Emotion regulation

Emotion regulation is how you notice, understand and manage your feelings. It does not mean pushing feelings away or never getting upset. It means you can feel a strong emotion, make sense of it, and still choose what you do next.¹

Everyone has moments when feelings take over. For some people this happens often, and it causes real trouble at home, at work or with the people they love. Experts call this emotion dysregulation. It is not a diagnosis. It is a set of skills that can be weaker or stronger, and trouble with these skills shows up in many mental health conditions.^4,5 The good news is that the skills can be learned. This page gives you the big picture and links to our detailed pages.

What is emotion regulation?

Emotions do useful work. Fear warns you of danger. Anger tells you something seems unfair. Sadness slows you down after a loss. So the goal is not to get rid of feelings. It is to handle them in a way that fits the moment and the life you want.¹

Psychologists Kim Gratz and Lizabeth Roemer describe emotion regulation as several abilities that work together:¹

• Noticing your feelings as they come up
• Understanding what you feel and what set it off
• Accepting the feeling, rather than fighting it or judging yourself for having it
• Steering your actions toward your goals, even while upset, and knowing ways to ease a feeling when you need to

Sometimes regulation means calming a feeling down, like settling your nerves before a hard talk. Sometimes it means letting a feeling run its course without acting on it.

Managing is not the same as hiding

Many people think handling emotions means keeping a straight face. Research shows that hiding feelings, called suppression, changes what other people see but not what you feel inside. It can also raise your body's stress response and make it harder to remember what happened. Looking at the situation in a new way, called reappraisal, tends to work better.³

What do difficulties look like?

The most widely used questionnaire in this area is the Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale (DERS). It looks at six areas.^1,2 Here they are in plain words:

A short version, the DERS-SF, has 18 questions, three for each area. It was tested in both teens and adults.² Our self-check, WhySigh MindCheck, uses the DERS-SF to look at this area. A score can point to skills worth building. It cannot diagnose a condition.

Read more in Signs of emotion regulation difficulties.

Why it matters across many conditions

Experts call emotion regulation transdiagnostic. That means it cuts across many diagnoses instead of belonging to just one.⁵

• Depression, anxiety, eating problems and substance use. A review of 114 studies looked at people who often ruminate (go over problems again and again), avoid feelings or hide them. They tended to have more symptoms of these conditions.⁴
• Self-harm. In a review of 49 groups of people, those with more trouble regulating emotions had about 2 to 3 times the odds of self-harm. The strongest links were with feeling unable to cope, not accepting feelings and acting on impulse.⁷
• Borderline personality disorder (BPD). The National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) describes BPD as an illness that severely affects a person's ability to regulate emotions.⁶ See Borderline personality disorder.
• Recovery. A review of 67 treatment studies covered anxiety, depression, substance use, eating problems and BPD. After treatment, emotion regulation improved along with the symptoms.⁵

These links do not prove that emotion regulation problems cause these conditions. They do suggest that building these skills may help with several problems at once.⁵

Why do some people struggle more?

There is rarely one cause. Researchers point to a mix of inborn sensitivity, early experiences, trauma, ongoing stress, poor sleep, and brain-based differences such as ADHD and autism. None of this is anyone's fault, and the brain keeps learning throughout life. We explain each of these, with sources, in Why emotion regulation can be hard.

What helps

Emotion regulation skills can be learned at any age. The badges show how strong the research is (see how we rate evidence).

All emotion regulation pages

• Signs of emotion regulation difficulties
• Why emotion regulation can be hard
• Emotion regulation skills
• Treatment for emotion regulation difficulties
• Emotion regulation in relationships, work and parenting
• Emotion regulation in children and teens
• Emotion regulation in later life

Related: DBT skills, Anger, Stress, Coping skills that work, Borderline personality disorder and our calming practices.

Explore emotion regulation

When to get help

Talk with a doctor or mental health professional if:

• Strong feelings often get in the way of work, school, relationships or daily tasks
• You often act on urges you later regret, such as yelling, breaking things, binge eating, drinking or overspending
• Your moods swing quickly and stay intense for hours
• You feel numb or cut off from your feelings much of the time
• You use alcohol, drugs, food or self-harm to get away from feelings
• You have tried self-help skills for several weeks without much change

In later life, a big new change in how someone handles emotions, such as sudden outbursts or crying spells, should be checked by a doctor. It can have a medical cause. See Emotion regulation in later life.

Education only. This page is general information written from the sources listed. It is not medical, legal or financial advice and does not replace a doctor, therapist or lawyer who knows your situation. How we write and check pages.