conflict

Strengthen Your Emotions: Consistent Regulation Practices

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By Stacy Hixon, MA, LPC-S, CCTP

Emotional regulation is the ability to notice and understand your emotions. It also involves managing them so they do not control your behavior or decisions.

It involves pausing, tolerating emotional discomfort, and responding in a thoughtful way rather than reacting impulsively.

Most people delay thinking about implementing emotional regulation skills. They wait until they are in crisis. They often reach a stress level of 10 before considering these skills. Before they realize it though, they are back in crisis again when the next wave of stress hits.

Emotional regulation skills work most effectively when we practice them consistently. It’s like strengthening a muscle. We have to learn to work out the brain’s ability to pause, regulate and respond rather than react. Our nervous system learns through repetition.

When we practice emotional regulation several times a day, we learn to feel calm and emotionally stable consistently. Practicing during neutral and positive moments allows our brain to learn to process without the pressure of intense emotions. Over time, this repetition ingrains the skills as second nature. We can then use them when we’re feeling stressed, angry, anxious, or experiencing a plethora of other difficult emotions.

Guidelines for Emotional Regulation:

  • Practice at least 3 times a day and then every time you feel stressed or difficult emotions throughout the day.
  • Spend about 5 minutes practicing in the morning when you awaken, at lunch and then before bed.
  • Be patient with the process. Emotional regulation is a skill that develops over time through repetition.
  • The goal is to make the tools automatic responses when difficult emotions arise.

If emotional regulation is only practiced during times of emotional crisis, it may not work at all. It might not be as effective. Regular practice trains the mind and nervous system to use these strategies naturally when we are feeling dysregulated.

Below are a list of emotional regulation skills. We suggest choosing 2 at a time to alternate practicing for a week at a time. You may switch the following week to try different ones and see which ones you like the best.

  1. Box breathing
    Inhale 4 seconds, hold 4 seconds, exhale 4 seconds, hold 4 seconds. Repeat several cycles to calm the nervous system.
  2. 5-4-3-2-1 grounding
    Identify 5 things you see, 4 you feel, 3 you hear, 2 you smell, 1 you taste.
  3. Name the emotion
    Pause and label the feeling precisely. Example: frustrated, ashamed, overwhelmed.
  4. Temperature change
    Splash cold water on the face. Alternatively, hold a cold pack to activate the dive reflex. This will lower emotional intensity.
  5. Opposite action
    Do the behavioral opposite of the emotional urge when the emotion is not justified by the situation.
  6. Cognitive reframe
    Identify the automatic thought and generate at least two alternative explanations.
  7. Progressive muscle relaxation
    Systematically tense and release muscle groups from head to toe.
  8. Body movement discharge
    Brief physical activity such as walking, stretching, or shaking out tension.
  9. Self soothing through senses
    Use sensory input such as music, scent, texture, or warmth to calm the nervous system.
  10. Urge surfing
    Observe emotional urges like waves that rise, peak, and fall without acting on them.
  11. Emotion intensity scaling
    Rate the emotion from 0 to 10 to create psychological distance and track reduction.
  12. Mindful breathing
    Focus attention only on the breath moving in and out.
  13. Thought defusion
    Observe thoughts as mental events rather than facts.
  14. Radical acceptance
    Acknowledge reality as it is without fighting it internally.
  15. Containment visualization
    Mentally place distressing thoughts into a container to revisit later.
  16. Self validation
    Acknowledge that the emotion makes sense given the situation or past experiences.
  17. Delay response
    Wait 10 to 20 minutes before responding to a triggering situation.
  18. Values check
    Ask: what action here aligns with the person I want to be.
  19. Safe person contact
    Reach out to a trusted individual for grounding conversation.
  20. Compassionate self talk
    Speak internally as one would to a respected friend who is struggling.

© 2026 LifeWise Counseling and Wellness, LLC. All rights reserved. lifewisetx.com

Dealing with Hurt: A Deeper Look at Perspectives

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By Stacy Hixon, MA, LPC-S, CCTP

It is difficult, when someone hurts you, not to see things only from your side of the pain. When we are hurting, our mind naturally centers our own experience. However, it is important to remember that there is another person on the other side of that hurt who may also be struggling and may not be considering your perspective either.

Most people do not wake up in the morning intending to hurt someone else. While there are certainly exceptions, the majority of people act from their own emotions, fears, and unresolved experiences rather than a conscious desire to cause harm. When someone does intentionally try to hurt others, that is a sign that they need to take a long and honest look at themselves.

How Perspective Shapes Reality

I often tell my clients that five people can watch the same sunset and describe five completely different experiences. One may notice the colors, another the quiet, another the memory it triggers, and someone else may barely notice it at all.

Are any of them wrong? No. They are simply experiencing the same moment through different lenses.

The writer Anais Nin captured this idea perfectly:

“We do not see things as they are; we see them as we are.”
Anais Nin

Our view of the world is shaped by our life experiences. Even children raised in the same family grow up with different perceptions because their parents are at different stages of maturity, stress, and life circumstances with each child.

Every experience we have shapes who we are, how we interpret events, and how we respond to others. Because our experiences are unique, our perspectives will naturally differ from those of the people around us.

A Lesson That Stayed With Me

When I was in my early twenties, I worked for a woman who was older at the time, though she was actually the age I am now. She once told me something that stayed with me for the rest of my life.

She said that we often do not understand why people behave the way they do because we do not know what they have been through.

That single sentence changed how I began to view conflict and behavior. When we do not know someone’s story, it is easy to assume their actions are about us when, in reality, they may be reacting to wounds we cannot see.

What I Learned About Hurt

When I was younger, I often personalized hurt. If someone said or did something that upset me, my immediate thought was that they did it on purpose.

Over time, through both my personal healing journey and my professional experience, I learned something different. Most people are not trying to hurt others. More often, they hurt others because they feel threatened, insecure, or emotionally overwhelmed.

When someone has not processed their own pain, they tend to react rather than reflect. Instead of pausing to understand their feelings, they lash out. When that happens, relationships can quickly become a cycle of reaction and retaliation.

What begins as hurt can easily become a back and forth exchange of pain.

When You Feel Hurt, Pause and Reflect

The next time you feel hurt, pause for a moment and ask yourself a few questions.

  • Why am I hurting right now?
  • What specifically about this situation affected me?
  • Is this truly about me, or could the other person be struggling with something within themselves?
  • Could I simply be a casualty in their internal battle?

Many times, the pain we experience comes from being caught in someone else’s unresolved struggle.

Is that fair? No. It is not.

People often bleed on others because they have not healed their own wounds. In many ways, that reality is one of the reasons counseling exists.

Protecting Yourself While Staying Open to Perspective

Looking at situations from different perspectives does not mean tolerating harmful behavior. Sometimes the healthiest thing we can do is step away from a relationship or establish firm boundaries.

Healthy responses may include:

  • Setting clear emotional boundaries (A boundary is where the disrespect ends, it’s not a demand for the other person to obey.)
  • Limiting contact with someone who repeatedly causes harm
  • Protecting your mental and emotional well being
  • Recognizing that someone may not be capable of seeing another perspective

It is completely acceptable to prioritize your own wellbeing.

At the same time, it can be valuable to remember that our view, while valid, is not the only view that exists. Human emotions and behavior are complex, nuanced, and deeply shaped by personal history.

Questions for Reflection and Conversation

Consider these questions and feel free to share your thoughts:

  • Have you ever realized later that someone’s behavior was more about their struggles than about you?
  • Has your perspective on conflict changed as you have gained life experience?
  • What helps you pause and reflect before reacting when you feel hurt?

Your experiences and insights may help someone else see their situation in a new way.

Key Takeaways

  • People often react from their own wounds rather than from a desire to hurt others
  • Every person views the world through the lens of their own life experiences
  • Hurt in relationships often comes from emotional reactivity and unprocessed pain
  • Reflection can help us respond thoughtfully rather than react emotionally
  • Healthy boundaries are necessary when someone repeatedly causes harm

© 2026 LifeWise Counseling and Wellness, LLC. All rights reserved. lifewisetx.com