Emotional Regulation refers to how we approach, experience, and respond to our primary emotional responses to events that occur around us or inside us.
(An example of an event occurring inside us is when we are alone and have a thought or memory that triggers emotional upset.)
Before we talk about emotional regulation skills, we need to discuss the difference between primary and secondary emotions.
Primary emotions are more or less immediate. We don’t have control over them—they just happen. Typically, they occur directly in response to an event that is happening around us or inside us. For instance, we experience a flash of primary anger when someone is rude to us. We experience a fog of primary sadness when we are excluded from something or belittled by a trusted friend. We experience a jolt of primary fear when someone moves towards us in violence. We experience a burst of primary happiness when someone recognizes our talents or contribution.
Secondary emotions arise from our approach towards, experience of, and response to primary emotions. Put quite simply, secondary emotions are our reactions to our primary emotions.
Secondary emotions have emotional, cognitive, and behavioral contributors. For instance, we can experience negative secondary emotions about the primary emotions we are feeling. This can happen when we feel guilty for, or anxious about, primary angry emotions towards a loved one.
We can experience painful thoughts about the primary emotion. For instance, thinking “There is something wrong with me for feeling scared right now.” Or repetitively reviewing in our mind the wrong a person did to us, and experiencing greater anger and wishes for revenge.
We can engage in behaviors that are responses to primary painful emotions that then lead to secondary painful emotions. For instance, experiencing primary fear about a work challenge ahead of us and then avoiding the challenge and experiencing additional fear about the challenge as the deadline draws closer. Or feeling that flash of primary anger, engaging in angry behavior (such as yelling) and feeling our anger rise more as we do the behavior.
Now that we know the difference between primary and secondary emotions, let’s talk a little bit about emotional regulation.
Emotional regulation can be divided into two basic categories: in-the-moment emotional regulation and lifestyle-based emotional regulation.
In-the-moment (ITM) emotional regulation involves approaching, experiencing, and eventually responding to our primary emotions in a mindful way. Essentially, ITM emotional regulation is no more and no less than employing your mindfulness skills to your primary emotions so as to reduce the chance that we also experience significant levels of painful, unhelpful secondary emotions that keep us stuck in the triggering experience.
When we engage in ITM emotional regulation we are hoping to let a primary emotion evolve naturally and eventually subside without introducing greater difficulty.
A helpful acronym to adopt a mindful approach to painful ITM emotions is STOPP*:
S—Stop
- Allow yourself to just pause for a second.
T—Take a breath
- Intentionally breathe and observe your breathing process.
O—Observe
- Observe your thoughts and feelings in the moment.
- Observe the situation around you.
- Where is your attention and what are you reacting to?
P—Pull back/Put in perspective
- Take a mental and emotional step back from the situation.
- Don’t believe everything you think.
- Is there another way of looking at this situation?
- Is what is going through your mind right now a fact or an opinion?
- Take a view from above—what would you see if you were hovering over the situation and not directly in it?
- How important is this situation? Will it seem important in six months?
- What advice would you give a friend about the situation?
- What advice would a friend give to you about the situation?
P—Proceed with what works
- What action(s) makes sense right now?
- What action(s) will work towards a constructive result in the long term?
- What action(s) fit with my values?
- What do I feel able to do right now that will be helpful or not make things worse?
*The STOP idea is taken from Jon Kabat-Zinn’s Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction curriculum. Kabat-Zinn’s original model is Stop, Take a breath, Observe, Proceed. He suggested we STOP several times a day, whether or not something triggering is occurring.
Lifestyle-based emotional regulation skills are habits and routines that help our bodies and minds maintain a healthy, balanced state so that we are in the best position to respond mindfully (and therefore skillfully) to our primary emotions and the events that transpire around us through the course of life.
Some examples of Lifestyle-based emotional regulation skills:
- Give yourself an appropriate amount of sleep.
- Provide yourself with a regular sleep schedule that works for your body.
- Nourish your body with consistent, healthy food intake.
- Allow your body to avoid the stress of over or under-eating.
- Consider how you are spending your money. Are you spending on things that are truly important to you? Are you spending in a way that is causing problems for you? If worries about your spending are bothering you, consider making a budget that helps you make spending decisions that are in line with your values.
- Introduce yourself to regular mindfulness practice.
- Reward your body and mind with healthy amounts of exercise and time spent outdoors.
- Cultivate healthy relationships that add to your life, if you are inclined to socialize; consider weeding out relationships that do not feel healthy and seem to cause more stress than benefit.
- Be mindful and honest about how alcohol or cannabis or other drug consumption may be negatively affecting your functioning. If you are receiving them, incorporate the observations of others in your assessment and evaluate them on their merits. If you don’t like the results of your honest assessment, change accordingly. If change is elusive, seek professional help.
- Be mindful (and honest) about how your use of electronics and social media affects your functioning and relationships. Make a plan that introduces helpful changes.
- Identify those areas in your life that are meaningful and nourishing to you. Plan how to devote periods of time to these areas.