Part 2: The Space Between Feeling and Action
In Part 1, we looked at what emotional regulation is, why we sometimes react more strongly than we intended, and what it is not. It isn't staying calm at any cost, never getting angry, or handling everything perfectly.
So what does it look like in practice? Here is where we move from understanding the concept to using it in ordinary situations.
Six Ways to Practise Emotional Regulation in Everyday Life
Here are six practical approaches you can experiment with.
Name the emotion before reacting
Sometimes, we know we're upset but struggle to identify what we're actually feeling.
Are you angry, disappointed, embarrassed, anxious, rejected, or hurt? Are you experiencing several emotions at once?
Try moving from a general statement such as I'm having a terrible day to something more specific: I'm disappointed because I was looking forward to this, and I'm also worried that it means I'm not a priority.
You don't have to identify the perfect word. Even a rough description can help you understand your experience more clearly.
You can ask yourself:
What am I feeling right now?
How intense is this feeling, from 0 to 10?
What happened immediately before I felt this way?
What might this emotion be telling me I need?
Naming an emotion doesn't automatically make it disappear. It can, however, give you a clearer starting point for deciding what might help.
Create a pause between the feeling and the response
When emotions are intense, the urge to act can feel immediate. You may want to send the message, defend yourself, make a decision, or end the conversation right away.
Whenever it is safe and appropriate, give yourself permission to pause.
You could put your phone down, take a short walk, drink some water, or step away from a difficult conversation for a little while. If you notice physical tension, try relaxing your shoulders and taking a few gentle, comfortable breaths.
If you need more time, communicate that clearly:
I want to talk about this, but I'm feeling overwhelmed at the moment. Can we take a short break and come back to it?
A pause is most helpful when it allows you to return to the situation with greater clarity. It isn't about using silence to punish someone or avoiding every uncomfortable conversation indefinitely.
Separate facts from interpretations
Our minds naturally try to make sense of uncertainty. Sometimes, however, we mistake our interpretation for a fact.
A friend cancels plans, and we conclude that they don't value us. A manager offers feedback, and we assume we're failing. Someone disagrees with us, and we interpret it as rejection.
Try asking yourself:
What do I know for certain?
What am I assuming?
What evidence supports my interpretation?
Is there another explanation I haven't considered?
What information would help me understand the situation better?
This is not about talking yourself out of your feelings or convincing yourself that everything is fine.
You can acknowledge that a situation hurts while remaining open to the possibility that your first interpretation may not be the only one.
Learn to recognise your emotional warning signs
Emotions often show up physically before we fully understand what we're feeling.
You might notice your jaw tightening, your heart racing, your breathing becoming shallow, or your shoulders rising when you're stressed. You may start speaking faster, interrupting, withdrawing, or feeling an urge to escape a conversation.
Learning to recognise these patterns can help you notice when you're becoming overwhelmed.
Try observing your own early warning signs without judging them. What tends to happen in your body when you're anxious? What do you notice when frustration begins building? How do you behave when you feel rejected or misunderstood?
Grounding exercises, gentle movement, and comfortable breathing may help you reconnect with the present moment. Different strategies work for different people, so experiment with what feels useful to you.
If focusing on your breathing or body makes you more uncomfortable, choose another grounding approach, such as noticing objects around you or describing what you can see and hear.
Choose a response that reflects your values
When emotions run high, our immediate impulses don't always reflect what matters to us.
You may want to lash out when you're hurt, withdraw when you're afraid, or agree to something you don't want because you're uncomfortable with disappointing someone.
Before acting, consider asking yourself: What do I want this response to achieve?
If your goal is to be understood, an insulting message may make that harder. If your goal is to protect your time, agreeing to another commitment may leave you feeling resentful. If your goal is to repair a relationship, avoiding every difficult conversation may prevent the issue from being addressed.
Choosing a values-based response doesn't mean making yourself smaller or suppressing your needs. It means considering how to express those needs in a way that reflects the person you want to be.
Sometimes, that means having a difficult conversation. Sometimes, it means saying no. And sometimes, it means accepting that you cannot control another person's response.
Learn to repair instead of getting stuck in regret
Even with practice, there will be moments when you react in ways you wish you hadn't.
Perhaps you snapped at a family member, became defensive during feedback, or said something hurtful because you were overwhelmed.
It can be tempting to replay the incident repeatedly, criticise yourself, and decide that you haven't made any progress.
Instead, try to approach the situation with both accountability and compassion.
Acknowledge what happened. Consider what contributed to your reaction. Take responsibility for the impact of your behaviour, and apologise or make amends when appropriate.
You might say, I was frustrated earlier, but I shouldn't have spoken to you that way. I'm sorry. I'd like to explain what was bothering me without taking it out on you.
You can recognise that your feelings were valid while also acknowledging that the way you expressed them was hurtful.
Self-awareness is not just noticing what went wrong. It is using that awareness to make a different choice next time.
What Does Progress Actually Look Like?
We sometimes expect personal growth to be dramatic. We imagine that one day we'll stop overthinking, never become defensive, and handle every difficult conversation with perfect composure.
Real progress is usually less dramatic.
It may look like noticing your frustration before it becomes an argument. It may mean recognising that you're anxious without immediately seeking reassurance. It may involve expressing disappointment instead of pretending you're fine, or asking for help before reaching a point of exhaustion.
Sometimes, progress means being able to sit with an uncomfortable emotion without immediately distracting yourself from it.
Other times, it means recognising that a situation genuinely needs to change rather than trying to regulate yourself into tolerating it.
And sometimes, progress means repairing a mistake instead of allowing shame to convince you that you are incapable of change.
Emotional regulation isn't about becoming unaffected by life. It is about becoming more aware of your internal experiences and more flexible in how you respond to them.
There will be difficult days. There will be moments when old patterns return. There may be circumstances in which the strategies that usually help you feel less effective.
These moments don't erase what you've learned.
If managing your emotions feels persistently difficult, affects your relationships or daily functioning, or leaves you feeling overwhelmed, speaking with a mental health professional can help you explore the underlying patterns and develop appropriate strategies. You do not need to wait until you reach a crisis point to seek support.
What Does Research Tell Us About Emotional Regulation?
Emotional regulation is a well-established area of psychological research. Research helps us understand why different strategies can be useful, while also reminding us that no single technique works equally well for every person or every situation.
Here are three useful starting points.
Emotional regulation involves more than controlling the final reaction
Psychologist James J. Gross's influential 1998 review introduced a process model of emotion regulation. It describes several points at which we may influence our emotional experience, including choosing or modifying situations, directing attention, reinterpreting a situation, and changing how we express a response.
In everyday life, this means we don't always have to wait until we feel overwhelmed before doing something. We might prepare for a difficult conversation, reduce an avoidable source of stress, redirect our attention, or reconsider an interpretation before responding.
Read the research: Gross, J. J. (1998), The Emerging Field of Emotion Regulation: An Integrative Review.
Mindfulness, reappraisal, and suppression are not interchangeable strategies
A 2017 study by Brockman and colleagues examined daily emotional experiences among 187 participants. The researchers found that mindfulness was associated with lower negative affect and higher positive affect, while emotion suppression showed the opposite pattern in their daily data. Cognitive reappraisal was associated with higher positive affect, although its relationship with negative affect varied.
These findings suggest that how we work with emotions matters. Simply hiding an emotional response is not necessarily the same as understanding it or responding flexibly.
The study also cautions against assuming that a strategy will work equally well for everyone. Its findings are associations from a particular study, not proof that one technique will produce the same outcome in every individual.
Read the research: Brockman et al. (2017), Emotion Regulation Strategies in Daily Life.
Mindfulness-based strategies can support emotional regulation, but context matters
A systematic review and meta-analysis published in 2025 examined mindfulness-based emotion regulation strategies across 110 studies, involving 8,105 participants. The researchers reported a statistically significant overall effect, with variation across study designs and outcomes.
This supports the potential usefulness of mindfulness-based approaches, while the variability in results is an important reminder that mindfulness is not a guaranteed or universal solution.
Mindfulness does not require you to empty your mind or stop having thoughts. It involves developing awareness of what is happening in the present moment and practising a less automatic response to internal experiences.
Read the research: Implementation of Mindfulness-Based Emotion Regulation Strategies: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis.
Taken together, this research supports an important point: emotional regulation is not one technique or a fixed personality trait. It involves learning to recognise emotional experiences, selecting strategies that fit the situation, and noticing whether those strategies are actually helping.
Five Takeaways You Can Practise This Week
You don't have to change every emotional pattern at once. Start with one or two small practices and give yourself time to understand what works for you.
Pause before responding. When something upsets you, take a moment before sending the message, making the decision, or continuing the argument. Ask yourself whether you need to respond immediately.
Put your emotions into words. Instead of saying I feel awful, try identifying the emotion more specifically. Are you disappointed, worried, embarrassed, lonely, angry, or overwhelmed?
Keep a brief emotion journal. At the end of the day, note one emotionally significant moment. Write down what happened, what you felt, what you thought, how you responded, and what you might try next time.
Practise one grounding strategy. Experiment with a short walk, noticing your surroundings, gentle breathing, or relaxing your muscles. Practise when you're relatively calm so you know what feels helpful before a difficult moment arises.
Focus on progress, not perfection. Instead of asking, Did I stay calm today? ask, Did I understand myself a little better? Did I notice a pattern? Did I respond differently, even in a small way?
A simple reflection exercise
The next time you experience a strong emotion, try completing these sentences:
The situation: What happened?
The emotion: What did I feel?
The interpretation: What did I tell myself about what happened?
The urge: What did I feel like doing?
The response: What did I actually do?
The learning: What might I want to try next time?
You don't need to complete this exercise perfectly or analyse every emotion you experience. The intention is to develop curiosity about your patterns, rather than treating each difficult feeling as another problem to fix.
Books to Explore
If you'd like to understand emotional regulation in greater depth, these books offer different perspectives and practical approaches.
1. Permission to Feel by Marc Brackett A useful introduction to emotional intelligence, recognising feelings, and understanding how emotions influence everyday life. Brackett draws on psychological research and his work in emotional intelligence to explore how we can better understand our own emotions and those of others.
Read more: Marc Brackett's official book page.
2. Emotional Agility by Susan David This book explores how to work with difficult thoughts and emotions without allowing them to dictate every decision. It focuses on self-acceptance, psychological flexibility, personal values, and taking meaningful action even when uncomfortable feelings are present.
Read more: Susan David's official book page.
3. The Dialectical Behavior Therapy Skills Workbook by Matthew McKay, Jeffrey C. Wood, and Jeffrey Brantley A practical workbook that introduces skills related to mindfulness, distress tolerance, emotion regulation, and interpersonal effectiveness. It can be a useful resource for readers who prefer structured exercises rather than a primarily explanatory approach.
Read more: New Harbinger Publications.
These books are educational resources, not substitutes for individualised psychological care when someone is experiencing significant or persistent distress.
Podcasts to Listen To
If you prefer learning through conversations and real-life examples, consider these episodes.
1. Hidden Brain: How to Harness Your Feelings Psychologist Ethan Kross discusses the science of emotion regulation, including self-talk, personal writing, sensory experiences, and ways of managing emotional spirals.
Listen here: Hidden Brain episode.
2. Hidden Brain: Where Do Feelings Come From? Psychologist Lisa Feldman Barrett explores how emotions develop and how our interpretations, experiences, and expectations contribute to what we feel.
Listen here: Hidden Brain episode.
3. The Happiness Lab with Dr. Laurie Santos This podcast explores the psychology and behavioural science behind well-being, including habits, relationships, and common assumptions about happiness. It is a useful broader resource for readers interested in the relationship between emotional well-being and everyday life.
Explore the podcast: The Happiness Lab on Apple Podcasts.
As with any self-help resource, take what is useful, remain curious about what fits your circumstances, and remember that listening to a podcast is not the same as receiving personalised mental health support.
A Gentle Reminder: You Are Allowed to Feel
We often spend so much time trying to control our emotions that we forget to understand them.
We tell ourselves not to be upset, not to overreact, not to care so much, or not to let things affect us. But emotions don't disappear simply because we believe we shouldn't be feeling them.
Sometimes, the first step towards responding differently is allowing ourselves to acknowledge what we feel without immediately judging it.
You can be angry and still choose not to hurt someone. You can be anxious and still take a meaningful step forward. You can be disappointed and still communicate your needs. You can feel overwhelmed and still be learning how to cope.
You can also recognise when a situation is genuinely hurting you and take steps to change it. Emotional regulation is not about learning to tolerate everything. It is about understanding your emotions well enough to make thoughtful decisions about what you need, what you value, and what you are willing to accept.
Emotional well-being isn't about how rarely you experience difficult emotions. It's also about how you learn to understand them, respond to them, and show yourself compassion along the way.
You don't have to be calm all the time to be emotionally healthy. You don't have to get every response right, either.
You just have to keep learning how to meet yourself where you are, one moment at a time.
At Love Live Learn, we believe that understanding our mental health begins with creating space for honest conversations, greater self-awareness, and compassionate support. Learning to navigate our emotions is a process, and you don't have to figure it all out on your own.
References and Further Reading
For readers who want to explore the scientific literature in more detail:
Gross, J. J. (1998). The Emerging Field of Emotion Regulation: An Integrative Review. Review of General Psychology, 2(3), 271–299. https://doi.org/10.1037/1089-2680.2.3.271
McRae, K., & Gross, J. J. (2020). Emotion Regulation. Emotion, 20(1), 1–9. https://doi.org/10.1037/emo0000703
Brockman, R., Ciarrochi, J., Parker, P., & Kashdan, T. (2017). Emotion Regulation Strategies in Daily Life: Mindfulness, Cognitive Reappraisal and Emotion Suppression. Cognitive Behaviour Therapy, 46(2), 91–113. https://doi.org/10.1080/16506073.2016.1218926
Implementation of Mindfulness-Based Emotion Regulation Strategies: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis. (2025). Read the open-access article.
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