How Emotion Regulation Skills Promote Stability

Table of ContentsView AllTable of ContentsUnderstanding Emotion RegulationExamplesThe Process ModelHealthy SkillsTips

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Understanding Emotion Regulation

Examples

The Process Model

Healthy Skills

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Many people withborderline personality disorder(BPD) struggle with basicemotion regulationskills. In fact, Marsha Linehan, one of the foremost researchers inBPDand the developer ofdialectical behavior therapy(DBT) for BPD, has suggested that emotion regulation deficits are at the core of the disorder.

Knowing how to regulate your emotions is important for everyone, whether or not you have BPD. But what is emotion regulation, and how can you improve your emotion regulation skills?

We all feel emotions, both negative or positive, on a daily basis. As children, most of us typically learn how to manage, express, and cope with these emotions in a healthy way. For some people though, including those with BPD,emotion regulationis much more difficult, sometimes due painful childhood experiences such as abuse or trauma, sometimes due to a biological vulnerability to emotional sensitivity, and sometimes because of not having been shown or taught how to manage difficult emotions.

Though it’s considered an important area of study in the world of psychology, so far there is no one agreed-upon definition of the term “emotion regulation.”

Many researchers define emotion regulation as the ability to enhance orreduce your emotionsas needed.

Other researchers use a much broader definition of emotion regulation, viewing it as a set of skills that help keep your emotional system healthy and functioning. Since emotions are not absolute and permanent, we can learn to adjust what emotion we have, how intense it is, when we have it, and how we react to it. Thedefining aspectof emotion regulation is that it occurs when a goal is activated.

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Here are some examples of activated goals that trigger the regulation of your emotions:

Sometimes emotion regulation goals overlap. For instance, you may speak soothingly to an overwrought child (extrinsic) in order to help decrease your own anger and frustration (intrinsic).

When it comes to emotion regulation, we can pick any part of the above sequence of emotion generation and influence our emotions accordingly.

Healthy emotion regulation includes components such as:

Because people with BPD can struggle with some or all of the skills on this list, this broader definition of emotion regulation mentioned above is probably the most helpful in describing the regulation deficits that are present in BPD. Fortunately, it is possible to develop some of the emotion regulation skills that you lack.

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If you need to work on your emotion regulation skills, this training is best done with the help of aBPD therapistsince it’s an important component ofdialectical behavior therapyfor BPD. However, you can try a few exercises on your own outside of therapy such as:

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5 SourcesVerywell Mind uses only high-quality sources, including peer-reviewed studies, to support the facts within our articles. Read oureditorial processto learn more about how we fact-check and keep our content accurate, reliable, and trustworthy.May JM, Richardi TM, Barth KS.Dialectical behavior therapy as treatment for borderline personality disorder.Ment Health Clin. 2016;6(2):62–67. doi:10.9740/mhc.2016.03.62Gross JJ.Emotion Regulation: Current Status and Future Prospects.Psychological Inquiry. 2015;26(1):1–26. doi:10.1080/1047840X.2014.940781Sheppes G, Suri G, Gross JJ.Emotion Regulation and Psychopathology.Annual Review of Clinical Psychology. 2015;11:379-405. doi:10.1146/annurev-clinpsy-032814-112739Fassbinder E, Schweiger U, Martius D, Brand-de Wilde O, Arntz A.Emotion Regulation in Schema Therapy and Dialectical Behavior Therapy.Front Psychol. 2016;7:1373. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2016.01373Fassbinder E, Assmann N, Schaich A, et al.PRO*BPD: effectiveness of outpatient treatment programs for borderline personality disorder: a comparison of Schema therapy and dialectical behavior therapy: study protocol for a randomized trial.BMC Psychiatry. 2018;18(1):341. doi:10.1186/s12888-018-1905-6Additional ReadingLinehan MM.Skills Training Manual for Treating Borderline Personality Disorder. New York: The Guilford Press; 1993.

5 Sources

Verywell Mind uses only high-quality sources, including peer-reviewed studies, to support the facts within our articles. Read oureditorial processto learn more about how we fact-check and keep our content accurate, reliable, and trustworthy.May JM, Richardi TM, Barth KS.Dialectical behavior therapy as treatment for borderline personality disorder.Ment Health Clin. 2016;6(2):62–67. doi:10.9740/mhc.2016.03.62Gross JJ.Emotion Regulation: Current Status and Future Prospects.Psychological Inquiry. 2015;26(1):1–26. doi:10.1080/1047840X.2014.940781Sheppes G, Suri G, Gross JJ.Emotion Regulation and Psychopathology.Annual Review of Clinical Psychology. 2015;11:379-405. doi:10.1146/annurev-clinpsy-032814-112739Fassbinder E, Schweiger U, Martius D, Brand-de Wilde O, Arntz A.Emotion Regulation in Schema Therapy and Dialectical Behavior Therapy.Front Psychol. 2016;7:1373. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2016.01373Fassbinder E, Assmann N, Schaich A, et al.PRO*BPD: effectiveness of outpatient treatment programs for borderline personality disorder: a comparison of Schema therapy and dialectical behavior therapy: study protocol for a randomized trial.BMC Psychiatry. 2018;18(1):341. doi:10.1186/s12888-018-1905-6Additional ReadingLinehan MM.Skills Training Manual for Treating Borderline Personality Disorder. New York: The Guilford Press; 1993.

Verywell Mind uses only high-quality sources, including peer-reviewed studies, to support the facts within our articles. Read oureditorial processto learn more about how we fact-check and keep our content accurate, reliable, and trustworthy.

May JM, Richardi TM, Barth KS.Dialectical behavior therapy as treatment for borderline personality disorder.Ment Health Clin. 2016;6(2):62–67. doi:10.9740/mhc.2016.03.62Gross JJ.Emotion Regulation: Current Status and Future Prospects.Psychological Inquiry. 2015;26(1):1–26. doi:10.1080/1047840X.2014.940781Sheppes G, Suri G, Gross JJ.Emotion Regulation and Psychopathology.Annual Review of Clinical Psychology. 2015;11:379-405. doi:10.1146/annurev-clinpsy-032814-112739Fassbinder E, Schweiger U, Martius D, Brand-de Wilde O, Arntz A.Emotion Regulation in Schema Therapy and Dialectical Behavior Therapy.Front Psychol. 2016;7:1373. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2016.01373Fassbinder E, Assmann N, Schaich A, et al.PRO*BPD: effectiveness of outpatient treatment programs for borderline personality disorder: a comparison of Schema therapy and dialectical behavior therapy: study protocol for a randomized trial.BMC Psychiatry. 2018;18(1):341. doi:10.1186/s12888-018-1905-6

May JM, Richardi TM, Barth KS.Dialectical behavior therapy as treatment for borderline personality disorder.Ment Health Clin. 2016;6(2):62–67. doi:10.9740/mhc.2016.03.62

Gross JJ.Emotion Regulation: Current Status and Future Prospects.Psychological Inquiry. 2015;26(1):1–26. doi:10.1080/1047840X.2014.940781

Sheppes G, Suri G, Gross JJ.Emotion Regulation and Psychopathology.Annual Review of Clinical Psychology. 2015;11:379-405. doi:10.1146/annurev-clinpsy-032814-112739

Fassbinder E, Schweiger U, Martius D, Brand-de Wilde O, Arntz A.Emotion Regulation in Schema Therapy and Dialectical Behavior Therapy.Front Psychol. 2016;7:1373. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2016.01373

Fassbinder E, Assmann N, Schaich A, et al.PRO*BPD: effectiveness of outpatient treatment programs for borderline personality disorder: a comparison of Schema therapy and dialectical behavior therapy: study protocol for a randomized trial.BMC Psychiatry. 2018;18(1):341. doi:10.1186/s12888-018-1905-6

Linehan MM.Skills Training Manual for Treating Borderline Personality Disorder. New York: The Guilford Press; 1993.

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