People say this all the time, like it’s a bad thing. “Oh, you’re so emotional.” How does that make you feel, huh? I get it, I do.
I get angry. I get scared. I feel love and compassion for people I don’t even know. I can find ridiculous amounts of joy in very small things when I’m actually paying attention.
Emotions are part of life. Sometimes they can be inappropriate. Others? Totally natural. Having emotions isn’t the problem really now, is it? What matters is what happens next.
A recent study looked at college students dealing with stress and taught them several emotional regulation skills, including focused attention and cognitive reappraisal. Cognitive reappraisal is essentially learning to look at a situation again and ask whether there might be another way to understand it.
The participants were also tested using neuroimaging, and the results suggested changes in emotional reactivity and regulation after the training. That doesn’t mean they stopped having difficult emotions. It means they may have become better at working with them. That distinction matters.
Emotional regulation isn’t about becoming calm, pleasant, or unbothered all the time. It’s about having enough awareness and flexibility to notice what we’re feeling without automatically handing it the steering wheel.
How cool is that?
Enhancing Resilience, Flexibility, and Well-Being Through Cognitive-Emotional Training: Behavioral and Neural Evidence
Read the study