Helping our patients with emotional regulation but what is emotional regulation

An important part of counseling is to help our patients with emotional regulation.

So what is emotional regulation?

I think emotional regulation is the ability to recognize and understand feelings, PLUS the ability to fuse, defuse, or detach from a feeling and at times, “fuse/attach” with another more helpful feeling to take action.

If feelings are the “gears” in the gear box, and defusion/detachment is the clutch, then great emotional regulation is the ability to use the gearbox like a Car Racer. 

Different terrains require different gears, so different context require different feelings. Resolving conflict with feelings of love and compassion, will give you a totally different outcome to doing the same thing, but with feelings of anger and frustration.

Some may argue that we have a semi automatic gearbox. That’s is true, although it may not be functioning well at times. 

Counseling is to help with that “override” back to manual. Once it’s good again with newer habits, we can switch back to automatic again for ease.