Emotion regulation
The processes by which people influence which emotions they have, when, how strongly, and how they show them, through choosing situations, shifting attention, reframing, or controlling expression.
What drives it
Explains why two people with the same emotional reactivity behave very differently, and where in the sequence (before or after the emotion fires) a person tends to intervene.
How it shows
Work
Good regulators pause before replying to a provocative email, ask a question to buy time, reframe a setback aloud ('So this tells us the pricing is wrong'). Poor regulation shows as either blowing up or shutting down, or avoiding hard conversations altogether.
Relationships
Can stay in an argument without escalating or stonewalling; can take a break and come back. Under-regulators shout, slam doors; over-regulators go silent and steely.
Self
You notice the emotion rising and have choices: change what you are attending to, change what it means, or change what you do with it. Without regulation it feels like the emotion is driving.
What tells it apart
Expressive suppression: Suppression is one regulation strategy that only hides the display; the inner state stays and often leaks as stiffness and distraction. Broad, flexible regulation changes the feeling itself.
Emotional dysregulation: Regulation is the capacity; dysregulation is its persistent failure, with fast, intense, slow-to-settle emotions across many settings.
Isolation of affect: Isolation of affect strips feeling from thought automatically and the person cannot reach it; regulated people can feel and name the emotion and choose what to do with it.
A test
Watch what a person does in the minute after something upsetting happens: do they have a flexible move (pause, reframe, ask, take a break), or only explosion or shutdown?
Questions to carry
- In the minute after something upsetting, what moves does the person have besides blowing up or shutting down?
- After something upsets me, what do I reach for first, and how well does it work?
How strong the research is
strong
Where it comes from
James Gross, 1998; Gross and Oliver John, 2003
Sources
- Marsha M. Linehan, Cognitive-Behavioral Treatment of Borderline Personality Disorder (1993)
- James J. Gross, The Emerging Field of Emotion Regulation: An Integrative Review (1998)
- Peter Fonagy, György Gergely, Elliot L. Jurist and Mary Target, Affect Regulation, Mentalization, and the Development of the Self (2002)