How Do We Regulate Our Emotions?
Emotion is one of the most important concepts among human mental processes. Every one of us tries many things, whether they work or not, to control our emotions, regulate them, and create more functional and positive feelings. Because having positive emotions is, most of the time, our most important worldly goal. We set goals for ourselves or adopt a certain lifestyle to feel happier, better, more at peace, or more comfortable. Some of us think we will reach inner peace by earning more money, others by gaining power; some of us seek happiness by helping other people, others by strengthening our social connections; some of us want to reach peace through worship, others through meditation… Whether we admit it or not, a part of us that we cannot even control is always chasing after feeling happier and better. Even though we may think there are much more sacred sources of motivation behind our behaviors, most of the time our goal is simply to feel better. In this sense we are all selfish, but along the way we seek positive emotions, we often end up making others happy too.
No matter how much we want to reach positive emotions, our mind and body are always on alert. Under the effect of stressful experiences, feelings that challenge us can appear all at once. Sometimes we want to control our emotions and relax through methods that don't work at all. For example, we may overeat or watch shows for hours; we may become dependent on alcohol or harm ourselves. Whatever method we use to relax, we do it because it actually works in the short term. However, in the long term we may struggle to truly understand what our problem is and to feel better by finding realistic and functional solutions to these problems.
In this article, I will talk to you about the emotion regulation process. Emotion regulation is a process that includes reducing emotional reactions, controlling emotions, accepting emotions, or reappraising emotions; fundamentally, it refers to the formation of emotions and our efforts to control them. There are different explanations from different theorists about what emotion regulation means. However, it can generally be said that emotion regulation is a helpful process for individuals, and that having difficulty with emotion regulation can bring emotional problems along with it. To understand how we regulate our emotions, James Gross developed the process model of emotion regulation. This model gives us clues about how emotion arises and is managed as a mental process. These clues make it easier for us to notice our emotions, to see the methods we use to control them, and to develop new, alternative, and helpful ways of coping. Below, I will share with you the five steps of emotion regulation as suggested by this model.
1) The first step of the emotion regulation process is the situation selection. Many of our experiences—such as meeting up with a friend and going to a restaurant, going to the gym, going for a walk, listening to music, or provoking someone into an argument—whether we are aware of it or not, are actually related to situations that we, while taking responsibility, choose to be in. It is not always possible to choose the situation we will be in. In such cases, the emotion regulation process begins with the second step, situation modification, or the third step, attentional deployment. However, in many situations, where, with whom, and how we will be present is, to a certain extent, within our own decision and responsibility.
If it weren't for social norms or certain other inhibiting factors at the stage of choosing the situation, most of us would probably prefer to be in the situation that would make us happiest. However, life is often full of obstacles. For this reason, the battle to feel good will already begin at this very first step. The winners, generally, will be people who can recognize their own needs and make an effort to meet them, who believe that they themselves matter too and that they need to make themselves happy as well, rather than constantly trying to please others.
2) The second step in the emotion regulation process refers to situation modification. Whether we choose the situation ourselves or find ourselves already in one, the need to change the situation often arises. Imagine you've met up with a friend and an unpleasant topic comes up. Even if the situation we're in generally makes us feel good, the topic that comes up can have the potential to disturb our peace. In such a case, trying to change the subject or going to the restroom is a step we take toward modifying the situation. In fact, our emotions become active from the moment we enter a situation, and they can follow a fluctuating course along with the changes in our surroundings and our thoughts. For this reason, situation modification is a method we often apply in our daily lives without even being aware of it. How functional this method is plays an important role in determining how we feel.
3) The third step is the attentional deployment step. It emphasizes that what we focus on and pay attention to in the situation we are in matters. Let's imagine we've gone to a hotel for vacation, and suppose the food is very bad but the sea and the pool are wonderful. In such a case, focusing on the food will make us feel restless and unable to enjoy our vacation, while focusing on the beauty of the sea will help us enjoy it more. Of course, the hotel could still have been left and a better one could have been switched to at the second step, situation modification, but even so, positive and negative stimuli we could focus on would likely await us in every circumstance. For this reason, what we choose to look at, hear, and smell is an important factor that will determine how we feel.
4) We've chosen our situation, changed it as needed, and focused on the stimulus that makes us feel better… Doing all of this may have already made us feel better. However, the emotion regulation process doesn't always proceed according to a perfect rule. Some steps may fall away, some steps may repeat, and sometimes applying certain steps may not make us feel good enough. For this reason, one of the steps I consider most important is the fourth step, namely the cognitive reappraisal stage.
At this stage, we reinterpret what the circumstances we're in mean. I say "reinterpret" because we've probably already made our primary interpretation beforehand, without even realizing it. Interpretations like "this hotel is terrible," "my friend is telling me this to upset me," "I'll never succeed on this exam," "people are always out to get me," "the food turned out awful," or "I could have accomplished more" are all thoughts that can cause us to feel negative. In the process of cognitive reappraisal, the thought we hold is rationally examined and an alternative perspective is put forward. For example, alternative interpretations like "this hotel isn't great, but it's not bad enough to ruin my good time," "even though what my friend said upset me, maybe their intention was actually to make me feel better," "I've succeeded at things before, and if I can relax a little, maybe I can get a good result on this exam too," or "the food isn't great, but it's not the biggest issue in the world" will be directly connected to how we feel and will play a key role in helping us feel better. The goal here is never to play the optimist just for the sake of it. It simply refers to the process of re-examining, through the eyes of a healthy adult, the primary interpretation that makes us feel bad, brainstorming to produce a mature and rational interpretation, and arriving, through reappraisal, at a more realistic and useful interpretation.
5) Each individual has a predisposition, formed in advance, that shapes the response they'll give to the emotion they feel. We call this "response predisposition." The difference between someone who withdraws into gloom after a similar experience and someone else who gets angry and disrupts everyone around them can, in some cases, be attributed to this predisposition. The fifth step involves regulating the behavioral, experiential, or psychological response that emerges after the first four steps. The outputs of the emotion we feel are turned into a response, either without being processed at all or after being softened. For example, when we don't like the meal we've eaten at a restaurant, we can turn the sadness or anger we feel into a response by yelling at the waiter, or by behaving in an avoidant way as if the food was actually quite good. How we choose to respond here is part of the response modulation step.
Suppression and Reappraisal
Two important methods of emotion regulation are recognized. One is suppressing the felt emotion and acting as if it doesn't actually exist. The other refers to reinterpreting the thoughts we produce about the situation we're in. Between these two emotion regulation methods, reappraisal has been found to be functional, while suppression has been found to be dysfunctional. Reappraisal is one of the antecedent-focused steps of emotion regulation, and it's an important skill that can be used to make a functional intervention before an emotional response emerges. Suppression, on the other hand, is observed at the response modulation step. This shows that the emotion itself cannot be intervened in, and that, in the short term, only the response can be changed.
The effort to regulate a negative emotion we experience, either by reappraising the thought that causes it or through an alternative behavior, reduces emotional reactions and softens the emotion we feel. On the other hand, trying to regulate the challenging emotions we feel by suppressing the experiences and thoughts that cause them, even though it appears to eliminate the visible emotional reactions, actually creates tension in the body and produces various negative physiological and psychological consequences.
To summarize, when we look at the emotion regulation process through the lens of a model, it appears to have a fairly complex and comprehensive structure. There are some points that have been found to be functional for regulating our emotions and feeling better. According to these points, choosing to be in environments and situations that will make us feel better, shaping and regulating, when necessary, the environment or situation we're in according to our own needs, focusing, when needed, on stimuli that will make us feel better while trying to move away from our tendency to focus on the negative, and being able to reappraise the thoughts we develop after our experiences by replacing them with realistic and functional ones, will help us soften the emotions we feel. Finally, at points where we can't control our emotions, noticing the dysfunctional responses we give to emotions that challenge us and trying to regulate them, so as not to enter new challenging emotion-state cycles, also appears to be a method that will help us avoid social problems and can be of help to us in the long run.
Source:
Gross, J. J. (2001). Emotion regulation in adulthood: Timing is everything. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 10(6), 214–219.
Malik Kubilay ÇADIRCIOĞLU
