You might feel like your emotions run the show. Whether it’s an outburst, a shutdown, or spiraling thoughts, sometimes we all feel like our lives are at the mercy of our moods. If you’re struggling to keep a mental health disorder, substance use disorder (SUD), or both under control, the struggle to regulate can become even harder. You’re not alone in that experience.
Everyone has emotions they don’t know what to do with. But learning to regulate your emotions in the moment can make your day-to-day life feel much more manageable. Research even shows that being better at implementing emotional regulation strategies can help you feel greater happiness, more satisfaction, and achieve higher financial success. In fact, if you can effectively change how you respond to distress or emotional curveballs, you may have better well-being outcomes overall.
At Miramont Behavioral Health, we teach these types of skills every day in inpatient and intensive outpatient programs (IOPs). Whether you need mental health care in Middleton or Waukesha, our team is here to help you strengthen your emotional toolkit so you can meet life’s challenges with more clarity, calm, and control.
Types of Emotional Regulation Strategies
Let’s imagine a moment that might feel familiar: You just argued with someone you love. They misunderstood what you said and walked away upset. Now you’re overwhelmed. Your heart’s racing, your chest is tight, and your mind replays what just happened on loop.
Here’s how five emotional regulation strategies might play out in this situation:
- Acceptance. Acceptance means you let yourself experience the difficult emotions you’re feeling without running from them. This approach predicts lower emotional distress and a more peaceful daily experience. To practice acceptance, pause and acknowledge the emotion instead of fighting the emotion. Rather than judge yourself for how you’re feeling, you sit with the discomfort without rushing to fix, condemn, or escape it.
- Distraction. You take a break and go for a walk while listening to music or call a friend to talk about something else. The goal isn’t to avoid the emotion forever—it’s to give your mind space to cool off and get some perspective. This helps reduce emotional intensity in the moment.
- Rumination. You keep replaying the argument in your head, thinking about what you should’ve said or how hurtful it was. This strategy can actually increase the intensity of your emotions and prolong distress. It’s usually not helpful when you’re trying to calm down or move forward.
- Reappraisal. You may take a moment to ask the other person if they’re having a rough day and perhaps misheard you. You then reframe the situation and imagine it from another point of view, helping you reduce negative emotions and feel more in control of your response.
- Suppression. You bottle up your reaction. You tell yourself to just push through and hide how upset you are. While this can be helpful in the short-term—especially in public or professional settings—overusing suppression might increase stress in the long run.
Tips For Implementing Emotional Regulation Strategies
Here are four ways to implement emotional regulation strategies in your daily life, especially during tough moments.
- Name the emotions. When you label what you’re feeling, whether anxiety, frustration, or pain, you can take a powerful first step toward calming down. This simple acknowledgment could help activate the part of your brain that’s good at problem-solving and reflection. Employing the acceptance strategy can help you stay honest about your internal experience without trying to push it away.
- Change up the scene. Sometimes, you just need to step away. Go outside, put on calming music, or switch activities. Giving yourself a healthy distraction can stop the emotional spiral before it gets worse. This tip pairs nicely with distraction. It creates space from distressing thoughts and helps you reset your perspective.
- Consider what else could be true about the situation. When your mind jumps to a disaster scenario, gently challenge it. Ask yourself if there’s another possible explanation for what happened or if you might be missing something. You can implement this if you choose a reappraisal strategy to give yourself a chance to shift your interpretation and respond clearly with less intensity.
- Start noticing when you should hold back and when to let it out. Sometimes, you might need to regulate your reaction outwardly, like during a difficult conversation or in a work setting. Still, you may eventually need to process those emotions in a healthy space, such as therapy or journaling. The gradual memorization of what environments you need to button up in can help make the suppression strategy more successful. Used carefully, it can help you stay composed, but it shouldn’t be your only strategy.
Get Support For Difficult Emotions in Wisconsin
Emotional regulation can feel tough at first, but with the right support, it becomes a skill you can build on forever, and you don’t have to learn how to self-soothe entirely on your own. At Miramont Behavioral Health Hospital, we offer compassionate care for teens and adults in Middleton and Waukesha.
If you or a loved one feels ready to explore new ways to respond to stress and triggers, we’re here to help. Contact us to learn more.
