety.

Reframe: After reducing our anxiety, we can participate in a quick reframe. For this example, the reframe might look like, “My friend has a demanding work schedule, and she is most likely busy with her new project; we have been good friends for four years, and I trust that if there is an issue, she will communicate it, and it can be resolved.” This reframe involved reviewing the facts (e.g., demanding work schedule, new project, friends for four years) to help see the situation from a more grounded perspective and build trust in yourself and this process with your friend.

Opposite Action: Our emotional responses can be attached to immediate behavioral reactions, such as texting a long apology in fear of having upset them, without having confirmed the friend’s perspective. Thus, as opposed to engaging in the same reactions we typically do, which can reconfirm the dysregulated emotion, we can break up our cycle of rumination-dysregulation-response by acting in the opposite manner, like texting the friend a quick follow-up about the hangout instead.

And while the above process can be used to regulate our emotions, it is only part of the issue, as developing emotional regulation involves building self-trust and awareness. If we find ourselves frequently dysregulated, deeper work involves addressing the underlying dynamics that affect our emotional regulation, which can be explored in therapy. In the above example, the person might have a history of abandonment, people-pleasing, or perfectionism that manifest in ruminations about upsetting someone. Emotional regulation skills are important, but talking through our patterns and underlying beliefs about people, situations, and our relationships is an essential part of the practice.