Learn how to regulate your emotions and respond more calmly

What is emotional regulation?

Emotional regulation is the ability to manage how you experience and express your emotions. 

Rather than suppressing or avoiding feelings, regulation is about relating to and responding to emotions effectively. This means acknowledging and accepting them, understanding what they’re telling you, and acting on them in a healthy, appropriate manner.

Our ability to regulate emotions develops throughout life, shaped by various factors. This includes our upbringing, environment, the amount of stress we’ve been exposed to, and any trauma we may have experienced. And how coping strategies both effective, and in-effective have been reinforced. 

When emotional regulation comes easily, it helps us navigate challenges without becoming overwhelmed. When we’re emotionally dysregulated, however, even a small amount of stress can feel hard to cope with.

In this article, we’ll explore practical techniques to help regulate emotions effectively, manage stress levels, and combat overwhelm.

Why emotional regulation is important

Being able to manage your emotions effectively is central to mental health and overall wellbeing. Emotions influence how we think, behave and interact with others. When we can regulate them, we’re better able to:

• Make considered decisions, even under stress
• Communicate clearly and enjoy supportive relationships
• Deal with unexpected challenges or changes
• Recover more quickly from setbacks

When emotional regulation is more difficult, everyday situations can feel overwhelming. You might:

• React with anger, tears or frustration to minor problems
• Struggle to calm down after a conflict or stressful event
• Withdraw, avoid, or rely on short-term coping behaviours like overeating, alcohol or other substances
• Feel guilt, exhaustion or shame after emotional outbursts

When emotions are unprocessed, they don’t just impact mental health. Holding them in can lead to physical tension and symptoms such as muscle pain, headaches and fatigue.

Emotional dysregulation can look different for everyone, but some common signs include:

• Feeling easily overwhelmed by emotions such as anger, sadness or anxiety
• Reacting impulsively in the moment, then regretting what you said or did later
• Finding it hard to calm down once you’re upset
• Bottling up emotions until they spill out unexpectedly
• Using unhelpful coping strategies, like avoidance, overeating or substance use
• Struggling to identify what you’re feeling or why

These patterns often develop over time. Emotional regulation difficulties can arise from a mix of biology and environment. This might involve being naturally more emotionally sensitive, or having experiences where your feelings were dismissed or criticised. 
When that happens repeatedly, it can make you question your emotions and make them feel wrong, even though they’re valid responses to what’s happening around you.

The good news is that emotional regulation isn’t fixed. Like any skill, it can be strengthened through awareness, practice and sometimes professional support. 

With the right tools and techniques, you can learn to pause before reacting, understand what your emotions are communicating, and act in ways that feel more balanced and authentic.

How to self-regulate your emotions

Techniques that help you feel grounded in your nervous system are highly beneficial, as they give you space to feel your emotions and let them settle rather than spiral. From this more centred state of being, you can choose to process your experience and acknowledge the underlying need beneath them.

Here are some immediate and long-term strategies to help you regulate emotions.

Immediate strategies

In the video below, Dr Marta Santandreu Oliver, a counselling psychologist at Priory, explains three core emotional regulation skills used in dialectical behaviour therapy (DBT).

Here are some practical, in-the-moment tools you can start using straight away, as explained in the video.

1. PLEASE skills: reducing emotional vulnerability

The PLEASE skills as a way to reduce the vulnerabilities that increase emotional dysregulation. They help you remember the essential elements of self-care and feel more emotionally stable. 
The PLEASE acronym consists of:

• Treating PhysicaL illness or discomfort, rather than pushing through it
• Balancing your Eating, adopting good nutrition and staying hydrated
• Avoiding mood-Altering substances that can intensify emotions
• Sleeping well and resting when needed, to help build a sense of resilience
• Exercising regularly to support your body’s natural balance and energy levels

2. Opposite action: responding differently to emotional urges

When emotions feel intense, they often come with strong urges. Wanting to lash out, hide away, or numb the feeling is the brain’s way of protecting us from discomfort. However, acting on these urges usually brings only short-term relief and longer-term suffering.
The ‘opposite action’ skill helps to break that pattern. It means noticing the emotion, recognising what it’s pushing you to do, and then consciously doing the opposite. For example:

• If anger pulls you towards confrontation, choose to step back, take a breath or walk away
• If sadness makes you want to withdraw, gently reach out to someone instead
• If anxiety urges you to avoid something, try taking one small action towards it

Over time, these small, opposite actions become the building blocks for longer-term emotional balance. This helps you behave in ways that support your wellbeing, rather than reacting out of instinct in ways that don’t feel productive.

3. Mindfulness of current emotion: allowing feelings, instead of avoiding them

Many of us are wired to escape uncomfortable emotions. You might relate to sometimes distracting yourself from feelings or trying to push them away. However, that often keeps the emotion lingering beneath the surface.

Mindfulness of current emotion as the practice of doing the opposite: noticing what you feel, naming it and allowing it to exist without judgement.

This means tuning into the physical sensations that come with emotion and observing them, rather than trying to make them stop. They might include a racing heart, tight chest or heavy stomach. 

Instead of attaching to unhelpful thoughts such as ‘I shouldn’t feel this way’, you might reframe your perspective as ‘this is sadness; it feels heavy in my body right now.’

By staying present with what’s happening in the moment, you give emotions space to move through naturally.