Humans are profoundly emotional beings—one study found that we experience at least one emotion 90% of the time.
But while we’re constantly feeling—everything from joy to gratitude to anger to fear—we don’t always have the tools to recognize, name and regulate those feelings. And that can make it tempting to just squish down or avoid any tricky, sticky emotions we have.
As New York Times bestselling author and clinical psychologist Ramani Durvasula Ph.D. tells SUCCESS+, it’s important to honor and experience your emotions. Even the tough ones.
“I think that the challenge becomes, when we think about quote-unquote ‘controlling’ the emotion, it cannot be about denying the emotion, avoiding the emotion [or] not experiencing the emotion,” Durvasula explains. “That’s not how emotion works. You do that, and it’s like Whac-A-Mole—it’s going to come out somewhere else.”
Here are some tips from the experts for recognizing and regulating your emotions, without letting them get the best of you.
1. Figure out what emotions feel like for you
Our individual emotional responses have been modeled by a number of factors, for example, what we saw growing up from our parents, what was appropriate in our culture and what’s worked for us in vulnerable situations in the past. We all have a sort of built-in repertoire “which might not always be a good one,” Durvasula says with a chuckle.
“Almost everybody has to do an emotional self-study,” she adds. “Some people, when they’re angry, cry. Some people, when they’re angry, yell. Some people… get up and walk out of a room. We need to know what are our anger go-tos?”
Furthermore, what makes one person sad might make another person angry; what makes one person happy might make another person anxious. Part of managing your own emotions is thinking about your history—in the past, how has having a difficult conversation with your partner made you feel? How has it manifested physically? Are there things you know you can expect in terms of your own reaction? Are there things you would like to do differently next time this comes up?
“I think one of the best ways to do this is after we’ve had an episode or a difficult time,” says Kristen Lee, a Boston-based behavioral science clinician, researcher and educator. “It’s a really opportune time for reflection, to say, ‘What is happening in my body? Was I clenching? Did I break out in a sweat? Did my voice go up?’ Because when we notice what happens, we’ll be better equipped to develop skills for future occurrences.”
2. Take a beat
If you’re in a situation where you start to notice some of those physiological signs of heightened emotion, one of the best things you can do is just take a second to focus.
“When we look at a lot of the therapeutic emotional regulation techniques, almost to the letter, they’re based on pausing,” Durvasula says. “Pausing and catching. Pausing and putting a hand to our pulse. Pausing and taking three deep breaths. But it’s doing something to reorient our physiology and to bring us back into the moment.”
If you feel you’re starting to get overwhelmed, or if anger is rising inside of you and you’re worried about your response, taking a pause can be enough to help you stay grounded and in control. Depending on the situation, it might even be helpful to remove yourself entirely—to say to the person who’s leading the meeting, or to the partner with whom you’re having conflict, “Hey, I need to take a minute, I’ll be right back.”
Durvasula says that physically stepping away is a very common strategy for emotional regulation, but she clarifies that it’s not the same as storming out of the room in a huff. You do need to express what’s happening before leaving, and you do need to return to the conversation within a reasonable amount of time.
The way you regulate emotion might vary a bit when it’s in your personal versus your professional life, but Lee says there are many universal applications. One thing she suggests for folks who are working to become solid communicators of their emotions is to have a “tool kit” that’s tailored to their personal goals and values.
Go into potentially difficult conversations with a keyword—she suggests words like “peace” or “integrity”—that you can use almost like a mantra when you feel your emotions spiking. You can tailor this to the conversation at hand or to the outcome you’re hoping for, and it will help you stay in control.
“When we advocate for ourselves, it doesn’t mean that we have to roll over someone’s egregious behavior,” she says. “But just in general, ask yourself, ‘How do I want to show up?’ Having that mini mantra or that key intention word can be helpful.”
4. Practice healthy habits in your day to day
Ever snapped at someone because you were tired, hungry or stressed about something totally unrelated? (Yeah, um, me either.)
Emotional regulation starts with your overall health and well-being. Factors like getting enough sleep, getting good nutrition and setting aside time to exercise or practice mindfulness can all contribute to your overall ability to regulate and express your feelings in a healthy way.
“The better we take care of ourselves, the better able we are to roll with the emotions,” Durvasula says.
Lee acknowledges that it can be difficult when we’re “activated,” or feeling angry, frustrated or overwhelmed, to quickly return to a positive mindset.
“But outside of activation, if we’re developing the ability to find a peaceful state or a nonjudgmental state—through meditation, laughter, nature [or] expressive therapies like art and music—it shows us there is such a thing as homeostasis, and that we can tap into it,” Lee adds. “I think that’s a key piece of emotional regulation.”
5. Don’t expect perfection, but keep working on it
It’s nice to think that we could be totally in control—that with enough practice, we could always identify and respond to our emotions in a cool, collected manner.
In the end, though, even with all the meditation in the world, there are times when your feelings might control you rather than the other way around. And in the event that this happens, it’s important not to beat yourself up over it. We’re human, after all, not perfect little robots.
In these cases, Durvasula says, it’s important to practice self-compassion. “Then we can also work on that next series of strategies, which are: How can we repair when we don’t express an emotion well? How do we make amends? How do we take accountability?”
Here, she continues, it’s important not to pile on excuses. You want to own the emotion and apologize for your reaction, then work to rebuild.
If all of this sounds like a lot of work, well, it is! Or it can be. And these things might come more easily to some people than others. Durvasula notes that it can be especially difficult for those who have experienced trauma, or anyone who’s been in a situation where expressing emotion wasn’t safe.
But with practice, patience—and yes, enough sleep and a little mindfulness—most of us can get to a place where we can regulate and healthily express our emotions.
“It’s finding that balance between the arrogance that we can master our emotions and the wisdom that we can be present for our emotions,” Durvasula says.
This article appears in the January 2025 issue of SUCCESS+ Magazine. Photo courtesy of eamesBot/Shutterstock
