Emotional regulation

Emotional regulation is the ability to manage properly your own emotions, thoughts, and behaviors, to achieve some goals. It can be automatic or controlled, conscious or unconscious. 

There is also an emotional co-regulation - when there is a person (like a parent) who influences the way another person (like a child) feels, thinks, or behaves. This means that it is needed an adult to teach a child what emotions are, how to feel them, and how to express them. We learn this through several repetitions.

Technically, it involves three steps:

• Initiating actions triggered by emotions;
• Inhibiting actions triggered by emotions;
• Modulating responses triggered by emotions - here happens most of the emotional regulation because it modifies how we react, avoiding stress or fear.

For a better response, you can practice some proper habits like acceptance of emotions, shifting attention away from negative emotions, or reframing emotional situations. Also, a specialized therapist or trainer can help a lot.

For me, some exercises that always work are self-awarenesses ones. Applied to emotional regulations, we can make a list of all thoughts that pass through our mind following this model (maybe it helps you also; you can do it with a certain routine, like daily, or only when needed, based on a stressed situation):

What I am feeling right now	What person/situation caused it	How I responded to the situation/person	What emotion/s did I feel at that point in time?
.	.	.	.
.	.	.	.
.	.	.	.

When you practice emotional regulation, you gain the ability to accept your feelings. This doesn’t mean that you will be always happy, but you will have the ability to move on.

Photo credit