Emotional Regulation: Connecting with Others as a Human Superpower!
Emotional regulation is our human superpower—the bedrock of our well-being, self-esteem, and resilience. It’s a way of being that means we can navigate the ups and downs of life without becoming overwhelmed. We can stand up as the waves crash over us! In contrast, emotional dysregulation can feel like being tossed around in the sea and is the source of most personal and family mental health issues, including anxiety, depression, and ADHD.
Emotional self-regulation has two core elements. The first is about managing our emotions through our body, as discussed previously. The second is about regulating our emotions through connection with other people, and this is the subject of this blog.
Managing our emotions by connecting with other people.
A crucial feature of human interactions is that we all ‘co-regulate’ through our emotional, right brain-to-right brain communication that happens out of conscious awareness. This co-regulation is also experienced through bodily communications as our eyes, tone of voice, speech, body movements, and touch convey our meanings. As we become more regulated in ourselves, we are less likely to be disturbed by other people, and the more significant regulating influence we can have on them. Sometimes, in the moment, we may co-regulate calmness. Still, other times, it may be an expanding energy such as happiness or frustration or a contracting energy such as sadness or despair. Sharing these energies openly with others can help us feel safe and secure while giving us a feeling of being seen and belonging. This is how nature intended and helps us feel even more emotionally regulated.
Emotional regulation is particularly important for parents to understand because when we learn to regulate ourselves, we can also positively impact our children's mental health. Through our own regulation, we can make available the consistent, predictable, and emotionally available connections that they need to thrive. Self-regulation is particularly important when interacting with younger children because younger brains are very malleable and vulnerable to disruptive influences (think stressed parents, social media, smartphones). Also, because parents are not perfect, and are typically only attuned a third of the time, being regulated means we can be sensitive to ruptures in the relationship and repair them before the relationship goes off course.
Nature has designed a bottom-up physiological stress response that is quick and always available to us in real-time—and that is through our breathing. We have to breathe anyway, so in a stress response we intentionally focus on our breathing to slow down our hearts and, in turn, calm our stressed nervous system. This is so simple to implement in the moment.
Breathe Out
When stress happens unexpectedly, our most natural, unconscious reaction is often to breathe in quickly, like in a large gulp, or to hold our breath. As such, our first intentional, conscious reaction has to be to breathe out. After this, as you breathe, focus on breathing out for longer than you breathe in. This slows down your heartbeat and helps your body come out of the stress response. Breathing out until you feel your tummy being pulled in means you work with your body’s natural breathing movement so it can respond quickly.
Deep Breaths
Taking two or three deep breaths with the exhale longer than the inhale is very powerful for stress release. However, when your stress is particularly heightened, doing a double inhale (like a sob the way a child does when he is crying) can really inflate your lungs. This is called a ‘physiological sigh’ and allows even more carbon dioxide to leave your body, making the response faster so you feel more grounded more quickly.
Stress-Release Practice
For ongoing emotional regulation, we can also implement a silent stress-release practice throughout the day, either alone, in meetings, or waiting for a date to appear. For information about implementing a relaxed and chilled lifestyle, click here.
Above all, this is a message of hope and empowerment for parents – we existed long before doctors, psychiatrists, or psychotherapists, and we play a critical role in our children’s self-regulation and mental health. Adopting self-regulation in dealing with issues can mean letting go of our immediate top-down responses in favour of a bottom-up approach, at least initially. This is particularly important because stress impacts our minds so it is very hard to respond in the moment with those impacted minds. However, when we are calmer and our minds can fully engage, we can then choose the appropriate top-down response for whatever the issue is.
So, focusing on breathing and bottom-up processing as a way of self-regulation could make a real difference to our own and the whole family’s mental health, as we all release our emotional regulation ‘superpower’ as our natural way of being!
