Emotional Regulation Series: A guide to Emotional Regulation
Emotional regulation, self-regulation, dysregulation… you’ve may have been hearing these terms lately, but do you actually know what it means? In this blog post we are going to go over emotional regulation, what it is, common triggers that lead us to dysregulation, and some strategies for building up emotional regulation.
As a mom, we’re going to experience a huge range of emotions- and not just from ourselves, but also from our children. This is very natural and just part of being human, however much of us didn’t grow up with the exposure to and knowledge of understanding and responding to our emotions. Most likely our parents (or our parents’ parents) followed the common adage of “children should be seen and not heard.” Just imagined how that shaped that generation growing up- they had all these emotional experiences, yet they were taught (and likely punished) for expressing them.
While we’ve come a long ways, we still have a long ways to go in not just understanding our emotional experiences but also being able to accept and process through them.
Understanding Emotional Regulation
So, what exactly is Emotional Regulation? At its core, emotional regulation is the ability to manage and respond to our emotions in response to internal and external stimuli. Basically, it’s what we do when something is going on either outside of us or inside of us. It is not about suppressing, avoiding, or denying our emotional experiences, but rather developing an understanding of them and finding ways to respond in a compassionate and healthy manner.
Having good emotional regulation does not mean we don’t experience stress or more “difficult” emotions. It means that we have an awareness of it and we are able to identify what we need to help us get through those times.
When we feel “dysregulated” we are often having both a physical and mental reaction to an internal and/or external stimuli. This often comes on as feeling overwhelmed, difficulties in managing these feelings and then often engaging in strategies that aren’t so helpful. Unhelpful strategies may include spending more time online/scrolling, drinking more alcohol or using more marijuana, emotional eating, and other avoiding/checking out behavior. Other times we may feel so overcome with the emotion that it comes out through yelling, increased conflict, and even physical complaints.
The Role of Emotional Intelligence
In order to be able to respond in healthy ways to our emotions, we first need to have more awareness and understanding of our emotions, this is also known as Emotional Intelligence.
Emotional Intelligence allows us the ability to recognize, understand, and manage our own emotions and those of others. This is crucial to raising children, who, as you know, can swing from one emotional extreme to the next. Building up your own Emotional Intelligence, allows you to tune into your children's emotional needs, respond empathetically to their feelings, and model healthy emotional expression. It fosters open communication, deepens connections, and nurtures resilience in the face of adversity.
Common Emotional Triggers for Mothers
Motherhood comes with its fair share of challenges that can trigger a range of emotions. For many mothers, sleep deprivation tops the list of emotional triggers, as the relentless demands of caring for young children can leave them feeling exhausted and overwhelmed. The constant juggling act of managing household chores, work responsibilities, and childcare can also stir up feelings of stress and frustration. Additionally, societal pressures and unrealistic expectations often fuel feelings of inadequacy and self-doubt, as moms grapple with the pressure to excel in every aspect of their lives. Witnessing their children's struggles or experiencing conflicts in their relationships can also evoke feelings of sadness, guilt, or helplessness.
Identifying Triggers
Understanding your triggers can be really helpful to be better prepared for when you are triggered and start to feel dysregulated. It can be helpful to explore the following questions to gain more understanding on your triggers:
What was going on the last time I got upset/angry?
How is my sleep? Do I get at least 7 hours of quality sleep?
Do I take time to eat meals throughout the day?
Do I find myself getting “touched-out” easily?
How am I around noise? Do I often get overwhelmed or bothered by noises from toys, or my kids playing loudly?
How am I with crying? Is it hard for my when my child is upset or having a difficult time?
How do I tend to handle stress?
How do I handle when someone is disappointed or expressing some sort of upset with me?
As you can see, some of these questions are around taking care of our basic needs (such as sleep and nutrition), others are around our sense, and how we are with other’s or our own emotions. It can help to get curious about what comes up for you when you feel stressed and/or overwhelmed. Explore what your thinking is around during those times- what are you telling yourself? Are there any themes to it? The more you know and understand, the better you’ll be able to respond in a helpful way to yourself.
The Mental Load and Emotional Burden
A very big and common struggle that moms have is The Mental Load. The Mental Load is all the responsibilities that come with managing and coordinating all the tasks and details that go into running a household and caring for a family. It’s not just the tasks themselves- but the mental components of knowing what needs to be done, anticipating when it needs to be done and planning for it to get done. These components are described as “invisible labor” as they are not seen by others.
In the majority of heterosexual couples, the woman bares the majority of the mental load (and yes, I fully recognize that it is not ALL households, that men do and can take on the mental load, however research still shows we are far from having equity in this area). This invisible workload can take a toll on mental and emotional well-being, leading to feelings of stress, overwhelm, and burnout. It also often leads to increased conflict and resentment in their relationship.
All this can lead to struggles with emotional regulation, as when you are already feeling overburdened, it doesn’t take much to push you over the edge.
Strategies for Cultivating Emotional Regulation
Life is a lot and raising a family and taking care of a household, much less finding time to take care of yourself and your relationship, can easily teetering to being too much. We are often running on fumes and just surviving through the days.
While you may mean well, it’s likely that you are often dysregulated. So, how do we build up better emotional regulation? Keep reading to learn more.
Taking Care of Your Needs
Taking care of our basic needs is non-negotiable to be able to effectively emotionally regulate. When we don’t get enough quality sleep, our body will automatically go in a more dysregulated state.
The same is true for fueling our body’s nutritional needs. Feeding your family can be really hard (don’t even get me started on all the particular likes and dislikes my kids have 😬). Again, it’s easy to put aside your own needs. Maybe you don’t have time to sit and eat, or you just snack here and there. When you body is not getting its nutritional needs regularly met, it sends a message to your brain that something is wrong. This will automatically send your body in a more stressed state.
Getting back to basics in making sure you are sleeping and eating appropriately is the bare minimum that is needed to have any emotional regulation.
Mindfulness Practices
Creating a mindfulness practice can be a great way to cultivate more present-moment awareness and to help regulate your emotions. A big part of emotional regulation is just being able to be aware and understanding what is happening to us on an emotional level. Mindfulness is key to this.
In order to be more mindful during times of stress and dysregulation, we first need to practice it outside of those moments. Some helpful ways to engage in a mindfulness practice are:
Going outside in nature
Self-Care and Stress Management
While taking care of our basic needs is a bare minimum for self-care, we also need to take care of our emotional and spiritual needs. Often when we hear self-care we may think about getting a massage or getting your nails done. While these can certainly be self-care, the idea of this often misses the boat on what real self-care is.
Real self-care is about understanding what makes you feel good, supported, nurtured, and taking the steps required to fulfill that. If this is an area you struggle in or you just have no idea what this can look like for you, I highly recommend the book “Real Self-Care” by Pooja Lakshmin, MD.
An important component for both self-care and stress management is Boundaries. Boundaries are an area that many of us struggle with, as we likely didn’t experience healthy boundaries modeled for us growing up. Learning more about boundaries and how you can set boundaries to engage in self-care and better manage your stress is key.
Exercise is another great resource for both self-care and stress management. When we are stressed, our body produces more cortisol and adrenaline (our stress hormones). These hormones lead to feeling more dysregulated in our body. Exercise can help us “burn off” these excess hormones and helps our body return to a more regulated state.
Building a Support Network
Motherhood can be very lonely. Many of us are often feeling a bit on an island, distanced by family and friends by proximity and/or by emotional connection. There’s a lot of judgement for mothers and unfortunately, a lot of it from other mothers (don’t believe this- just check out any mom facebook group, yikes!). This judgment and our own experiences of guilt and shame in not living up to being the “perfect mother” often leads us to isolate more. We don’t share our struggles with others and we feel like we are the only ones experiencing them.
As a therapist to moms, I can tell you for a fact- moms struggle and moms don’t have it all together. I hear this over and over again by my clients- and my clients are successful, intelligent, and fully capable women. They are normal, imperfect, humans.
It may come as a surprise, but building your own support network is an important component of emotional regulation. We are wired to have a need to connect with others. Having trusted others that we can go to, that we can connect with, is key to feeling whole and well.
Seeking Support
If you are finding yourself feeling overwhelmed, burnt out, and feel like you don’t even know where or how to get started to help yourself create better emotional regulation, much less build a support system, therapy may be the next best step for you. I recommend working with a therapist that has experience in working with mothers. They will have a better understanding on the common struggles mothers face, as well as knowing ways to overcome those struggles.
To find a therapist, you can check through your health insurance directory, do a google search, and/or check out a therapist directory. Some directories that can be helpful are:
If you are in California and interested in my therapy services, please reach out.
Connection and Community
Connecting with other mothers can also be extremely valuable. It helps to relate to others that are experiencing similar things and or have found some of their own strategies through it and can help guide you. It takes time to build up friendships and it can certainly feel overwhelming to even know where or how to start with this. Connecting through your children can be a helpful first step. Try connected with other moms at parks, your children’s activities, through their school. It’s important to remember to be patient. A study on friendships found that it takes about 50 hours of time together before we’d consider someone a casual friend, 90 hours to be a “real” friend and 200 hours to be a close friend. So, yes, that is a lot of time, which demonstrates the importance of taking initiative in this area.
Emotional Regulation is key to Overall Wellness
Developing more awareness, understanding more about our emotional experiences, and having healthy strategies to respond to times of stress are all important components to having more emotional regulation. Having better emotional regulation is also imperative in being able to parent well and to teach our children how to have emotional regulation.
If you are interested in learning more about emotional regulation, check out my course- Mastering Emotional Regulation in Motherhood.
Disclaimer: This is not a replacement for a therapeutic relationship or mental health services. This is for educational purposes only and should be in used in conjunction in working with a licensed mental health professional. If you are in California and looking for a professional therapist feel free to use the contact me to request an appointment or search Psychology Today for local therapists in your area.