What Is Emotion Regulation?

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When emotions grow inflexible, we become generals fighting the last war.

Rigidity of emotional response leads to self-limiting and self-destructive behavior.

The ways we interpret emotions are varied and often troublesome.

Misinterpreted, they can make us into someone we’re not.

The most pervasive emotional problem is rigidity of response. It happens to everybody to some extent, due to the habit-forming tendencies of emotional associations.

When emotions grow inflexible, we become generals fighting the last war, responding to current events with emotional associations from the past. An inflexible emotional system limits growth and development. In the extreme, it motivates profoundly self-limiting or self-destructive behavior.

Emotional rigidity results from the way we interpret emotions.

Problems of Interpretation

Conflicting: The anxiety stimulated by a spouse staying out late garners an interpretation of accident and injury, stimulating compassion with desire to help. It also stirs a conflicting interpretation of infidelity, stimulating jealousy, with motivation to punish.

Uncertain: I’m not sure what this means, but it’s probably not good.

Vacillating: The flowers on the table mean that he loves me, also that he’s........

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