What Is Emotion Regulation?

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Emotional inertia entails being susceptible to loops of emotions or moods that are difficult to shake loose.

While emotional inertia can refer to negative or positive emotions, it more often involves negative emotions.

Early trauma is often associated with emotional inertia, as it creates a sensitivity to being triggered.

Moving past emotional inertia begins with recognizing its occurrence and building skills in self-soothing.

A ’70s song titled “I’m Hooked on a Feeling” highlights the fixation on a feeling of love that can even be addictive. This is an example of “emotional inertia”: being susceptible to loops of emotions or moods that are difficult to shake. And being able to let go of emotions is a key skill for emotional regulation.

Emotional inertia may also be defined as the resistance to emotional change (Kuppens, Allen, & Sheeber, 2010). A high degree of emotional inertia reflects a fixation on one’s inner landscape, in contrast to attending to the details of one’s environment (Kuppens, Sheeba, Yap, et. al., 2012). This may be reflected within an hour, a day, or a lifetime.

While emotional inertia may involve positive feelings such as love, it more often entails negative emotions related to a predisposition and sensitivity to become emotionally triggered. Such difficulty has been found to be associated with depression, esteem issues, and fear of negative evaluation. I’ve observed this in some clients who reported having few memories of certain periods in their lives. This is a consequence of their preoccupation with their internal reactivity to the exclusion of what was occurring around them.

Some clients have described their reactions to stressful events that occurred in the morning, leaving them wishing for the end of the day—as if they could only escape such moods through the dawning of a new day. This is an example of emotional inertia supported by difficulties in flexibility and emotional regulation in general.

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