Emotion

Regulation
RACHEL ESTHER, COUNSELLING
PSYCHOLOGIST, WCC
Rapport building
activity
THE COMMON FACTOR
1 HATE AND 1 LOVE
Introduction to
Emotion
Regulatiom
THE STORY OF US
EMOTIONS! We all feel it 
All of us feel emotions. We just deal with it differently.
 Emotions signal threats and rewards.
Much like a compass that guides us in the right direction, emotions have the power to guide us to the right actions.

Let’s discuss the example of a 7 year old boy who was hungry for cookies and broke the cookie jar when his mother
asked him not to.

The boy might get scared and lie to his parents about it, or avoid confronting them for fear of punishment. But the
parents find out eventually. In all probability, the boy will end up facing the same consequences that he was trying to
avoid. In this instance, listening and responding to the ‘fear’ emotion proved futile to the child.

However, the same emotion (fear) would have proven helpful for someone being chased by a wild animal in the
forest. In that situation, running to avoid confronting the savage beast would have been the correct decision.
Contd.
It is therefore crucial to judge when to trust emotional triggers and act on them, and when not to; in other words, it
is essential for us to understand how to regulate or control our emotions so we could use them optimally.

This is where emotion regulation comes into play!

What is emotion(al) regulation?
Emotional regulation refers to the process by which individuals influence which emotions they have, when they
have them, and how they experience and express their feelings. Emotional regulation can be automatic or
controlled, conscious or unconscious, and may have effects at one or more points in the emotion producing
process.” - (Gross, 1998, p. 275).

It includes positive and negative feelings and how we can strengthen, control, and use them. It involves 3
components –
•Initiating actions triggered by emotions.

•Inhibiting actions triggered by emotions.

•Modulating responses triggered by emotions.

Ideally, the third component is the best way to make the most of the regulatory processes!
 Emotion regulation is defined as the ability to affect one's own emotional state. It can involve
either increasing positive emotion, decreasing negative emotion, or both. Generally, it involves
changing your thoughts or behaviors, sometimes in conscious and sometimes in unconscious
ways.
For example, you can focus on the silver linings or remove yourself from a difficult situation to
regulate your emotions. When you regulate your emotions with healthy strategies, you feel better
and can more quickly recover from stressful experiences.
If you notice that balancing and controlling your emotions is challenging, developing emotional
regulation skills can help.
Emotional dysregulation refers to experiencing difficulty when trying to diffuse or manage
strong emotions, particularly those considered negative like anger, frustration, and jealousy.
When emotions impact your overall quality of life, relationships, or performance at work or
school, you may want to explore healthy ways to cope.
 Understanding emotion regulation
The way you deal with emotions may, in part, have to do with how you were raised, particularly if you faced
adverse experiences like abuse, neglect, or other causes of childhood trauma. Some of them will not have been
taught or shown how to manage difficult situations,

Emotional regulation isn’t as simple as “learning to control yourself.” It may come down to biological and
neurological processes, specifically at:
•the limbic system, which houses your stress response (fight or flight)

•the prefrontal cortex, which helps you make rational decisions

 Contd.
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 their friends for petty reasons surely has less
emotional control than a child who, before hitting or yelling, tells the teacher about their
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.
With emotional regulation, we can
allow the initial upsurge of
emotions to settle down and zoom
out of the situation before reacting
to it.

The increased time gap between

stimulus and response restores the
mental faculties that involve
rational thinking and reasoning. As
a result, we can save ourselves from
sudden emotional breakdowns or
burnout.
HOW DO I KNOW I DO NOT HAVE EMOTION
REGULATION SKILLS?
Challenges in emotional regulation can arise when your reactions are considered to be out of proportion, or
somehow socially inappropriate, on a regular basis.
Some signs that you aren’t properly regulating your emotions may include:
•abrupt changes in mood
•binge eating
•crying spells
•emotional outbursts
•persistent interpersonal conflict
•aggression or violent outbursts
•self-harm
•substance use disorder
•poor tolerance for frustration
Can/Should we
control our
emotions?
Controlling our emotions is one way to regulate, manage, or change emotions. But it is not the
only way. Accepting our emotions or doing something non-emotional are other ways to change
our emotions without directly controlling them.
In fact, emotional control may not always work and may not always be beneficial. For
example, certain types of emotional control such as suppression—or hiding your feelings—can
actually have long term negative impacts on your well-being.
The Process Model -
Gross
 Our emotions are typically generated by a "situation, attention, appraisal, response" sequence, like this:

•Situation: Emotion generation begins in a situation. It may be an external situation, such as a friend making a
critical comment, or it may be a thought or emotion in your own head.
•Attention: This situation grabs your attention. For instance, your attention may be drawn to the way your friend
has his arms crossed as if he's angry.
•Appraisal: You appraise the situation. In this example, you may be worried that this person no longer wants to be
your friend.
•Response: Your initial response can be physical and/or emotional. Your face may turn red and you may feel hurt.
You then respond to the person, which may change the situation and start a new sequence all over again. For
example, you tell your friend that the comment hurt your feelings and ask why he said it. He may then apologize
or say he's having a bad day.
When it comes to emotion regulation, we can pick any part of the above sequence of emotion generation and
influence our emotions accordingly.

•Situation: We can choose to avoid people or situations that we think we'll find hurtful, engage in situations we
find positive, or we can change the situation we're already in by changing our behavior.
•Attention: We can focus on something else in the situation, such as nonverbal cues the other person is giving or
what might be really behind what she's saying.
•Appraisal: We can change the way we're thinking about the situation. For instance, if the emotion generation
sequence was started by you thinking "I'm so stupid," you can tell yourself that's not true and it's just a feeling
you're having at this moment. In the above example, after worrying that your friend no longer wants to be your
friend, you can remind yourself that you're jumping to conclusions and one critical comment doesn't mean the end
of your friendship.
 Contd.

•Response: We can change how we respond to the situation. Instead of getting angry and
lashing out, you can do some breathing exercises. Instead of avoiding an uncomfortable
situation, you can take a trusted friend along with you. Instead of overreacting to what
someone says, you can ask him or her more about it so you understand each other.
Emotion Regulation
Strategies
 Be aware of your emotions
Noticing what we feel and naming it is a great step toward emotional regulation. When you feel bad, ask yourself
– Am I feeling sad, hopeless, ashamed, or anxious?

When we know we have an emotion to regulate, awareness makes it easier for us to engage in healthy emotion
regulation.

Give yourself some options and explore your feelings. Try to name the specific emotions that you can feel
intensely within yourself at that 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.’

If we are not self-aware or not aware of our emotions, we may still engage in emotion regulation. However, we
may do so in ways that don't work very well (for example maybe we yell at people when we're sad, they get mad
at us, and then we feel sadder). Or we may do so unconsciously--Why did we get so drunk last night? Oh ya, we
were feeling really bad about a workplace conflict.
 Acceptance
Acceptance is the ability to experience your emotions without judging them.
Accepting emotions is not our natural mode of operating. Because of social influences, cultural
influences, and upbringing, we automatically judge emotions—especially emotions like anger and
sadness.
Women tend to judge themselves more for feeling anger; men tend to judge themselves more for feeling
sadness. For these reasons, acceptance takes conscious effort for most of us. We have to actively let go
and accept.
Imagine this scenario – When you see a building burning, you don’t ask why. The first order of business is
to get people out and then figure out the cause.
The same is true for mental health challenges!
 Contd.

Instead of focusing on why this happened, try to ask the ‘what’ questions first:
•What are my choices right now?

•What tools do I have available?

•What people, places, or things will help me feel safer in this moment?

Reframing the situation may help you stay calm.

A cognitive reappraisal strategy that is almost always useful is to tell yourself: ‘I may not know why I’m
experiencing this symptom, but my brain is trying to help me and I am not lazy, crazy, or unmotivated.’
 Mindfulness
Mindfulness is thought to be the combination of awareness and acceptance. Mindfulness can be an
effective way to regulate emotions, particularly to induce calm and relaxation.
Activities that keep you in the present moment make it easier to choose between a reaction (automatic)
and a response (intentional) in those critical moments.
Deep breathing, breathing from your belly, tells your nervous system that you are safe. Bringing our
attention to the present moment helps reengage our prefrontal cortex.
Remember, your prefrontal cortex is the part of your brain that’s charged with problem-solving and
restoring calm. Engaging your five senses by noticing one thing you can see, hear, taste, touch, and
smell can also help.
 Calm the nervous system

It’s difficult to “think” your way out of emotional dysregulation.

This is because dysregulation is the function of the autonomic nervous system, not our ‘thinking’ or cognitive
brains. The language of the nervous system is sensation and movement.
While you’re feeling emotional, try these skills to help soothe your limbic system. These include:
•taking a cold shower
•holding an ice cube in one hand
•moving gently
•listening to music
•putting your hand on your pet’s heart and counting the beats
 Cognitive reappraisal
Cognitive reappraisal includes altering the way we think. It 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.
POSITIVE AND NEGATIVE REAPPRAISAL
Positive reappraisal is thought to involve cognitively reframing an experience as more positive. For
example, let’s say that you lost your job. A positive reappraisal might be that this situation will push you
forward and help you begin building that business you always wanted to start.
Other definitions of positive reappraisal include reframing an event in ways that increase positive
emotion

Negative reappraisal is thought to involve cognitively reframing an experience as less negative. For
example, if you lost your job, a negative reappraisal might be: at least you don't have to deal with your
jerk boss anymore. Rather than focusing on the good in the situation, you focus on what's "less bad".

Like positive reappraisal, negative reappraisal is sometimes defined more in terms of emotional outcome.
Negative reappraisal, then, would be defined as reframing an event in ways that decrease negative
emotion.
 Self-Compassion
Setting aside some time for ourselves every day is a great way to build emotional regulation skills. Reminding
ourselves of our talents and virtues, and letting our minds land on a flexible space can immensely change the way we
feel and react to our emotions.

Some simple self-compassion hacks involve:

•Daily positive self-affirmations

•Relaxation and breath control

•Compassion meditation

•Regular self-care

•Gratitude journaling
 Take Opposite Action

Opposite action is an emotion regulation strategy used in Dialectical Behavior Therapy.

When we're feeling a certain way, we tend to act in ways that are congruent with those feelings.
By acting in the opposite way we can begin to shift our mood to the opposite as well.
 Self-Care
For your brain to manage your emotions effectively, it needs to have enough fuel and rest.
Make sure you give your brain and body the following:
•Get a good night’s sleep. 2018 researchTrusted Source shows that sleep deprivation is linked to
mood changes such as anger and aggression.
•Eat a healthy diet. Eat regular meals, and add more fruits, vegetables, and healthy proteins and
fats to your diet. Limit sugar, refined carbohydrates, and fried foods as much as possible.
•Aerobic exercise. A 2019 studyTrusted Source revealed an 8-week mind-body course (aerobic
jogging and mindfulness-based yoga) improved participants’ emotional regulation skills.
Activities!
Mindfulness Meditation
 Positive and negative appraisal
Sample Situation – I barely scraped through and passed in my Basic Psychology paper

Write positive and negative appraisals to the following situations.

1. I came late to class today.

2. I don’t think I’m as pretty and confident as other people in my class

3. My teacher yelled at me in the classroom today

4. I blurted out the wrong answer in class and everybody laughed

5. My partner did not hug me today as they usually do when we meet

Self-Awareness Technique – thought naming

What I am feeling right What person/situation How I responded to the What emotion/s did I feel
now? caused it? situation/person? at that point of time?
“Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is
our power to choose our response. In our response lies our
growth and our freedom.”

- Viktor E. Frankl

QUESTIONS AND FEEDBACK ARE ENCOURAGED!