Emotional Dysregulation is Driven by Your BELIEFS
Here are 3 tools to help!
What Research Reveals About Emotional Dysregulation
What if the primary driver of your emotional distress is not what you assume it to be?
The intensity of your emotional distress and its duration — how long you remain in that painful state — are controlled more by your beliefs and attitudes about your emotions than by anything else.
This has substantial research behind it – and understanding it is particularly valuable in your journey to improve your emotional regulation.
One research study makes this especially clear. Participants were asked to bring to mind an event that had elicited a very negative emotion, then to rate, across a number of different factors, how upsetting that experience had been. They were also asked what they had believed, at the time, about their own ability to cope with those emotions. Of all the factors measured, it was that final question — about perceived coping ability — that correlated most strongly with both the intensity and the duration of the emotional impact. (Research can be found at: Brans, K. et al (2014). Intensity and Duration of Negative Emotions: Comparing the Role of Appraisals and Regulation Strategies. PLoS ONE, 9(3), e92410.)
The results were striking. People who felt they had a reasonably good ability to cope with the emotions that arose experienced far less emotional intensity, and their negative emotions resolved in a much shorter period of time. Those who believed they truly could not cope experienced considerably more dysregulation — in both intensity and duration.
This pattern has been replicated across a number of different studies, with consistent results.
Secondary Appraisal: The Judgment We Place on Our Emotions
Whenever we have an emotional response to something, we also form a judgment about that response. When something makes us happy, we often think: "I like this feeling."
When something makes us angry, we often think: "I should not feel this way."
So our anger might be immediately followed by guilt.
These judgments are called negative secondary appraisals of our emotions.
In a recent video and blog, I explain how negative secondary appraisal drives rumination [view the video here or the blog here].
This dynamic, however, affects the entirety of our emotional regulation — not rumination alone.
The Most Dysregulating Belief
There are a number of beliefs about emotions that are dysregulating, and it is worth exploring what your own beliefs are about the emotions that tend to send you into a spiral. However, research demonstrates that the greatest disruption to our emotional well-being is the belief that sounds like this:
“I cannot cope with these feelings. I do not have the capacity. I cannot handle it.”
I will share tools at the end of this post to help you work with this belief and implement strategies to support emotional re-regulation.
Where These Beliefs Come From
These beliefs about our emotions are not randomly generated in response to present circumstances. They are almost always tied to negative core beliefs that we developed about emotions — and about ourselves — early in childhood, based on our experiences and what we were taught.
Some questions worth reflecting on:
• What emotions were you allowed to feel growing up?
• Which emotions were you told you should not feel, or that were considered bad?
• What did you learn about your own adaptability, resilience, and ability to cope with difficult feelings?
All of that history contributes to the fact that our responses to our emotions have become deeply habitual — almost automatic.
They have been grooved into the brain. Habits, however, can be changed. The neuroplasticity of our brains means that even our neurobiology can shift as we practice new patterns. Shifting your beliefs about your emotions is one of the most powerful things you can do to improve your emotional regulation.
If you have not yet downloaded it, I have a free PDF: Transform Your Negative Core Beliefs. It helps you identify the core belief that underlies all of this — whether that is something like "I am defective" or "I am powerless," among others. The PDF also provides tools and exercises to begin to overturn those core beliefs.
How Your Beliefs Determine Your Regulation Strategies
How you judge an emotion is also important because it directly determines which emotional regulation strategies you employ. In plain terms, an emotional regulation strategy is what you choose to do to calm yourself down. Some of those strategies are adaptive — healthy over the long run. Others are considered maladaptive because they worsen the problem.
Some well-known examples of maladaptive strategies include:
• Using alcohol or drugs. These suppress emotions and may provide temporary relief, but they perpetuate the cycle over the long term.
• Screaming at others. Some people believe this helps them calm down, but it creates significant problems in relationships and in daily life.
There are also very common strategies — used by almost everyone — that are not widely recognized as maladaptive. They are more difficult to identify as problematic, which makes them particularly worth addressing. These are suppression, avoidance and rumination.
The Hidden Cost of Suppression, Avoidance, and Rumination
Research has demonstrated that these strategies maintain and amplify emotional dysregulation. Emotional avoidance and suppression have been linked to increased depression and anxiety, negative mood, lower social functioning, and reduced psychological well-being.
(Research can be found at: Wittkamp et al. (2022) How you think about an emotion predicts how you regulate: an experience-sampling study. Cognition and Emotion. 36. 1-9. 10.1080/02699931.2022.2027744).
These are the same strategies we use when we wish to neutralize a threat. When something feels threatening, the instinct is to suppress it or avoid it.
When we come to perceive our own emotions as threatening, we communicate to our ancient brain that we are in danger. That message activates the amygdala and intensifies whatever stress response is already underway — making everything considerably worse.
Three Tools to Begin Shifting Your Beliefs
Tool #1: Look at the Evidence That the Emotion Eventually Passed
Choose one emotion that you find particularly upsetting and dysregulating, and examine the evidence of whether that emotion eventually passed. The question here is not whether you handled the emotion well — many people, if asked that, will answer no: it worsened, and they contributed to that. The question is whether that emotion eventually ebbed and receded, and whether other emotions arose in its place.
Emotions are temporary. Reviewing your own history to observe how emotions ebb and flow — even when they feel as though they will never pass — removes that sense of survival threat. If this exercise feels challenging, you can also ask yourself: Did I survive? If you are reading this, you did.
We are using the word survival in a very basic sense, because that is what the amygdala is oriented toward — physical survival. The amygdala, however, can become confused, because many of our problems are emotional. They exist in our minds, they involve relationships, or they concern concepts. They are not physical threats, yet we respond as though they are. Journaling through this — examining whether the emotion eventually shifted, and reminding yourself that you did in fact survive it — is a meaningful step.
Tool #2: Assess Which Strategies Made Things Worse or Better
Building directly on Tool #1: once you have identified a past emotional experience, examine which regulation strategies you employed at the time. Look carefully at which regulation strategies contributed to the emotional spiral, and which ones might have helped.
This gives you a framework for distinguishing which strategies are beneficial and which are harmful. It also gives you a sense of agency and command: it is not only the emotion itself — it is how we are interpreting it and what we are choosing to do about it. We may not always feel as though we have control over that, but we do. With practice and continued exploration, your sense of agency over your emotional experience will grow stronger.
Tool #3: Create Distance from the Beliefs and Notice When They Arise
When a strong emotional response arises, notice as quickly as you can what you are thinking about that emotional response — and then change how you are speaking to yourself about it.
Instead of: “I cannot cope with this feeling,” say: “I am having the thought that I cannot cope with this feeling.”
Instead of: “I am a bad person for feeling angry,” say: “I am having the thought that I am a bad person for feeling angry.”
Saying "I am having the thought" is extremely accurate. These are thoughts.
Some of our thoughts are helpful and valid, and some are not. Using this phrasing helps you distance from the thought and puts its validity into question.
A viewer posed a question on my earlier video about secondary appraisal and rumination, asking about the feeling of guilt that frequently arises as a secondary response. If we believe an emotion is bad, or that we are a bad person for experiencing it, guilt will follow. Using this tool, you can observe that your initial emotional reaction was anger, and that was quickly followed by guilt.
You can say to yourself: "I am having the feeling that I am bad for having the feeling of anger."
You are adding a layer of awareness. You are strengthening your observer brain.
I have a number of videos and blogs on emotional regulation skills that you may find helpful. And next week, I will be releasing a video and blog to help you identify your primary belief about your emotions.
Key Takeaways
When you view your emotions as dangerous or as a threat to your well-being, you generate an internal emergency response — and that escalates everything. Learning to understand your emotions as information and signals creates a much healthier relationship between you and your emotions. (And will impact positively how you navigate the world!)
It is also important to remember that the emotions you feel are separate from what you do with them. As I discuss in my anger videos, feeling angry is natural — it arises when we are hurt or when something feels unfair. What we do with that anger, however — the behavior that follows from it — can sometimes be seriously destructive, whether it is internalized or externalized. The emotion itself is simply a natural part of being human.
We are human. We have very complex emotions. Learning to sit with them — to invite them in for tea, so to speak — and to be at ease with experiencing a range of different feelings will help prevent those emotions from exploding out of control or becoming overwhelming.
If you found value in this, please share this with someone who might benefit. See you next week!
Blog Author: Barbara Heffernan, LCSW, MBA. Barbara is a licensed psychotherapist and specialist in anxiety, trauma, and healthy boundaries. She had a private practice in Connecticut for twenty years before starting her popular YouTube channel designed to help people around the world live a more joyful life. Barbara has a BA from Yale University, an MBA from Columbia University and an MSW from SCSU. More info on Barbara can be found on her bio page.
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