Regulating Emotion: A Simple Check-in

​He probably wasn’t referring to regulating emotion when Ice Cube wrote the lyrics “Check yo self before you wreck yo self”, but the lyrics are catchy and they pertain perfectly to emotional awareness! Read on to learn a simple strategy you can use to gain insight into the early indications that emotion is activating up so that you can utilize a coping strategy to return to the present moment.

Regulating emotion means we are better able to shift out of high emotion before it becomes distressing and painful, thereby rendering unhealthy coping behaviours unnecessary. To regulate emotion, we need to first recognize how we experience emotion in the body. This serves two important purposes:

1. Awareness of emotion activating up in the body enables us to intervene with a healthy coping strategy before it reaches a distressing level, and
2. Developing awareness of the sensations of calm can enable us to grow and deepen them.

​It is also incredibly empowering because you will have created that internal sense of calm. One of the goals of learning to regulate emotion is to render all those unhealthy coping strategies unnecessary.

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