What Is Emotion Regulation?

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Emotion regulation is a set of learnable skills, not just something people are born with.

A review of 62 studies found that when therapy works, better emotion regulation is often part of the reason.

Therapy showed the strongest link to emotion regulation when it taught those skills directly and on purpose.

Kids don’t need to wait for therapy. Families, schools, and communities can teach coping skills early.

A recent car-buying experience left me thinking. When a salesperson pulled a bait-and-switch on pricing, I could feel my body react. My face got hot, my heart raced, and my voice got louder. Before things escalated further, another salesperson stepped in, staying remarkably calm, listening, and steering the conversation to a fix. That salesperson later told me that catching far more heat than I had shown was just part of the job, without a hint of defensiveness. How did that calm look so natural? Was it learned?

We often talk about emotion regulation as if it were temperament. One child is “easygoing” whereas another “has a temper.” But emotion regulation, meaning how we influence what we feel and how we express it, is not just something we are born with. It is a set of skills that includes recognizing a feeling, reflecting on it, and choosing how to respond. Coping is the part of emotion regulation that we........

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