Emotional regulation is your ability to manage and adjust your emotions in ways that help you function and connect with others.
Researchers define it as the ability to stay aware of, analyze, and change emotions to reach a goal.
People usually use emotional regulation to talk about managing negative emotions, like anger, anxiety, or sadness. But it also refers to the ways we increase positive emotions, like excitement or joy.
Emotional regulation could help you turn a feeling up, turn it down, or simply let it be, depending on the situation and your goals in the moment.
And it’s not just about you. Emotional regulation affects virtually everything in your relationships with other people.
One meta-analysis of 58 studies found that people who regulated emotions well tended to have higher cognitive empathy, more compassion, and less empathic distress — that is, getting upset on behalf of others.
Regulating your emotions helps you show up better for the people around you.
What emotional regulation actually means
When people hear “emotional regulation,” they often picture suppressing feelings — keeping a poker face, staying calm on the outside no matter what. That’s a common misunderstanding. Emotional regulation is not really about controlling or hiding how you feel.
It includes a whole range of strategies. Some of them work with your emotions from the inside: changing how you look at a situation, refocusing your attention on something else, or practicing acceptance about things you can’t change.
Others show up in how you respond outwardly: what you say, how you act, whether you walk away or stay in a difficult conversation.
Importantly, emotional regulation isn’t just about easing your negative emotions. It also means being able to amplify positive feelings — savoring a good moment, or allowing yourself to be vulnerable and express joy with others.
Adaptive vs. maladaptive emotional regulation strategies
Not all emotion regulation strategies work equally well. Researchers generally sort them into adaptive (helpful) and maladaptive (unhelpful) categories.
Adaptive strategies include:
- Cognitive reappraisal: Changing how you think about a situation — for example, changing your perspective to see a conflict as a chance to understand your partner better, rather than an attack on you.
- Acceptance: Acknowledging what you’re feeling without fighting it, or accepting an external situation you can’t change.
- Problem-solving: Focusing on what you can actually change.
Maladaptive strategies tend to make emotional difficulties worse over time. They include:
- Rumination: Replaying upsetting thoughts on a loop.
- Avoidance: Steering away from emotions or situations that trigger them.
- Suppression: Hiding your emotional response, without actually changing the feeling underneath.
Which emotion regulation strategies you choose can affect your health.
A major meta-analysis of 48 studies and more than 21,000 people found that cognitive reappraisal was linked to higher well-being, while suppressing feelings was linked with lower well-being.
People who suppress their emotions and avoid expressing them tended to have less positive feelings, weaker relationships, and a lower quality of life.
For those who tended to reappraise difficult situations they found themselves in, the effects were just the opposite.
Signs of emotion dysregulation
Emotion dysregulation — difficulty managing your emotional responses — shows up differently depending on the person and the situation. Here are a few common signs:
- Getting angry quickly and intensely, in ways that feel out of proportion to the situation
- Difficulty identifying or naming what you’re feeling
- Struggling to calm down after an upsetting event
- Impulsive behavior when emotions are running high — saying things you regret, shutting down, or acting out
- Avoiding people, conversations, or situations that might bring up uncomfortable feelings
- Emotional outbursts
- Difficulty staying focused on a task when you’re emotionally activated
- Having trouble accepting your own emotions — feeling bad about feeling bad
These patterns tend to create friction in relationships.
When you can’t manage a difficult emotion in the moment, it can often leak into how you treat the people around you, even if they had nothing to do with the situation that bothered you.
How emotional regulation shapes your relationships
Emotional regulation is one of the most important factors in relationships — and it works in two directions: how you manage your own emotions, and how you engage with your partner’s.
Your emotional regulation affects the people around you
When you let your negative emotions take the wheel on a regular basis, your relationships may suffer.
People who have trouble with emotional regulation tend to report lower relationship satisfaction, less intimacy, and more conflict.
And their romantic partners may carry a lot of stress from living with a partner who regularly struggles with emotion dysregulation.
Emotional suppression can be harmful for your relationships, too. When one partner suppresses their feelings, it can create distance in the relationship, research has found.
The other partner often experiences more stress (their blood pressure can actually go up!) and feels less connected.
When one person avoids expressing their feelings, it also prevents both parties from resolving the conflict and allows resentment to build up.
How you respond to others’ emotions can change everything
Emotional regulation in relationships isn’t just a solo effort.
Research has increasingly shown that how you regulate your partner’s emotions matters just as much — this is called interpersonal emotion regulation.
In one study of 122 couples over 28 days, how partners handled each other’s emotions during conflict had meaningful effects on sexual well-being.
On conflict days, greater perceived responsiveness, cognitive support, and physical presence were each associated with higher sexual satisfaction and desire — while perceived hostility was linked to lower satisfaction and desire.
Other research shows that when both partners feel the other is successfully managing their emotions during difficult moments, both report greater relationship quality, closeness, and intimacy.
Emotional regulation is linked to empathy and compassion
Emotional regulation is also connected to how empathic you are.
A meta-analysis of 58 studies found that adaptive emotional regulation was positively linked to cognitive and affective empathy — your ability to understand and feel what another person is feeling — and to compassion.
On the other hand, maladaptive regulation was the opposite. It was linked to higher empathic distress, being more likely to get overwhelmed by another person’s pain rather than being able to sit with them in it.
Emotional regulation doesn’t mean suppressing your feelings
Many people use “emotional regulation” to mean keeping a lid on their feelings — staying calm, not reacting, managing the outside so nobody sees what’s happening inside.
But in psychology, that actually describes emotional suppression, which is considered unhealthy.
True emotional regulation is flexible. Sometimes it means calming yourself down. But it can also mean letting yourself cry, sitting with discomfort instead of avoiding it, or allowing yourself to feel excited and not pulling back.
The goal isn’t emotional flatness. It’s being able to work with whatever you feel in a way that serves you and your relationships.
Attachment style and emotional regulation
Why do some people seem to have mastered emotional regulation while others struggle with it?
A big part of it is shaped early in life.
Your attachment style — the patterns of feelings and behavior with others that you developed in childhood — influences how you manage emotions as an adult. There are three general types of attachment: secure attachment, and the two types of insecure attachment — avoidant attachment and anxious attachment.
- Secure attachment: Securely attached people tend to use more adaptive emotion regulation strategies, especially cognitive reappraisal (looking at the problem with a different perspective). They’re more likely to stay open to their feelings, express them accurately, and seek support from others when needed.
- Avoidant attachment: These people tend to suppress and deactivate their emotions, distancing themselves from feelings, withdrawing from partners during difficult moments, and relying on strategies like denial or self-distraction. When they have an upset partner, they often disengage rather than move toward them.
- Anxious attachment: People with anxious attachment tend to hyperactivate their emotional experience — intensifying feelings like jealousy, fear, or sadness as a way to attract care from others.
Keep in mind that attachment styles are tendencies, not your fixed destiny.
You can understand them, work with them, and shift them over time — especially in therapy and with a safe, supportive partner.
Can you improve your emotional regulation?
Yes — and there’s good evidence for several ways of doing it.
Mindfulness
Mindfulness practice is one of the most well-studied routes to better emotion regulation.
A meta-analysis of 36 studies and over 12,000 people found that mindfulness was linked with cognitive reappraisal. People who practice mindfulness may be better at reinterpreting situations rather than just reacting to them.
Research also suggests that mindfulness is linked to reduced rumination and emotional avoidance. Instead, it helps people accept and stay present with difficult emotions without being swept away by them.
Therapy
Several types of therapy can help you improve emotion regulation:
- Dialectical behavior therapy (DBT): Helps develop emotion regulation skills, alongside mindfulness, distress tolerance, and interpersonal effectiveness. DBT was originally developed for borderline personality disorder but has since been used across a range of conditions.
- Acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT): Builds psychological flexibility — the ability to stay present with difficult emotions without letting them dictate your behavior.
- Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT): Helps you identify and shift unhelpful thinking patterns — many of which drive maladaptive emotion regulation.
Other ways you can learn to regulate your emotions better
Outside of formal therapy, you can also try other practices shown to help regulate emotions, including:
- Journaling to identify and name your emotional patterns
- Practicing cognitive reappraisal — pausing to ask, ‘Is there another way to look at this situation?’
- Building a habit of self-compassion around your emotional responses
- Problem-focused coping, a strategy in which you directly try to resolve the problem that’s causing distress
- Seeking support from other people you care about
Improving your emotional regulation takes time and consistency.
If you’re finding it especially difficult, consider speaking with a therapist who can help you identify what’s getting in the way.
They can help you build emotional regulation skills that work for your situation.
Further reading
Want to learn more? These Relationship Smart articles cover related topics:
- What Is Psychological Flexibility? How It Can Make Your Relationships Better
- What Is Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT)?
- Why Self-Compassion Is Key for Your Relationships: Interview with Kristin Neff
- 3 Tips for Healthy Conflict Resolution in Relationships
Claude AI
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