Greetings and Happy Sunday! I hope everyone is having a lovely start to their fall season 🍂
We received a special request to talk about regulating emotions, a topic that is important and deeply relevant to living a healthy and happy life. Given its significance, we'll take the next few weeks to explore this deeply. Whether or not you feel challenged by managing your own emotions, I encourage you to follow along—these insights are invaluable for your leadership toolkit.
Let’s begin.
The ability to regulate our emotions is a part of emotional intelligence (EQ). In sessions, I often get asked how we achieve a state in life where we remain calm and not triggered in any circumstance. How can we become less reactive to others' behavior or environmental factors? How can I feel less irritation in general? This balanced state is known as equanimity.
Equanimity is the state of mental and emotional stability or composure, especially in difficult or stressful situations. It refers to maintaining calmness and balance without being swayed by strong emotions, whether positive or negative. Equanimity involves a sense of inner peace and resilience, where we are neither overly reactive nor overly indifferent to external events, allowing for clarity of mind and wise decision-making. It's often associated with mindfulness, where one can observe experiences without becoming attached to them. The key here is letting go of attachment, which we will discuss more in the coming weeks.
Equanimity is like an emotional anchor, keeping us grounded, maintaining a clear and balanced mind, and responding (not reacting) to experiences with an even-minded attitude, which is vital to healthy emotional regulation.
Here's the thing, though… to achieve this ‘happy place,’ we must do the work to unpack what lies beneath our surface. Otherwise, you’ll be engaging in toxic positivity or spiritual bypassing. Both of which involve ignoring our true feelings and pretending everything is fine when, truly inside, we do not feel okay. This means there is no shortcut to regulating emotions.
Many contributing factors hinder our ability to regulate our emotions. So, before I can discuss controlling emotions, let’s first examine the potential of our current state.
Misalignment
When someone is struggling to regulate their emotions, it often stems from living a life that is out of alignment with their core values, purpose, or authentic self. This misalignment creates internal friction, resulting in emotional turbulence, frustration, or even burnout.
When our actions, decisions, or daily lives don’t reflect our core values or authentic desires, we experience internal conflict. This includes living a life guided by external expectations (societal norms, family pressures, etc.). This misalignment creates emotional dissonance, leading to frustration, anxiety, and even feelings of emptiness.
When we ignore our true needs or purpose, we often suppress difficult emotions like anger, sadness, or frustration. These suppressed emotions build up over time and can result in emotional outbursts or persistent low-level anxiety or general irritation.
Unresolved Trauma
Traumatic experiences are often stored in the body and mind, causing intense emotional responses that feel out of proportion to the current situation. Past trauma, especially if unprocessed, can lead to heightened emotional sensitivity and overreaction to seemingly minor triggers or feeling a constant state of irritation just below the surface.
You can read more about the nervous system and some healing techniques here
Environmental Stressors, Drainers, and Joy
Factors in your environment, such as a toxic work culture, unsupportive relationships, or chaotic home life, can create constant emotional stress. These stressors disrupt emotional regulation by creating ongoing challenges that wear down emotional resilience. Facing chronic rejection can also play a role in this category. For more on this, click here
If life circumstances drain our energy and outweigh the things that bring us joy, friction can result. This friction weighs us down, making it harder to feel happy and stay emotionally balanced.
Chronic Stress
Ongoing stress, whether from work, relationships, or financial pressures, wears down the body’s ability to manage emotions. Chronic stress can exhaust the brain’s emotional control centers, leaving people more prone to mood swings, irritability, and anxiety.
For more information on this topic, you can click here
Lack of Self-awareness and Rigid Thinking Patterns
When you are disconnected from your emotions or unaware of the patterns driving your emotional responses, it becomes difficult to manage those emotions. Self-awareness allows for reflection, which is essential for regulation.
Cognitive distortions, such as black-and-white thinking, catastrophizing, or personalization, distort reality and make emotional regulation difficult. These negative thought patterns lead to exaggerated emotional responses to situations.
For more on this topic, you can click here and here
Physical Factors: Sleep, Nutrition, Hormonal Imbalance
Sleep deprivation directly affects the brain’s ability to process and regulate emotions. The prefrontal cortex, responsible for executive function and emotional control, becomes impaired, while the amygdala (the brain’s emotional response center) becomes hyperactive.
The brain needs proper nutrients to function optimally, and certain deficiencies (e.g., in vitamins B, D, magnesium, or omega-3 fatty acids) can negatively impact mood and emotional stability.
Hormonal fluctuations, such as those caused by menstrual cycles, thyroid problems, or other endocrine issues, can significantly impact emotional stability. Hormones like cortisol, estrogen, and serotonin influence mood, making it harder to regulate emotions when imbalanced.
Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms
Using maladaptive strategies like substance abuse, overeating, or avoidance (distraction) to cope with emotions can mask the underlying issues without resolving them. These behaviors can provide temporary relief but often worsen emotional regulation over time. When these emotions build up without appropriate and healthy release, it is a recipe for inflammation and constant irritation. You can read more about what emotional buildup does to our spiritual and mental psyche here
Unmet Emotional Needs
When emotional needs like love, validation, security, or autonomy go unmet, it can create chronic emotional stress. This includes being kind and loving toward yourself vs. constant self-rejection with negative self-talk. All of this can manifest as mood swings, irritability, or an inability to soothe oneself because the core emotional needs remain unaddressed. For more on this, you can read here and here
Practicing Awareness
Over the next few weeks we will dive into the purpose of emotions, the art of letting go of attachment, managing expectations, and the different strategies we can employ to improve our emotional regulation. This week, please take a few minutes each day and reflect on each area of your life. See where you may need to shed some old habits, remove yourself from toxic situations, or employ healthier coping mechanisms. I also suggest making a list of drainers and joys to see where your current circumstances fall. Do your drainers outweigh your joys?
Use your awareness and the lists above to see where you might have occurrences in these areas and where you can begin to make some changes. Are you living in alignment with your core values or life purpose? Are you being honest with yourself? Can you listen deep enough to hear what is happening beneath the surface?
I hope you enjoy your week and the beginning of your fall season. I’ll see you back here next Sunday for more discussion on emotional regulation.