Research shows that emotion regulation, that is, the ability to handle emotions appropriately, plays a very important role in developing or maintaining a psychopathology. Sooner or later, a person's emotional skill will trigger a range of behaviours which, if they are poorly adaptive, can lead…
Research shows that emotion regulation, that is, the ability to handle emotions appropriately, plays a very important role in developing or maintaining a psychopathology. Sooner or later, a person's emotional skill will trigger a range of behaviours which, if they are poorly adaptive, can lead to emotional problems and, therefore, to psychopathological ones. The first emotion regulation skills are acquired through interactions with us, the main caregivers. It is important to teach these strategies during childhood because, although they have been shown to be malleable throughout life, studies show they are never learned as well as in childhood. Some important points to bear in mind are:
There are different kinds of emotion regulation strategies that can be used: problem solving, distraction, forgetting, acceptance, mood improvement, reappraisal, giving up, rumination… Each of these strategies has emotional, social and cognitive consequences, and some are more adaptive than others depending on the situation.
When introducing these emotional strategies, we need to be careful if we are applying them to children up to the age of 6, since they may not yet have the cognitive skills needed to put them into practice.
Context is very important when teaching emotion regulation strategies. Some strategies may seem more or less suitable in general, but it will always depend on the context, on the situation. In short, it is important to teach that there are different strategies for regulating emotions and that, depending on the situation, we have to decide which one might be the most appropriate.
And now, do you think it is important to teach good emotion regulation?
References
Cracco, E., Goossens, L., and Braet, C. (2017). Emotion regulation across childhood and adolescence: evidence for a maladaptive shift in adolescence. European child & adolescent psychiatry, 26(8), 909-921.
Rovella, A., and Giaroli, A. E (2018). El estudio dimensional de las emociones y la regulación emocional. Implicancia para la psicopatología.