Improve your emotional regulation
When you’re emotionally dysregulated, your emotions can take you on a wild ride, and it can be really hard to find your way back to centre.
Being dysregulated can create havoc in your days.
It can damage your relationships, affect your health, and just spread pain everywhere.
So what can you do about it?
Well, you can learn both to bring yourself back when you are dysregulated, but also to be more emotionally regulated more often, both in the heat of the moment, but also as part of your daily practise of self-care.
I’m Nicola, and my passion is helping parents, and not yet parents, resolve their stuff so they don’t pass it onto their kids and repeat the cycle.
And I’ve been exploring ways to break my patterns of pain for over 25 years.
Signs of emotional dysregulation
So what are some of the signs that you are emotionally dysregulated?
Well, it can look like sudden mood changes or emotional outbursts.
Maybe you’re suddenly irritated or angry for no apparent reason.
Maybe you find yourself acting impulsively or feeling out of control or doing things that damage you and your well-being.
Maybe you’re feeling overwhelmed, maybe you’re wanting to withdraw from the world or feeling really fragile or anxious.
Or maybe you’re just having over-the-top reactions to seemingly small things.
What’s key here is that you learn to recognise what emotional dysregulation looks like for you.
In my instance, when I’m emotionally dysregulated, the first thing I tend to notice is the thoughts running through my head.
They’re more negative and unhelpful than usual.
And also I notice physical sensations.
Usually, it’s things like adrenaline running through my body or feeling really anxious or wired or lethargic.
But these physical and mental signs are in my first cue, and then I notice that’s what’s going on for me.
So learning to recognise what dysregulation looks for you is key.
So if you’ve figured out some of the signs for you of what emotional dysregulation looks like, please share them in the comments so that everyone else can learn from your experience.
How to improve emotional regulation
But in order to improve our emotional regulation, there’s really two approaches we need to take.
Firstly, we need to look at what do we do in the moment when we feel dysregulated.
And secondly, what can we do outside of those times to increase our regulation, our ability to stay regulated.
And I’ve got five different strategies that I’m going to share with you around each of these.
Strategies for when you’re emotionally dysregulated
1. Notice and name
So in the heat of the moment, when we’re basically feeling completely out of whack and dysregulated, the first strategy that we might want to try is to notice and name.
Actually notice what’s going on for you.
Name the emotions you’re feeling.
“Oh, I’m feeling anxious.
Oh, I’m feeling really fearful.
Oh, I’m really irritable.” Understanding those emotions and putting names to them can be really powerful.
And also noticing those physical sensations and putting labels, “I’m feeling really jumpy.
I’m feeling really wired.” But just noticing and naming what’s going on for you can be really helpful.
If you do have a journaling practice, that can be something that can strengthen that ability outside outside of these times.
2. Create space
The second strategy you might want to try is to create space.
When we are dysregulated, stuff just happens almost without our control.
We’re just overtaken by these emotions.
So creating a space or a brief pause before you do anything can be really important.
So take a breath, count to 10, or maybe if you have to, remove yourself from the situation, but whatever you need to do, just create that little bit of a gap so that you have an opportunity to change how you respond to the situation and potentially bring yourself back to a better state.
3. Grounding and breathing
The third strategy you might want to try is grounding and breathing.
So grounding is about bringing yourself back into the present moment, noticing what’s going on for you right here, right now, what’s around you, the fact that you are safe in this current moment and being fully aware of the present moment as opposed to being in your head or carried away by your emotions.
And breathwork can also help with that because it brings you back into your body in awareness of your physicality.
4. Challenge negative self-talk
The fourth strategy that you can use is to challenge negative self-talk.
So as you notice those negative thoughts in your head, to actually reframe them, to shift your perspective on the situation that’s unfolding around you, to alter your interpretation of those events, to use things either like thought stopping or thought correcting.
So thought stopping is when you have a thought that you just don’t want to have.
So maybe it’s something awful, like “I hate myself,” to actually say things like, “No!”, “Stop!”, and “Cancel!” when you do that, to basically interrupt that thought and not accept it into your thinking.
But thought correction is where you change your thoughts.
So you might have a thought like, “Everybody hates me.”
But then you stop and say, “Actually, no, I have some people in my life who do care about me and who do like spending time with me. So not everybody hates me. Maybe some people do, but not everyone.”
So you’re shifting that thought.
You’re changing your perspective and altering the interpretation of what’s going on.
And those challenges to those thought patterns can be really helpful as well when you are feeling dysregulated.
5. Soothe yourself
And the fifth strategy is to do the things that soothe you, to settle your emotions down, whether that is going for a walk, listening to music, dancing, maybe having a bath or a shower, having something to eat, going and standing outside in nature for a while.
Whatever it is that you need to do that settles you down.
One of the techniques I quite like is something called quick coherence from the HeartMath Institute.
And that involves – very quickly – breathing in and out of your heart, as if your breath is moving in and out of your heart, and then finding a positive emotion to focus on whatever you can find, whether that’s appreciation or love or something you like thinking about.
By breathing that way and focusing that way, you can very quickly bring your system back into a much more coherent state.
Those five strategies in the heat of the moment can really help you take more control of your experience when you are dysregulated and try and bring you back to a more stable place, allowing you to choose how you respond, to be able to problem-solve more constructively, and also communicate effectively with the people around you about what’s going on for you, about what you need, or about ways to resolve the situation that is causing you to feel dysregulated.
Strategies to reduce dysregulation
And then there are the strategies that you can practise outside of these times so that you can have a greater ability to stay regulated.
6. Develop mindfulness & acceptance
The first strategy is to develop mindfulness and acceptance of what’s going on for you, actually becoming aware of your experience at a general level and accepting it, fully embracing what’s going on for you rather than saying, “No, I don’t want to experience that,” just observing without judgement and experiencing.
And certainly sitting with those feelings and journaling about that stuff can make you more aware of what’s going on for you and bring that to a place of, “Okay, this is what I’m feeling, and I’m okay with that.”
And I have a whole video on a way to sit with uncomfortable feelings when they do arise if you’d like to watch that as well, you might find that helpful.
7. Support well-being
The next strategy that we can try is things that support for our wellbeing – our emotional wellbeing, our mental wellbeing, and our physical wellbeing.
So for our emotional wellbeing, expressing our emotions really does support that.
So whether that is writing and journaling, whether that’s talking to someone else about how we feel, or whether it’s expressing ourselves creatively through, say, painting or drawing, or making music, expressing how we’re feeling can be really healthy for our emotional wellbeing.
And then our mental wellbeing, a lot of that is about managing stress, so making sure we’re not feeling too overwhelmed, we’re not taking on too much, we are challenging those negative thoughts at other times, and things like breathing, relaxation exercises, and those mindfulness exercises can be really helpful as well for supporting mental wellbeing.
And then physical wellbeing is all about, “Am I getting enough sleep? Have I had exercise recently? And am I eating well?”
So all of these things support our physical wellbeing.
And by looking at all aspects of our wellbeing and doing the things that support that, we’re more able to stay regulated and come back to a regulated state.
8. Practise positive habits
The third strategy is to practise positive habits.
So this involves identifying the things that you know you enjoy doing and making a commitment to do those more regularly, even if it’s just a little bit every day, finding the things that you like to do, whether that’s listening to music, whether that is painting, whether that is reading, whether it’s going for a walk.
Whatever it is that brings you pleasure, making sure you’re making that part of your daily routine so that you get to experience positivity on a regular basis.
It might also involve self-care activities.
So actually doing the things that show you that you’re taking care of you, not just everyone else, you’re also taking care of you.
And doing that helps you feel valued and appreciated by yourself, increasing that level of positivity.
And gratitude is another great way to increase the amount of positivity in your day because you’re looking for things to appreciate, to value, to like, to say, “Hey, wow, I’m really glad that happened.”
That practice of gratitude can be really powerful. It increases the amount of positivity you experience on a daily basis.
9. Build support
The fourth strategy is to develop your support.
So having people in relationships around you that support you to stay regulated, to also help you come back to regulation.
People can help you to work through what’s going on for you by talking to you about it.
They might help you to shift perspectives.
They might also just be able to validate what’s going on for you to either say, “Yes, I’ve experienced that,” or to help you simply sit with and accept what’s going on for you right now by modelling that for you.
You might build a community of people around you of like-minded individuals who can do that for you when you need it.
You might end up needing to work with someone professionally to provide that level of support.
But by having these people around you, you can develop both an awareness of what it is to remain regulated, but also they can help you come back to a regulated state.
By staying calm while you’re dysregulated, they can help to bring your system back more readily.
10. Plan for dysregulation
The fifth strategy is to plan for dysregulation, to plan that this is going to happen and what you’re going to do about it.
Firstly, recognise the things that do tend to make you emotionally dysregulated and try to minimise your exposure to them.
But of course, that’s not going to be possible at all times.
So it’s also important to understand “What am I going to do when this happens?”
Make a plan. Use the strategies we’ve talked about to make a plan.
“Okay, when I feel dysregulated, this is what I’m going to do. I’m going to sit down over there. I’m going to breathe. I’m going to focus on this.”
Having a plan and then practising that plan outside of these times can be really powerful because it means it’s right there at your fingertips when you need it and you can apply it in the moment when you do become dysregulated.
Strengthen your emotional regulation
So as you practise these strategies, both in the heat of the moment and other times, you strengthen the muscle of emotional regulation.
You make it more possible for you to take control of your experience, to choose how you respond to situations.
And then you get to act in accordance with what’s most important to you, what you value most, and what you’ve chosen you want to experience in your life.
And I’ve got a guide that takes you through most of this that you might want to download, link in the description.
And if you want to dive deeper into my ABCD emergency response process when you are triggered and becoming dysregulated, watch this video next.
And may you feel more emotionally regulated today.
