Emotion Regulation

By Alanna Singer, M.A.

Human beings experience a range of emotions- they are with us from day to day, and from moment to moment. When our emotions become too intense, they can get it in the way of doing the things we need to in our daily life, or they can impact our behaviours, leading to mood-dependent behavaiours that we may not have done in the absence of the emotion. In Dialectival Bhaviour Therapy (DBT), we emphasize a number of emotion regulation strategies to help change the intensity of our emotions so that we can move through our daily lives effectively and act in line with our values and goals. While we often think about emotion regulation strategies as being important when we experience negative emotions, these strategies can be helpful for both negative and positive emotions. This clip from the movie Turning Red illustrates well the possibility for both positive and negative emotions to become increasingly intense:

In this video clip, Mei-Mei practices down-regulating the intensity of her emotions after being prompted and experiencing both positive and negative emotions. She uses some excellent skills, like breathing and mental imagery, to effectively manage through the emotions. There may be many different scenarios when it would be helpful to change the intensity of both positive and negative emotions. For example, if we are at school or at work and are anticipating an upcoming vacation or an exciting event, it can impact our ability to focus and complete tasks to get through the day effectively. There are many emotion regulation strategies in DBT, some of which include:

1. Becoming aware of the emotion through mindfulness
2. Using mindfulness to identify our emotions involves observing and describing, non-judgmentally, what you are noticing, including any thoughts, physical sensations, and body postures that accompany the emotion
   1. It is also helpful to identify action urges that are accompanying the emotion, and whether acting on the urges would be helpful or are in line with your values and goals
3. Riding the wave of the emotion
   1. Riding the wave involves stepping back and noticing the emotion, and experiencing it as a wave that comes and goes. Instead of trying to get rid of the emotion, or trying to hold on too tightly to it, experience it as a wave, noticing where in the body emotional sensations are arising and experiencing those sensations as fully as possible
   2. A video that explains mindfulness of emotions and riding the wave in more detail can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NECs97k_8Z4&t=102s
4. Acting opposite to change the emotion
   1. Acting opposite to change our emotion can be helpful when our action urge will not be helpful, or when the emotion is doing more harm than good
   2. Acting opposite is exactly what it sounds like- doing the opposite of what the emotion wants us to do, in order to change the emotion
   3. Here is a resource that provides more information about opposite action: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fDWn-cqKKrg