343 SelfWork: What Is Emotional Regulation? It’s Both Self-Control and Self-Protection

Episode transcript available below.

There are a lot of mental illnesses that are characterized by intense emotion which then governs behavior, such as in bipolar disorder, major depression, or several personality disorders. But even it it’s a pattern, and not an actual mental illness, it may mean that you don’t have the skill to regulate your emotions – to have control over them instead of them over you. What does this look like? You get angry at a friend and you text them impulsively about your feelings instead of taking a minute to cool down. You get dumped by someone you’re dating and you immediately head to the nearest bar or pub to work on getting picked up.

That’s what we’re going to focus on today. How do you learn to more self-control emotionally or how to “self-regulate” those emotions?  We’ll also talk about when intense control over emotions is highly self-protective.

The listener email follows this subject line as well, but is more about the listener’s recognition and identification with perfectly hidden depression. But they put a bit of a different spin on it – and are asking how I might suggest they “explain” PHD to a new therapist.

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Psychology Today article on self-regulation

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My book entitled Perfectly Hidden Depression is available here! Its message is specifically for those with a struggle with strong perfectionism which acts to mask underlying emotional pain. But the many self-help techniques described can be used by everyone who chooses to begin to address emotions long hidden away that are clouding and sabotaging your current life. And it’s available in paperback, eBook or as an audiobook!

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Episode Transcript

There are a lot of mental illnesses that are characterized by intense emotion which then govern behavior. But this behavior or this lack of self-control doesn’t have to be seen as “mental illness” although it may be – and that’s important to recognize. If it’s a pattern, then at the least it’s telling you that you don’t have the skill to regulate your emotions – to have control over them instead of them over you. You get angry at a friend and you text them impulsively about your feelings instead of taking a minute to cool down. You get dumped by your new “friend” and you immediately head to the nearest bar or pub and work on getting picked up. But it could be that emotional regulation was never modeled for you – so you didn’t see a parent doing it and could “copy.” Or it’s just something you’ve never learned. But you can. 

That’s what we’re going to focus on today. How do you learn to more self-control emotionally or how to “self-regulate” those emotions. And we’ll also look at when intense control over emotions is highly self-protective – or at least, it might’ve been during your childhood and you’re following the same pattern. 

The listener email follows this subject line as well, but is more about the listener’s recognition and identification with perfectly hidden depression. But they put a bit of a different spin on it – and are asking how I might suggest they “explain” PHD to a new therapist. 

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When you’ve been a therapist as long as I have been, there aren’t a lot of emotional outbursts or their counterpart, emotional shutdowns that I haven’t witnessed. People who burst into tears if they can’t perform their compulsive rituals due to the tsunami of anxiety that hits them. Others who look at me flatly and say, “I don’t feel anything.” And I can tell from the dullness of their eyes that they mean it and that there’s a yawning emptiness where feelings typically live. Or those that become angry or feel insulted at the suggestion of them being in the “wrong” about something – whether it’s narcissism or even sociopathy, it can be a little scary.  This last group may subtly threaten if, for example, a report on their sessions suggest there could be a problem. With them. 

All of these three examples reflect that anxiety, depression, or characterological problems exist to the extent that emotional regulation doesn’t exist for them – at least at this moment. 

So what is emotional regulation? Here’s a working definition supplied by Psychology Today. 

Psychology Today article on self-regulation

Emotion regulation is the ability to exert control over one’s own emotional state. It may involve behaviors such as rethinking a challenging situation to reduce anger or anxiety, hiding visible signs of sadness or fear, or focusing on reasons to feel happy or calm.

You can basically calm yourself. 

Not many of us likely see this as children in our parents. If you did, yay! You’re lucky. And by modeling that for you, maybe you absorbed that behavior and that skill. If you heard one parent say to the other during a disagreement let’s say about money, “I’m too mad right now to talk about this. But I know it’s important. Give me an hour to cool down and get myself in a better headspace – and we can try this conversation again.” Perfect example of recognizing that something is causing you to overreact – so you challenge your own response – you tell yourself things like, “I want to be able to talk about our finances. My own parents never did.” Reminding yourself of the value of what you want rather than focusing on whatever your partner said that pissed you off. That’s emotional regulation. And emotional self-control. 

Self-control can also be about behaviors obviously – which could lead us into a whole other conversation. So, right now, we’ll stick with emotional self-control. 

And let’s quote again from Psychology Today. 

Two broad categories of emotion regulation are reappraisal—changing how one thinks about something that prompted an emotion in order to change one’s response—and suppression, which has been linked to more negative outcomes. Other strategies include selecting or changing a situation to influence one’s emotional experience, shifting what one pays attention to, and trying to accept emotions.

So, let’s talk about them both – as well as the “other” strategies. 

REAPPRAISAL – in the psychology business, this is called a “reframe.” It’s like putting another “frame” around the picture of something that suddenly makes you see the picture differently. I read one of these the other day that I loved. So many people hate to ask for help. But this author stated, “Asking for help is not allowing yourself to give up.” All of a sudden, the choice to ask for help becomes a sign of your determination to keep trying – and even to succeed. Whereas “asking for help is weak” which labels it a “crutch” or something that STRONG people would never do, instead it turns it around and says , “Wait. Asking for help is a proactive choice to find a way to keep going. Hopefully you can hear the difference. 

So, what is suppression? It’s an intentional strategy to tamp down whatever you’re feeling. If you know my work in perfectly hidden depression, that is often a needed protection from traumatic or painful childhood experiences – where showing your actual emotions would put you in harm’s way. So, you suppress them – you “compartmentalize” them, meaning you move them away from your consciousness and store them in a safe “emotions closet” – obviously not a real place, but a corner of your mind that has that capability. What is healthy to then do is get them out when it’s safe, and work through them. Sadly, that often doesn’t happen because there is very little real safety for those emotions where you live. And so those emotions are left there – and they pile up and pile up and pile up. 

There are far more normal times when suppression is called for – and is healthy.And it’s protective.  If my alcoholic partner is railing at me – it would do no good to fight with them when they’re drunk. So, letting it go for now – making sure you’re safe – and waiting to talk to them when they sober up is when suppression is more than handy. 

The other three methods that the last sentence of the Psych Today article says, Other strategies include selecting or changing a situation to influence one’s emotional experience, shifting what one pays attention to, and trying to accept emotions.

What this means is that you do something like figure out the trigger – if you have to get to work when parents are taking their kids to school, and the traffic makes you late – either go another way.  Or leave earlier.   Your trigger is feeling helpless or trapped. So avoid that trigger. 

You can also change your focus. Let’s say your trigger is fear of failure or of being disappointing  – but you always try a brand new recipe when people come for dinner. Either cook it a few times beforehand – or change your focus – meaning that you don’t have to prove to yourself that you can “handle” that recipe, but focus on feeling calm when people come over so you can also enjoy dinner! 

The last thing “accepting your emotions” is interesting. This one was really hard for me for years – because accepting that I had anxiety, for example, felt like I was giving up. But lo and behold, when I began accepting that certain situations would cause me anxiety – I began to accept that. And come up with ways to lean into the anxiety, instead of hating it. 

Here’s another example. How many times have I heard people say, “But I shouldn’t feel hurt … or sad… or fearful. I don’t want to feel that. I don’t even like the way those feelings feel.” Well… likely the more you hate them, the more they’ll stick around. 

Now, that’s not to say that if a certain painful emotion is triggered that you should ALWAYS go with it. Some triggers can become habitual – and they never lose their ability to turn you into an emotional wreck. In my FB group, I noticed several members with PTSD or CPTSD from sexual abuse, talking about when their partner sneaks up on them and surprises them, that their reaction is painful. It throws them into a fight or flight or freeze mode – recreating the fears they felt initially with the abuse. That’s an emotional flashback – a revictimization. Now can you stop the fact that sometimes others wlll surprise you? No. Can you talk to your partner and ask them to not do that? Yes. But realizing that your next step is to work on somehow separating your partner’s playfulness from your abuse – working on how to stay in the moment and not get pulled back into the past. It’s not easy at all. But empowering yourself is important. Taking a self-defense class is a great way for example. Building your sense of self-control in the present.  So in this case, you want to accept your hyperarousal or hypervigilance – and then take measures to empower yourself. 

Self-regulation involves self-control – the emotional kind at least. And seeing its origins in self-protection – which is important. But overall, to not live a life where you emotions govern you. But you govern your emotions. 

I mentioned at the beginning that there are some mental illnesses where there is very little capability to use emotional regulation – bipolar disorder, borderline or histrionic personality disorder, major depression, severe anxiety – but again, it can be learned with enough determination. And as whatever of these problems you’re dealing with, you can begin to realize when fear or anger or sadness has overtaken you – where you’ve made unhealthy or unhelpful decisions based on these feelings. You can rethink this – re-strategize. Become more aware of when you are “in” your illness – and when you can see it more clearly. “Wait, why am I predicting that I will utterly fail and be ridiculed by others, when I haven’t even tried? That’s not rational.” You can begin to see how your mind isn’t helping you. 

If I see one factor where certain medications do seem to help, it’s here. Often (not all the time) a medication will help to clear and clarify your thinking. It won’t solve your problem – that’s your job. But it’ll give you much greater mental energy. Then you use that energy to make changes in your life – and then you can often get off . O r stay on  if you and your prescriber feel that is best. 

You can regulate your feelings – and use them for what they’re really good for. Being aware and expressing emotions can help you feel connected to others, can guide you as to the decisions or actions that will be most helpful to you. And can offer a deeper and more enriching human experience. If you stay in charge. 

So today we have a listener email that I’ll read to you. 

I am a 50-year-old American expat permanently residing in Ireland. I have just started therapy with a young therapist associated with the state medical system (and thank the stars that we have one), with whom I have eight sessions. I was referred to him by my GP (personal physician), who noticed I was at the end of my rope with a disabling medical condition. I have “graduated” from therapy several times in America, and I am always described as the “nice” person who always takes people’s feelings seriously. I am accustomed to managing my thoughts in objectivity, so if people are noticing my control is slipping, I must truly be in a bad way. 

About an hour ago I Googled the phrase, “I am outstanding at hiding my anger,” and your image of the ten characteristics of PHD was literally the very first result. I read it and said to myself, “Dr Margaret has read my mind; anyone who reads this list hardly needs to know anything else about me”. And my “three-year-old inner child”, with whom I have done a little work in therapy, volunteered, “We’ve always felt like that”. And it is true. I started to cry. My cat came up to me and put his ears back a little and meowed once and pawed my knee, which is Cat for, “What’s wrong, mam? Please stop expressing that something’s wrong”. So I stopped crying and told him I was sorry, as you do when you are used to brushing yourself under the rug, and felt empty for a moment.

So anyway I decided that I should tell my therapist about this at my next session next Wednesday, but he is inexperienced, though rather smart, and mostly deals with Irish country people who are naive about their own feelings, let alone therapy techniques. I don’t want to go through weeks of “have you considered taking time to relax” or “have you tried mindfulness”, haha. 

I guess my question boils down to, “In a few words, how can I place my therapist in a position to consider PHD as a thing that explains a lot about me?”. How would you want to have a client approach you with this?

Thank you very much for your caring support,

First, as a general comment, if you’ve had a fair amount of therapy through the years, then giving  a new therapist a quick synopsis of what you figured out “back then” and how therapy was helpful to you at that time. No more than 15 minutes. Then let them know what brought you in now. And that could be similar to your other work – or quite different. 

It does sound as if your discovery of how much you control your anger and how strongly you identified with perfectly hidden depression, that that’s the tack or the direction you want to go in. So much therapy these days is highly collaborative – rather than the older psychoanalytic model of a largely the “unseen” therapist listening as the client lies on the couch and free associates – meaning they say anything that’s on their mind. Let me be quick to say that psychoanalytic therapy is not what it was years ago either; frankly I don’t know a lot about it. But even Freud’s granddaughter refuted some of his basic ideas, especially about sexuality.

But I digress. 

Back to the listener’s email. So you can say, this is what I want to work on now. The therapist is likely not to have heard of PHD – and so you can offer my podcasts or blogposts for them to experience and tell you what they think about it. But the traits of the syndrome aren’t wild at all – and should be readily recognizable to experienced therapists. If he’s young or new, his job is still to help you get where you’d like to go – maybe that becomes how to process that anger differently – or to learn more about your anger. Where does it come from? What are childhood experiences that might’ve influenced that ‘hiding”? 

PHD by the end of this year will have been translated from English into seven different languages. So, it’s hitting a chord somewhere. And if you can see that many Irish people themselves may have adopted this kind of protective shield, maybe you can be a part of spreading the message. 

Thank you so much for writing in. And good luck to you.