Emotional Regulation
Back to: Social and Emotional Learning
Photo by Icons8 Team on Unsplash
Throughout this course, whenever we are discussing Emotional Regulation, you’ll see an icon like the one to the right.
An example: *ahem*
You woke up late, sat in miles of traffic on the way to work, and spilled your coffee on your shirt on the way to your desk. Then you got a bad performance review, your kid got in trouble at school, and now your computer isn’t working and the IT Help Desk is of no help.
How do you not scream at everybody in sight or bust into tears?
Emotional Regulation.
Emotional Regulation is a fancy term that describes:
1. Recognizing the emotion you are currently having
2. Identifying an emotion you’d prefer to have instead or making the choice to fully embrace the one you are feeling.
3. Using tools to either change the emotion or tolerate the one you have until it passes.
The cool thing is, emotional regulation skills can be taught. In Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT), clients (usually teenagers and adults) are taught exactly these skills.
Social Emotional Learning aims to teach emotional regulation skills to children before they get themselves in that irritating scenario above. We will all have days like that, but emotional regulation skills give us the tools to ease our way through it.
Before you go on, think about some of the tools you use to regulate your emotions. What soothes you? What helps you calm down when you are stressed? Comment below!