{"id":753255,"date":"2026-08-29T05:28:18","date_gmt":"2026-08-29T05:28:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/753255\/"},"modified":"2026-08-29T05:28:18","modified_gmt":"2026-08-29T05:28:18","slug":"how-to-regulate-your-emotions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/753255\/","title":{"rendered":"How to Regulate Your Emotions"},"content":{"rendered":"

An emotionally healthy individual can regulate his emotions and adjust them to whatever his surroundings demand. People who can modulate their facial expressions<\/a> while looking at emotion<\/a>-filled images have better mental health than those who cannot. Showing our emotions is part of everyday social interaction. When a friend tells us she met someone special, we should show her our interest and enthusiasm. According to Columbia University professor George Bonanno and his colleague Charles Burton, a research scientist at Yale University, we must sometimes show more or less emotion than we feel. Bonanno and Burton developed the Flexible Regulation of Emotional Expression Scale<\/a>, which measures expressive flexibility. Items on the scale include:<\/p>\n

You receive a gift from a family member, but it\u2019s a shirt you dislike. You have to show happy enthusiasm.<\/p>\n

You\u2019re attending the funeral of someone you don\u2019t know. You have to be somber.<\/p>\n

You\u2019re a guest at a solemn religious ceremony, and the person sitting next to you just whispered a funny joke. You have to stifle your laughter<\/a>.<\/p>\n

People who regulate their emotions can quickly analyze new information because they can pull back and think rationally. This ability helps a person see possibilities and adapt to new situations. It also helps us set aside knee-jerk reactions and solve problems that come up. People who can regulate how they feel generally have better relationships, romantic, professional, and otherwise. <\/p>\n

Emotionally regulated people are also agile thinkers; agility can halt heated emotional reactions that bring on feelings of overwhelm and paralysis. Essentially, strong emotions restrict the brain from problem-solving; however, an agile thinker can brainstorm solutions.<\/p>\n

Many areas of therapeutic inquiry\u2014including Gestalt, cognitive behavioral<\/a>, and acceptance and commitment therapies\u2014promote this go-with-the-flow unflappability. Psychologist Steven Hayes, developer of acceptance and commitment therapy<\/a>, has examined this ability. As the author of Get Out of Your Mind and Into Your Life, Hayes may be a bit Buddhist.<\/p>\n

Hayes and his colleagues derived the Acceptance and Action Questionnaire, which measures just how mentally rigid a person can be, and they determined that a rigid person has the following negative tendencies:<\/p>\n

Ruminates more and can get stuck in pessimistic loops<\/p>\n

Feels more anxious<\/a><\/p>\n

Feels more depressed<\/a><\/p>\n

Fears failure and success<\/p>\n

Seeks perfection<\/p>\n

Seeks approval from others<\/p>\n

Suffers more mental health conditions\u2014including mood disorders and beyond<\/p>\n

Suffers an inability to learn, be curious, or be open and relies on habitual responses<\/p>\n

Cannot expand or grow with new experiences<\/p>\n

Falls into self-sabotaging behaviors such as substance abuse<\/a>, eating disorders, and procrastination<\/a><\/p>\n

When we are emotionally agile and flexible, we can balance different needs across life domains; we make conscious choices about time and energy on work, home, health, and other areas. The flexible thinker reshapes his mental resources and accesses different perspectives by observing his thoughts and feelings without getting entangled in unhelpful thinking patterns<\/a>. This person is light on his feet and adaptive rather than maladaptive because he realizes thoughts and feelings are not an accurate reflection of reality, which allows a more flexible view of life situations. He is resilient<\/a> and doesn\u2019t buckle in the face of adversity by engaging in self-compassion, which builds inner strength. He is broad-minded and doesn\u2019t rely on one tool or method to get through life; he tests different strategies to see what works and what doesn\u2019t.<\/p>\n

If we can manage our thoughts and emotions with present-moment awareness, we may better attain what we want in life\u2014the things we value. When we get mired in our heads about slights, annoyances, grievances, fears, criticisms, insults, or whatever gloom we glom onto, we don\u2019t pay attention<\/a> to what matters. We forget what is meaningful. Ruminating on a negative thought can take us away from engaging with the things that are vital to us, what we value.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An emotionally healthy individual can regulate his emotions and adjust them to whatever his surroundings demand. People who…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":753256,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-753255","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-kingdom","tag-gb","tag-great-britain","tag-greatbritain","tag-news","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/753255","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=753255"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/753255\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/753256"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=753255"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=753255"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=753255"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}