Emotion Regulation
It’s much easier to contain and regulate your emotions when you are less worked up, the more your feelings intensify, and the harder it will be to calm down.
The idea is to catch your feeling at the right moment and relax yourself before it gets out of control- by doing this you are practicing emotion regulation.
Self-regulation is all about pausing between feeling and reactions- it encourages us to slow down for a bit and act after objectively evaluating a situation. For example, a student who yells at others and hits her friends for petty reasons surely has less emotional control than a child who, before hitting or yelling, tells the teacher about her problems.
Another huge aspect of emotional regulation is value engagement. When we react impulsively without paying much attention to what is going on inside, we might often deviate from our core values and act in a way that is opposite to them. With proper regulation and self-control, we gain the power to stay calm under pressure and prevent ourselves from acting against our core values and ethics.
Here are some skills that can help in cultivating emotional regulation and sustaining it during challenging times in life.
1. Self-awareness
Noticing what we feel and naming it is a great step toward emotional regulation. For example, when you feel bad, ask yourself – Am I feeling sad, hopeless, ashamed, or anxious?
Give yourself some options and explore your feelings. Try to name the specific emotions that you can feel intensely within yourself at that very moment, and write it down if you want. You need not act or judge the cause and effect of your emotions at this stage; all you need is complete awareness of each feeling that is controlling your mind ‘right now.’
2. Mindful awareness
In addition to gaining thought awareness, mindfulness lets us explore and identify all aspects of the external world, including our body. Simple mindful exercises such as breath control or sensory relaxation can calm the storm inside and guide our actions in the right way.
3. Cognitive reappraisal
Cognitive reappraisal includes altering the way we think, and calls for greater acceptance and flexibility.
Cognitive reappraisal skills may include practices such as thought replacement or situational role reversals, where we try to look into a stressful situation from a whole new perspective.
For example, we can replace thoughts like ‘My boss hates me’, ‘I am no longer needed here’, etc. with alternatives such as, ‘My boss is upset at this moment, I am sure I can make up for this’, or ‘I know I am hard working and honest, let me give it another try’, etc. By doing so, we gain a broader and better perception of our problems and react to them with more positivity.
4. Adaptability
Emotional dysregulation lowers our adaptability to life changes. We become more prone to distractions and fail our coping mechanisms, which is why we often start resisting changes. A great exercise to build adaptability is objective evaluation.
For example, when you feel bogged down by stressful emotions that you want to avoid, and you might end up destructively reacting to them, take a moment to think what if your best friend was experiencing the same thing? What would you have suggested her to do under these circumstances? Write your answers if you want to and try to think if you are following the same steps for yourself!
