How to Deal With Dysregulation

Table of ContentsView AllTable of ContentsWhat Is Dysregulation?CausesIs Dysregulation a Mental Disorder?SignsImpactTreatmentSupporting Your ChildSummary

Table of ContentsView All

View All

Table of Contents

What Is Dysregulation?

Causes

Is Dysregulation a Mental Disorder?

Signs

Impact

Treatment

Supporting Your Child

Summary

Close

Dysregulation, or emotional dysregulation, is an inability to control or regulate one’s emotional responses, which can lead to significant mood swings, significant changes in mood, oremotional lability. It can involve many emotions, including sadness, anger, irritability, and frustration.

While dysregulation is typically thought of as a childhood problem that usually resolves itself as a child learns proper emotional regulation skills and strategies, dysregulation may continue into adulthood.

For these individuals, emotional dysregulation can lead to a lifetime of struggles, including problems with interpersonal relationships, school performance, and the inability to function effectively in a job or at work.

Press Play for Advice On Regulating Your Emotions

What Triggers Dysregulation?

Why is it that some people have no trouble remaining calm, cool, and collected while others fall apart at the first instance of something going wrong in their life?

The answer is that there are likely multiple causes; however, there is one that has been consistently shown in the research literature. That cause is early psychological trauma resulting from abuse or neglect on the part of the caregiver.This results in something known as areactive attachment disorder.

In addition, a parent who has emotional dysregulation will also struggle to teach their child how to regulate emotions. Since children are not naturally born with emotional regulation coping skills, having a parent who cannot model effective coping puts a child at risk for emotional dysregulation themselves.

While dysregulation isn’t necessarily a mental disorder (or a sign of one), we know that emotional dysregulation in childhood can be a risk factor for later mental disorders. Some disorders are also more likely to involve emotional dysregulation.

Below is a list of the disorders most commonly associated with emotional dysregulation:

When emotional dysregulation appears as part of a diagnosed mental disorder, it typically involves a heightened sensitivity to emotional stimuli and a lessened ability to return to a normal emotional state within a reasonable amount of time.

What Are Signs of Dysregulation?

In general, emotional dysregulation involves having emotions that are overly intense in comparison to the situation that triggered them. This can mean not being able to calm down, avoiding difficult emotions, or focusing your attention on the negative. Most people with emotional dysregulation also behave in an impulsive manner when their emotions (fear, sadness, or anger) areout of control.

Below are some examples of what it looks like when someone is experiencing emotional dysregulation.

Note that the behaviors of emotional dysregulation may show up differently in children, involving temper tantrums, outbursts, crying, refusing to make eye contact or speak, etc.

Impact of Emotional Dysregulation

Being unable to manage your emotions and their effects on your behavior can have a range of negative effects on your adult life. For instance:

A child with emotional dysregulation may experience the following outcomes:

How Do You Fix Dysregulation?

The two main options for treating emotion dysregulation are medication and therapy, depending on the individual situation. Let’s take a look at each of these in turn.

Medication

Medication may be used to treat emotion dysregulation when it is part of a larger mental disorder. For example, ADHD will be treated withstimulants, depression will be treated withantidepressants, and other issues might be treated withantipsychotics.

Therapy

In general, this type of therapy involves improvingmindfulness, validating your emotions, and engaging in healthy habits. It also teaches the skills needed to regulate your emotions. Through DBT, you learn to focus on the present moment, how to become aware of your thoughts, feelings, and behaviors, and how to deal with stressful situations.

DBT argues that there are three “states of mind:”

DBT is about showing you that you can see situations as shades of grey rather than all black and white (in other words, combining your emotional mind and logic mind).

Journaling

If you’ve just experienced a stressful situation or crisis and want to try a little DBT at home, pull out a journal and answer these questions.

The goal of DBT is to balance your emotions with logic to obtain more positive outcomes from the situations that you find stressful. The goal is also to teach you to become more aware of the connections between your thoughts, feelings, and actions. In this way, it’s expected that you will be able to better manage your emotions in your daily life.

How to Deal With Negative Emotions

Parenting a Child with Emotion Dysregulation

Your child also needs to know that they can reach out to you for help and comfort when needed. Having a supportive and reliable parent figure in their life will help to protect them against problems with emotional dysregulation.

ADHD Symptom Spotlight: Emotional Dysregulation

Whether it’s you, your child, or someone you know who struggles with emotion dysregulation, it is important to know that this is something that can improve over time. In fact, 88% of those diagnosed with BPD are not predicted to meet criteria 10 years down the road.This goes to show that emotion regulation strategies can be learned and are very helpful for improving your situation and living the best life possible.

Regardless of your current circumstances, you can make changes that will result in improved social, school, and work functioning. You can learn to manage the stressful situations that cause you pain and work through past hurts or mistreatment that led you to where you are today.

6 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.Dunn EC, Nishimi K, Gomez SH, Powers A, Bradley B.Developmental timing of trauma exposure and emotion dysregulation in adulthood: Are there sensitive periods when trauma is most harmful?J Affect Disord. 2018;227:869-877. doi:10.1016/j.jad.2017.10.045Dvir Y, Ford JD, Hill M, Frazier JA.Childhood maltreatment, emotional dysregulation, and psychiatric comorbidities.Harv Rev Psychiatry. 2014;22(3):149-161. doi:10.1097/HRP.0000000000000014Fassbinder 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.2016.01373Linehan M.Cognitive-behavioral treatment of borderline personality disorder. 1st ed. Guilford Press; 1993.The National Institute of Mental Health.Disruptive mood dysregulation disorder: The basics.Zanarini MC, Frankenburg FR, Hennen J, Reich DB, Silk KR.Prediction of the 10-year course of borderline personality disorder.Am J Psychiatry. 2006;163(5):827-832. doi:10.1176/ajp.2006.163.5.827

6 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.Dunn EC, Nishimi K, Gomez SH, Powers A, Bradley B.Developmental timing of trauma exposure and emotion dysregulation in adulthood: Are there sensitive periods when trauma is most harmful?J Affect Disord. 2018;227:869-877. doi:10.1016/j.jad.2017.10.045Dvir Y, Ford JD, Hill M, Frazier JA.Childhood maltreatment, emotional dysregulation, and psychiatric comorbidities.Harv Rev Psychiatry. 2014;22(3):149-161. doi:10.1097/HRP.0000000000000014Fassbinder 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.2016.01373Linehan M.Cognitive-behavioral treatment of borderline personality disorder. 1st ed. Guilford Press; 1993.The National Institute of Mental Health.Disruptive mood dysregulation disorder: The basics.Zanarini MC, Frankenburg FR, Hennen J, Reich DB, Silk KR.Prediction of the 10-year course of borderline personality disorder.Am J Psychiatry. 2006;163(5):827-832. doi:10.1176/ajp.2006.163.5.827

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.

Dunn EC, Nishimi K, Gomez SH, Powers A, Bradley B.Developmental timing of trauma exposure and emotion dysregulation in adulthood: Are there sensitive periods when trauma is most harmful?J Affect Disord. 2018;227:869-877. doi:10.1016/j.jad.2017.10.045Dvir Y, Ford JD, Hill M, Frazier JA.Childhood maltreatment, emotional dysregulation, and psychiatric comorbidities.Harv Rev Psychiatry. 2014;22(3):149-161. doi:10.1097/HRP.0000000000000014Fassbinder 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.2016.01373Linehan M.Cognitive-behavioral treatment of borderline personality disorder. 1st ed. Guilford Press; 1993.The National Institute of Mental Health.Disruptive mood dysregulation disorder: The basics.Zanarini MC, Frankenburg FR, Hennen J, Reich DB, Silk KR.Prediction of the 10-year course of borderline personality disorder.Am J Psychiatry. 2006;163(5):827-832. doi:10.1176/ajp.2006.163.5.827

Dunn EC, Nishimi K, Gomez SH, Powers A, Bradley B.Developmental timing of trauma exposure and emotion dysregulation in adulthood: Are there sensitive periods when trauma is most harmful?J Affect Disord. 2018;227:869-877. doi:10.1016/j.jad.2017.10.045

Dvir Y, Ford JD, Hill M, Frazier JA.Childhood maltreatment, emotional dysregulation, and psychiatric comorbidities.Harv Rev Psychiatry. 2014;22(3):149-161. doi:10.1097/HRP.0000000000000014

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

Linehan M.Cognitive-behavioral treatment of borderline personality disorder. 1st ed. Guilford Press; 1993.

The National Institute of Mental Health.Disruptive mood dysregulation disorder: The basics.

Zanarini MC, Frankenburg FR, Hennen J, Reich DB, Silk KR.Prediction of the 10-year course of borderline personality disorder.Am J Psychiatry. 2006;163(5):827-832. doi:10.1176/ajp.2006.163.5.827

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