How to Better Regulate Your Emotions | Dr. Marc Brackett

Change the relationship, not the feeling

Effective regulation means shifting how you relate to emotions—such as greeting anxiety with curiosity—rather than attempting to eliminate the sensation entirely.

Emotions as background processes

Healthy functioning requires allowing emotions to remain in the background most of the time, activating regulation strategies only when environmental shifts or relationship dynamics trigger a need for intervention.

The regulation formula

Brackett's model defines Emotion Regulation (ER) as Goals plus Strategies, determined by the function of the specific Emotion, the Person's traits, and the Context (ER = G + S = f(E + P + C)).

Prevent and Reduce

Regulation includes preemptively avoiding unwanted emotional triggers (Prevent) and downregulating the intensity of difficult emotions when they arise (Reduce).

Initiate and Enhance

Upregulating is equally critical, involving the intentional initiation of emotions (like energizing a room for teaching) and enhancing positive feelings to maximize performance or connection.

Maintain equilibrium

Strategic maintenance involves sustaining helpful emotional states by avoiding disruptions and savoring positive moments to prolong beneficial moods.

No bad emotions

Anxiety signals that something important is at stake and involves uncertainty about the future, making it functional data rather than an inherently harmful state to be eradicated.

Context-dependent expression

While all emotions are acceptable to feel, their outward expression must be calibrated to the social environment, creating freedom to experience anger or frustration internally while managing behavior externally.

Person-specific strategies

Regulation tactics must account for individual differences, such as introversion or neuroticism, meaning a strategy like running might work for one person while cognitive reframing works for another.

Challenging happiness stigma

Cultural and familial programming often incorrectly equate happiness with stupidity or naivety, leading people to unconsciously suppress positive emotions to appear intelligent or discerning.

Developmental associations

Childhood experiences like bullying can create learned associations where feeling happy signals impending threat, causing adults to sabotage positive moments or feel uncomfortable with success.

Permission to feel

Emotion regulation is a learned skill set, not an innate ability, requiring conscious unlearning of generational myths such as the need to 'toughen up' or deny emotional experience.