What is emotion regulation?
Emotion regulation is our ability to recognize the emotions we feel at a given moment and then to control them and find an appropriate response. The term refers to affective states that are of relatively short duration but can be attributed to clear triggers. Mood regulation, on the other hand, would refer to longer lasting affective states that do not necessarily have a trigger.
Emotion regulation then refers to processes by which people attempt to direct these emotions in a particular direction. This can involve regulating the type, or even the intensity, of the emotions. Imagine trying to concentrate during an important phone call having two toddlers bickering loudly about who hit who first. Or feeling anxiety and insecurity while presenting in a meeting and sitting across from an intimidating colleague. Life just constantly confronts us with situations that elicit an emotional response.
Isn’t that life? Do we need emotion regulation at all?
Yes – that’s life. But you don’t necessarily have to make it harder on yourself than necessary. Most of the time we act on autopilot. These situations are usually not the problem – unless they are a problem for others. But let’s be honest – we all know situations where we would have liked to act differently and regret afterwards that we did this or that.
Those we notice, that bother us, are usually the ones we dwell on and that’s where we would start the coaching process.
For positive emotions or the ones, we handle well, regulation is not necessary – I am referring to those, that do not cause us any problems. As a rule, we only use emotion regulation when the emotion prevents us from acting according to our personality or strategies. Even strong emotions can be completely unproblematic for us if they fit the situation well and lead to an adequate behaviour in our view. In general, we want to regulate emotions when they are excessive and harm others, or when they do not fit the situation well, or affect our behaviour in a way that disturbs us. These excessive or inappropriate emotions often have a biographical background. Knowing and understanding this, is part of the work with me.
