Emotional Regulation Strategies, Skills & Exercises

Emotional Regulation Strategies

Emotions are part of our living, balancing our emotions in a constructive way makes us to lead a better life. Nowadays, we feel tensed when waiting in a queue to buy things what we love, we get irritated when our friends call is waiting for few minutes, we feel sad when we see a post in Instagram has few thousand likes, we are having more ups and downs of Emotions which has a huge impact on our day to day life. These things disturb our peace, Health and relationships. Emotional regulation strategies are quite important to overcome from this emotional distress. This article is all about Emotional regulation strategies.

What is meant by Emotional Regulation Strategies?

It is nothing but the process of controlling your own emotions and keeping you in balance.

 When you are capable of controlling your emotions,

  • It helps you to maintain a great attitude
  • It is the key for your Mental & Emotional Health.
  • It helps you to face life challenges and develops Resilience
  • It helps you in making right decisions
  • It nourishes your relationships in a healthy way
  • People who are regulating their emotions in a better manner have high Emotional Intelligence.

Emotional Regulations Strategies and skills:

Do Introspection:

  • Identify the triggering factors
  • Question it “Why”– Answer the “Why” in 5 times
  • Label it in terms of emotions- Eg. You feel sad when you see your friend’s success. So label it “Jealous” instead of sad
  • Understand your labeled Emotions and explore it with causation, triggering factors, scopes to overcome from it and accept yourself as a whole.
  • Hurrah!!, You will find the solution. Now, work on it.

Do Retrospection:

Retrospection is nothing but looking back or reviewing past events or situations and exploring it.

  • When did you feel bad about yourself? Why?
  • When did you acknowledge your own emotions? Why?
  • What were the triggering factors?
  • How did you express yourself in every situation like Happy, sad, Anger, Jealous, guilty, shame?
  • Did you accept the way how you react? If yes, why? If no, then what is the best way?

Practice Self-compassion:

While doing these exercises, you may get some negative thoughts about yourself. Remember, mistakes are common part of human experiences. Self-acceptance plays a crucial role here which means you accept your flaws and change it for better. While practicing Self-compassion, you should remember Mindfulness, How?

Being aware of your painful experience in a balanced way neither ignores or avoids nor amplifies your painful thoughts and emotions.

Practice Embodied self-awareness – your ability to understand yourself in the current moment, just as you are, not how you think you should be.

Respond, instead of reaction – Many of us thinks that responding appropriately is faking. It is not…

Responding appropriately is not fake; it is the way to Emotional intelligence.

Engage Perspective taking:

Most of the time, you get triggered by other’s action and words. In interpersonal relationships, it is incredibly important that you are able to engage in perspective taking i.e you need to understand how someone sees the world  and helps you to move away from egocentric point and show Empathy & Compassion.

Practicing Forgiveness:

Forgiveness is one of the self-care act and it harnesses your personal power to take care of your Mental & Emotional Health.

Engaging in deliberate self-care is critical for Emotional regulation.

Focus your physical sensation:

Sometimes Hunger and lack of sleep are the reason behind your Emotional dysregulation. Identify and the underlying issue is essential.

Journaling:

Write your feelings, your thoughts and write everything. It just calms your mind and a wonderful remedy for handling all kind of emotions.

Breathing:

Focus your breath, it tells everything and it anchors the moment.

Regular exercise, balanced diet, proper sleep, Mindfulness & Meditation; these are the important factors for Emotional regulation.

Seek Professional Help- Nothing wrong in it.. Sometimes talking helps you to be balanced