coping skills

Strengthen Your Emotions: Consistent Regulation Practices

lifewisellcLeave a comment

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

Mastering Distress Tolerance: Effective Strategies

lifewisellcLeave a comment

By Stacy Hixon, MA, LPC-S, CCTP

We all experience stress, and stress often shows up as intense emotion. Without distress tolerance, we default to impulse. We lash out, we shut down, we avoid, we go numb. We try to escape the feeling instead of enduring it.

Distress tolerance is different from emotional regulation. Emotional regulation is about calming the storm. Distress tolerance is about surviving the storm without making it worse.

You can still use emotional regulation skills like breathing, grounding, and movement. Those help settle your nervous system, but distress tolerance goes further. It prepares you to function wisely when the discomfort does not immediately go away.

Distress tolerance becomes especially important when a situation cannot be resolved quickly. For example, when your boss says they need to speak with you later and you have to sit with uncertainty. When you are navigating a breakup and want to avoid spiraling or dissociating. When you have a presentation coming up and the nerves will not disappear on command.

Distress tolerance is learning to sit in discomfort without escalating it. It is choosing not to act on every urge. It is remaining steady enough to prevent temporary distress from turning into long term damage.

You are not trying to eliminate the emotion. You are strengthening your ability to endure it safely.

Right – but how?

Distress tolerance is practiced when you are uncomfortable and choose not to react impulsively. It is not something you master in calm moments. It is built in the middle of discomfort.

Here are practical ways to practice it:

  1. Stop trying to eliminate the feeling immediately. Tell yourself, “I do not have to solve this right now.” The goal is not instant relief. The goal is stability.
  2. Narrow your time frame. Instead of thinking about how you will survive the week, focus on surviving the next ten minutes. Distress becomes manageable when you reduce the window.
  3. Delay decisions. When you are activated, postpone major conversations, life changes, or emotional reactions. Waiting is a skill. Often, the urge passes if you give it time.
  4. Anchor to your body. Sit upright. Plant your feet on the ground. Slow your breathing. You may not feel calm, but you are signaling to your nervous system that you are safe enough.
  5. Use healthy distractions intentionally. Take a walk. Clean something. Call a grounded friend. Watch something neutral. This is not avoidance. It is giving your nervous system space to settle.
  6. Practice acceptance language. Replace “This should not be happening” with “I do not like this, but it is happening.” Fighting reality increases suffering. Acceptance reduces resistance.
  7. Track the wave. Notice that emotions rise, peak, and fall. When you sit with them instead of reacting, you build confidence that you can survive discomfort.

Distress tolerance is not about liking pain. It is about choosing not to create more pain while you are already hurting.

You are strengthening your ability to stay steady under pressure. That is a skill that changes relationships, decision making, and long term stability.

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