To my amazement, this August marks my first decade of teaching psychology. If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that regulating emotions is a paramount skill for every aspect of life. Many of my students have voiced how this topic made a bigger impact on them than several other psychology concepts. The better students, professors, parents, coworkers, and community members learn to recognize and regulate their emotions, the better their health and relationships will be.
Emotion regulation is what we do when we want to manage our emotional state. This includes changing, taking control of, or fully processing our emotions. There are a host of ways we change our emotional state using unhealthy tools such as illegal drugs, excessive alcohol consumption, overeating nutrient-lacking foods, or lashing out at others. Thankfully, psychologists have found dozens of ways to regulate emotions that lead to better long-term mental, physical, and social health.
In honor of the hundreds of incredible students I’ve had over the years, here is my Ultimate Emotion Regulation Kit. Not every tool will work for everyone or every situation, but we can focus on one or two new strategies to experiment with. When we have healthy options at our........