The Foundations of Emotional Regulation: How We Learn to Feel, Think, and Respond

Introduction

Emotional regulation is not simply a matter of willpower or personality—it is a developmental process shaped by both biology and environment. As Thomas and Chess (1985) demonstrated in their landmark work on temperament, some individuals are naturally more reactive, less adaptable, and prone to intense emotional expression. When these temperamental traits meet environments that cannot respond with consistency, empathy, or structure, emotional development can be disrupted. The result is often a lifelong struggle to manage emotion effectively.

Psychologist Marsha Linehan (1993), in Cognitive-Behavioral Treatment of Borderline Personality Disorder, describes this dynamic as a mismatch between biological vulnerability and an invalidating environment. Within such environments, emotional experiences are trivialized, punished, or ignored—teaching the child that their inner world is unreliable or wrong. Over time, emotional regulation becomes not a natural skill, but a survival task.

The Four Emotional Modulation Abilities

Linehan (1993), drawing on Gottman and Katz’s (1990) research, outlined four core abilities that form the foundation of emotional regulation. These are the skills that emotionally healthy environments teach naturally—and the same skills that therapy often helps adults rediscover.

1. Inhibiting Inappropriate Behavior in the Presence of Strong Emotion

The first ability involves learning to pause before acting—to resist mood-linked behaviors, or those driven purely by the emotion of the moment. This applies to both positive and negative affect.

For example, imagine someone who uses food as a personal reward. After a major success at work, they decide to celebrate by ordering a large pizza and eating the entire thing. In the moment, the behavior feels justified—“I earned this.” Yet afterward, guilt and shame arise. These secondary emotions don’t come from the food itself, but from the conflict between the person’s behavior and their deeper values—perhaps a desire to feel healthy, disciplined, and in control.

Because the celebratory impulse overrides that long-term value, the individual experiences the episode as a failure of self-regulation. This often leads to self-critical thoughts (“I have no willpower”), reinforcing both guilt and avoidance. The irony is that the original emotion—joy and pride—gets overshadowed by shame.

The same dynamic can occur with negative emotion: after a stressful day, a person may eat to numb sadness or anxiety. While this temporarily soothes discomfort, it ultimately strengthens the link between distress and self-defeating coping.

Learning to pause in such moments—to recognize the emotion driving the urge and act according to long-term goals rather than immediate mood—is the foundation of coordinated action. Coordinated action means choosing behaviors that align with one’s values, even when emotions push in the opposite direction.

2. Regulating Physiological Arousal (Soothing the Body)

Emotional experiences are inseparable from the body’s physiological state. Strong emotions—whether anger, fear, or excitement—activate the sympathetic nervous system, flooding the body with adrenaline and tension. Learning to soothe the physiology is the second modulation ability.

Techniques such as deep breathing, progressive muscle relaxation, grounding, and mindfulness help lower physiological arousal. These methods not only calm the body but also bring access to primary emotions—the deeper, more vulnerable feelings beneath reactive states. For instance, anger may conceal grief or loneliness. When the body settles, awareness expands, and we can begin to address what truly hurts.

This process parallels behavioral activation in cognitive behavioral therapy: acting to regulate emotion even when motivation is low. By moving, breathing, or grounding intentionally, we remind the body and mind that emotional states can shift.

3. Refocusing and Shifting Attention

The third ability involves control of attention—the capacity to focus and redirect it intentionally. Attention focusing means sustaining awareness on a chosen stimulus, while attention shifting involves moving focus away from distressing triggers to restore equilibrium.

These skills interrupt rumination, the repetitive cycle of negative thoughts that fuels emotional intensity. For example, a person may replay a painful interaction repeatedly, deepening sadness and helplessness. Learning to consciously redirect attention—to a grounding task, a soothing image, or a valued activity—breaks this loop and allows emotion to subside.

Mindfulness and cognitive defusion exercises strengthen these abilities by teaching us to observe thoughts without being consumed by them.

4. Coordinated Action: Acting According to Long-Term Goals

The fourth and most integrative ability is coordinated action—the capacity to organize behavior in alignment with external goals and personal values rather than transient moods. This is the behavioral translation of emotional maturity.

When we act purposefully—even in the presence of distress—we reaffirm agency and resilience. This might mean attending therapy despite anxiety, maintaining boundaries despite guilt, or reaching out for connection even when afraid of rejection. Such actions are not mood-dependent; they are value-dependent.

Behaviorally, this reflects the principle that we can act ourselves into different feelings rather than waiting to feel different before acting. Over time, consistent value-aligned action reshapes emotional patterns and strengthens self-trust.

The Path of Healing

Many people who grew up in invalidating or chaotic environments never learned these four abilities because they were never modeled. Emotional regulation was replaced by suppression, avoidance, or emotional extremes—patterns that once ensured survival but now cause suffering.

Therapy, particularly Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT), rebuilds these missing capacities. Through validation, mindfulness, and skills training, clients learn to calm the body, identify emotions, and express them safely. Over time, repeated experiences of empathic attunement create new neural pathways of regulation and safety.

From a developmental perspective, this process recreates what Winnicott (1965) called the facilitating environment—a relational space where emotional experience can be held, understood, and integrated. Within that environment, dysregulation becomes not a moral failing but an understandable adaptation to an environment that once failed to understand.

Conclusion

Emotional regulation is not about controlling emotions—it is about cultivating relationship with them. Through awareness, validation, and practice, we learn that feelings are not threats to manage but messages to understand. When we learn to act with intention instead of reaction, we begin to experience emotion not as chaos, but as guidance.

Healing doesn’t mean feeling less—it means feeling safely.

It means learning, perhaps for the first time, that your emotions make sense.

—Joseph Mounts M.Ed., AADC, LPC

References

Fonagy, P., Gergely, G., Jurist, E. L., & Target, M. (2002). Affect regulation, mentalization, and the development of the self. New York, NY: Other Press.

Jung, C. G. (1959). Aion: Researches into the phenomenology of the self (R. F. C. Hull, Trans.). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. (Original work published 1951)

Linehan, M. M. (1993). Cognitive-behavioral treatment of borderline personality disorder. New York, NY: Guilford Press.

Schore, A. N. (2012). The science of the art of psychotherapy. New York, NY: W. W. Norton & Company.

Siegel, D. J. (2012). The developing mind: How relationships and the brain interact to shape who we are (2nd ed.). New York, NY: Guilford Press.

Skinner, B. F. (1953). Science and human behavior. New York, NY: Macmillan.

Thomas, A., & Chess, S. (1985). Temperament and follow-up to adulthood. In J. Strelau & A. Angleitner (Eds.), Explorations in temperament: International perspectives on theory and measurement (pp. 255–263). New York, NY: Plenum Press.

Winnicott, D. W. (1965). The maturational processes and the facilitating environment: Studies in the theory of emotional development. London: Hogarth Press.