Emotion Regulation: Definition + 21 Strategies to Manage EmotionsWhat is emotion regulation? What can you do to make your emotions more manageable? Here are science-based, high-impact emotion regulation strategies you can start using today.
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What is emotion regulation?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. Therefore, emotion regulation is sometimes thought be a type of coping mechanism.
Video: What is emotion regulation? Is emotion regulation the same as emotion control?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 [1].
What is the impact of emotion regulation?Generally, emotion regulation strategies make you feel better in the short term. But not all emotion regulation strategies also make you feel better in the longer term. For example, drinking alcohol is a pretty effective short-term emotion regulation strategy—it makes us feel good. But it often makes us feel worse in the long term, especially if we are using it to manage emotions that we can't effectively manage with healthier strategies.
This is just a bit of why learning to effectively regulate your emotions with healthy strategies is so important. Read on to learn more about the many types of healthy and unhealthy emotion regulation strategies. Are You a Therapist, Coach, or Wellness Entrepreneur?
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In this activity, you learn the emotion skill, negative reappraisal.
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In this emotion activity, you learn the emotion skill, positive reappraisal.
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8. Self-distancing
Another way to regulate your emotions is to look at your situation as if you were “a fly on the wall” or as if you were someone else who is witnessing your situation from afar. These days, we are so immersed in our experiences—what we feel, what we think, even what we had for dinner. But it turns out that emotionally distancing yourself from your experience and looking at it from an outsider’s perspective helps you from getting stuck in your negative emotions. As a result, you don’t feel quite as bad, even when you do feel bad [3].
9. Temporal distancing
In addition to shifting to another person’s perspective, we can shift to another time perspective by looking at our situation from another point in time. This technique helps dampen our emotions because we see that our negative emotions are not permanent, so we feel less afraid of them [4]. Just remember, this too shall pass.
10. Positive imagination
You probably already know that when you think about something bad happening, you start to feel all sorts of negative emotions as if that bad thing already happened. Just the thought of your romantic partner leaving you or losing your job might lead to intense anxiety, anger, or sadness. Our brains act as if those thoughts are real. So thinking about negative scenarios that haven’t even happened is horrible for our well-being.
But on the bright side, our brains do the exact same thing if we imagine positive scenarios. By imagining all the positive things that could happen in our future, we can create all the positive emotions that would arise in those situations. For example, maybe you imagine your boss finally praising you for something you did well, maybe you imagine spending all afternoon at an amusement park with your family, or maybe you imagine flying around town on a purple dragon. Almost magically, you create positive emotions out of thin air.
But on the bright side, our brains do the exact same thing if we imagine positive scenarios. By imagining all the positive things that could happen in our future, we can create all the positive emotions that would arise in those situations. For example, maybe you imagine your boss finally praising you for something you did well, maybe you imagine spending all afternoon at an amusement park with your family, or maybe you imagine flying around town on a purple dragon. Almost magically, you create positive emotions out of thin air.
11. Savoring
Savoring is all about mentally holding on to the positive emotions we get in our day-to-day lives. Too often we let the good moments and positive emotions pass by without truly savoring or celebrating them. When we savor these moments, we pause and attempt to fully experience the positive emotions that have arisen in that moment, and as a result, we up-regulate our positive emotions, creating longer-lasting positive experiences [5].
12. Capitalizing
When we capitalize on positive events by sharing them with others, we extend our positive emotions, feel closer to others, and they feel closer to us. So to extend a positive moment even longer, show it, tell it, or share it with others right away. You could send a personal message to someone. You might call or text a friend or talk to the people around you about what you’re feeling. Just be sure when that you’re sharing your emotions and not humble bragging.
13. Gratitude
Gratitude is simple thankfulness. When we express gratitude, we not only make ourselves feel good, we make others feel good too. Gratitude appears to increase positive emotions in both the short and longer term by improving the quality of our relationships. Here are some gratitude activities: Gratitude List, Gratitude Note.
14. Growth mindset
The belief that you can grow and improve, often referred to as growth mindset, has a surprisingly big impact on your ability to reach your goals. In fact, the more you believe that you can improve a skill, the more likely it is that you actually will improve that skill.
Although growth mindset is often not thought of as an emotion regulation strategy, its impact on emotion suggests it is at least an important part of the emotion regulation process. How? Well, it turns out that believing that you can change your emotions makes it more likely that you will. So if you have a growth mindset for emotion, you put yourself in a frame of mind where all other emotion regulation strategies are likely to be more effective [6].
Although growth mindset is often not thought of as an emotion regulation strategy, its impact on emotion suggests it is at least an important part of the emotion regulation process. How? Well, it turns out that believing that you can change your emotions makes it more likely that you will. So if you have a growth mindset for emotion, you put yourself in a frame of mind where all other emotion regulation strategies are likely to be more effective [6].
15. 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.
Video: Opposite action
Video: Opposite action
16. Distraction
Distraction can be a healthy emotion regulation strategy when used properly. There are all kinds of unhealthy ways to distract ourselves (we'll talk about these more below). But some types of distraction can be beneficial. One good example is exercise. If we're feeling sad or upset, exercise is a good distraction that helps us feel better in the short term and longer term. Another good distraction when we're feeling anxious is to take a cold shower or swim, as this helps activate our parasympathetic, rest and digest system. So distraction can be used effectively, as long as it's done thoughtfully.
Unhealthy Emotion Regulation Strategies
Unhealthy emotion regulation strategies are strategies that may help us feel better in the moment (or we think they will) but tend to have negative long-term effects. They usually help us feel better now but these effects don't last and often we feel even worse later because we have not addressed the emotions properly.
1. Rumination
Rumination is when we think over something again and again. Rumination and worry are often used to help us regulate or manage our emotions. We think—incorrectly—that thinking or worrying about our issues will help us solve them. That's why this is an ineffective emotion regulation strategy. It actually doesn't help reduce our emotions in the short term or longer term.
2. Substance use
Drug and alcohol use is not always an emotion regulation strategy. Sometimes, we consume these substances as part of socializing or ritual. But more often than we realize, these substances are used to increase positive emotions--Whoohoo, let's party!—or to decrease negative emotions--That day sucked; I just need a drink!
When we use substances as emotion regulation tools, we actually do ourselves more harm than good. Because we aren't learning other ways to increase positive emotions or decrease negative emotions, we can become reliant on these substances to regulate our emotions for us. And that's a dangerous game.
When we use substances as emotion regulation tools, we actually do ourselves more harm than good. Because we aren't learning other ways to increase positive emotions or decrease negative emotions, we can become reliant on these substances to regulate our emotions for us. And that's a dangerous game.
3. Self-harm
Non-suicidal self-harm is actually considered to be a maladaptive (unhealthy) emotion regulation strategy. Although many people are shocked to discover people deliberately hurt themselves, there are many more socially acceptable versions of self-harm that we forget. For example, a man may punch a wall when he's upset, hurting his hand. Or someone may get a tattoo in an effort to "feel something".
Although it's unclear whether these different types of self-harm share common emotional undertones, the research suggests that self-harm is frequently practiced in the context of intense, overwhelming negative emotions and has even been shown to reduce negative emotions and alter physiology in ways that induce a sense of calm [7]. So this is an effective emotion regulation strategy in the short term, but not the longer term.
Although it's unclear whether these different types of self-harm share common emotional undertones, the research suggests that self-harm is frequently practiced in the context of intense, overwhelming negative emotions and has even been shown to reduce negative emotions and alter physiology in ways that induce a sense of calm [7]. So this is an effective emotion regulation strategy in the short term, but not the longer term.
4. Expressive suppression
Expressive suppression, or hiding the expression of our emotions on our face, is one way we attempt to squash emotions. Unfortunately, this strategy doesn't work. We actually end up increasing physiological activation associated with negative emotion and do ourselves more harm than good.
Video: Emotions on the face and experience of emotion
Video: Emotions on the face and experience of emotion
5. Avoidance
Experiential avoidance tends to be an unhealthy emotion regulation strategy (or emotional dysregulation). Basically, we try to avoid the situations or experiences that we know will cause us negative emotions. Perhaps we are afraid to fly so we avoid it. Maybe we have social anxiety so we avoid people. Or maybe we're just insecure so we avoid doing things where we might fail. But by avoiding these situations, we avoid key experiences that can make life more enjoyable for us.
I do believe there is a caveat here though. Sometimes it's okay to avoid. In fact, it can be beneficial to avoid abusive relationships, to end friendships that hurt our self esteem, and to avoid foods that put us in a bad mood. The goal here is to be thoughtful about what you're avoiding and be clear on whether it's helping you in both the short term and long term.
I do believe there is a caveat here though. Sometimes it's okay to avoid. In fact, it can be beneficial to avoid abusive relationships, to end friendships that hurt our self esteem, and to avoid foods that put us in a bad mood. The goal here is to be thoughtful about what you're avoiding and be clear on whether it's helping you in both the short term and long term.
6. Retail therapy
We commonly hear that "retail therapy" is a tool we can use to feel better. In graduate school, I was interested in whether this was actually an unhealthy emotion regulation strategy. Indeed, my research showed that shopping makes us feel better in the short term, but worse in the longer term. So using retail therapy to regulate emotions is not generally a good idea.
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References
1. Wenzlaff, R. M., & Wegner, D. M. (2000). Thought suppression. Annual review of psychology, 51(1), 59-91.
2. Amir, N., Beard, C., Taylor, C. T., Klumpp, H., Elias, J., Burns, M., & Chen, X. (2009). Attention training in individuals with generalized social phobia: A randomized controlled trial. Journal of consulting and clinical psychology, 77(5), 961.
3. Ayduk, Ö., and E. Kross. 2010. “From a Distance: Implications of Spontaneous Self-Distancing for Adaptive Self-Reflection.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 98 (5): 809–829. http://doi.org/10.1037/a0019205.
4. Bruehlman-Senecal, E., and O. Ayduk. 2015. “This Too Shall Pass: Temporal Distance and the Regulation of Emotional Distress." Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 108 (2): 356.
5. Quoidbach, J., E. V. Berry, M. Hansenne, and M. Mikolajczak. 2010. “Positive Emotion Regulation and Well-Being: Comparing the Impact of Eight Savoring and Dampening Strategies.” Personality and Individual Differences 49 (5): 368–373.
6. Tamir, M., O. P. John, S. Srivastava, and J. J. Gross. 2007. “Implicit Theories of Emotion: Affective and Social Outcomes Across a Major Life Transition.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 92 (4): 731–744. http://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.92.4.731.
7. Nock, M. K., & Mendes, W. B. (2008). Physiological arousal, distress tolerance, and social problem-solving deficits among adolescent self-injurers. Journal of consulting and clinical psychology, 76(1), 28.
2. Amir, N., Beard, C., Taylor, C. T., Klumpp, H., Elias, J., Burns, M., & Chen, X. (2009). Attention training in individuals with generalized social phobia: A randomized controlled trial. Journal of consulting and clinical psychology, 77(5), 961.
3. Ayduk, Ö., and E. Kross. 2010. “From a Distance: Implications of Spontaneous Self-Distancing for Adaptive Self-Reflection.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 98 (5): 809–829. http://doi.org/10.1037/a0019205.
4. Bruehlman-Senecal, E., and O. Ayduk. 2015. “This Too Shall Pass: Temporal Distance and the Regulation of Emotional Distress." Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 108 (2): 356.
5. Quoidbach, J., E. V. Berry, M. Hansenne, and M. Mikolajczak. 2010. “Positive Emotion Regulation and Well-Being: Comparing the Impact of Eight Savoring and Dampening Strategies.” Personality and Individual Differences 49 (5): 368–373.
6. Tamir, M., O. P. John, S. Srivastava, and J. J. Gross. 2007. “Implicit Theories of Emotion: Affective and Social Outcomes Across a Major Life Transition.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 92 (4): 731–744. http://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.92.4.731.
7. Nock, M. K., & Mendes, W. B. (2008). Physiological arousal, distress tolerance, and social problem-solving deficits among adolescent self-injurers. Journal of consulting and clinical psychology, 76(1), 28.
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