Emotional regulation
Emotion regulation is the "ability to exert control over one's emotional state. It may involve behaviours such as rethinking a challenging situation to reduce anger or anxiety, hiding visible signs of sadness or fear, or focusing on reasons to feel happy or calm". In emotional regulation, you create a sacred buffer of time between feeling an emotion and reacting to it. For instance, take a moment to collect your thoughts before responding.
Emotional regulations are divided into two major categories: reappraisal (change thinking in order to change response) and suppression (hiding emotions and feeling stress).
Garnefski et al. (2001) distinguish nine conceptually different cognitive emotion regulation strategies: self-blame, other-blame, rumination, catastrophizing, putting into perspective, positive refocusing, positive reappraisal, acceptance, and planning.
Gross (2001) defines emotion regulation as " all of the conscious and nonconscious strategies we use to increase, maintain, or decrease one or more components of an emotional response.
Emotional regulation is in fact, an important tool for protecting and establishing healthy relationships and improving mental well-being. Furthermore, this tool helps you in a variety of ways, such as:
- Controlling the emotional state and feeling balanced.
- Manage mental stress.
- Feel you relax in a challenging situation.
- Remain professional in the workplace.
- Communicate your need constructively.
- Actively listens to others' needs.
Importance of Emotional regulation:
Fortunately, or not, in real life, we cannot always express our true emotions. They may be rude, inappropriate, unprofitable, or you may just have manners.
Regulating our emotions is a skill. Some of us learn to regulate our emotions as we grow up. For example, when a child drops a toy, they may be distraught, but as they grow up, they no longer become upset and instead learn to reach the toy and move on.
The social environment forces us to regulate our emotions to get through school, a career, friends, status etc. We are all different, so some people find it easier to regulate their emotions, yet at times everyone struggles to manage their emotions.
Good emotional self-regulation makes it easier for us to glide along life and avoid emotional aggression and emotional overwhelm aiming for emotional balance - yet it is not so good for our inner selves. Whereas we show fake emotions such as joy, acceptance, and trust etc., our true emotions get suppressed. Some call it wearing a mask, but effectively, we are getting in the way of emotional imbalance, and that's not good.
Emotion regulation is essential because our emotions are closely connected to how we think and feel. Our thoughts and feelings help us to decide how to respond to a situation and what actions to take. In other words, our thoughts and feelings influence our behaviour.
Which emotions to regulate?
We use the Plutchik Wheel of 32 Emotions for reference: Acceptance, Admiration, Aggressiveness, Amazement, Anger, Annoyance, Anticipation, Apprehension, Awe, Boredom, Contempt, Disappointment, Disgust, Distraction, Ecstasy, Fear, Grief, Interest, Joy, Loathing, Love, Optimism, Pensiveness, Rage, Remorse, Sadness, Serenity, Submission, Surprise, Terror, Trust, Vigilance.
Tips for Regulating Emotions
There are several strategies that people can adopt to regulate their emotions. However, knowing which tips are most helpful is essential so everyone can leverage them. Here, we have mentioned some mindful tips that you can apply to improve your emotional regulation.
Take Care of your physical need
Getting a good night's sleep, regular exercise, and eating fresh healthy foods are our basic physical needs. These are the needs that feel us satisfied in our life. Do you feel fresh after having a good night's sleep and eating a healthy diet? Indeed, you'll feel better. These habits further help you to overlook little things that might upset you.
Engage yourself in positive events
Naturally, humans are more attributed to negative emotions rather than positive feelings. If you do the same, you must pause and refocus on positive activities. You can do it by engaging yourself in joyous tasks daily. Hence, in this way, you can enjoy your life fully by keeping an emotional balance.
Change your thoughts
How do you feel in a particular situation? It's all depended on what you think. Thoughts play a very critical role in our lives. For instance, if you feel anxiety, you first try to evaluate what you are thinking that is causing those emotions. You can ask yourself various questions, like why I feel so annoyed. After assessing yourself, you can change the thoughts that worry you.
Seeking emotional support
According to a psychologist, we all have some innate capacity to build a strong emotional reserve. These emotional stocks help us save our mental energy from being invested to thinking negatively. Practicing self-awareness and engaging in positive communication with others are ways to find emotional support in ourselves.
How can emotional experiences help us regulate emotions?
Emotional experiences are great for emotional regulation. They brighten life, help to release suppressed emotions and avoid emotional overwhelm and emotional exhaustion. Emotional experiences help to get a good emotional state of mind and achieve Emotional balance.
Learn about play experiences involving emotions, endorphin release, and listening experiences.
Emotional regulations are closely related to emotional experience. When you regulate your emotions through emotional provoking experiences, you would be able to get rid of emotion suppression and emotional exhaustion.
However, you can easily regulate your emotions by following the tips discussed above. But sometimes, when the stress crosses the limit, you would not be able to balance emotions with yourself. Then visit the emotions.market, we regulate emotions with different emotional experiences. You can choose what best suit you.