5 Solid ways you can regulate your emotions

Few things can hijack an ordinary day faster than emotion: One difficult email, one anxious thought at 3 a.m., one awkward conversation replayed repeatedly in the shower, and suddenly the mind begins spiraling into irritation, sadness, fear, frustration, or catastrophizing worthy of an Oscar-winning performance.

Dr. Bernard Anselem, a French doctor specialized in neurosciences, recently reflected on this question in Aleteia France, offering several practical techniques for better emotional regulation. In his book Ces émotions qui nous dirigent, translated as The Emotions That Drive Us, he argues that intense emotions often become exhausting not simply because they exist, but because we unknowingly keep feeding them.

“An intense emotion lasts only a short time if we do not maintain it,” he explains. That idea alone feels surprisingly liberating.

Because while emotions can feel overwhelming in the moment, most people have also experienced the strange phenomenon of accidentally (or intentionally) intensifying them through endless mental replay. A small irritation becomes a personal drama. A passing insecurity turns into a full imaginary disaster complete with soundtrack and lighting.

One of Anselem’s first suggestions is deceptively simple: learn to identify emotions more precisely.

Many people use vague umbrella words like “stress” to describe wildly different experiences — fear, disappointment, anger, humiliation, anxiety, frustration. Yet developing a richer emotional vocabulary can immediately create a little internal distance.

And honestly, this rings true. Saying “I’m stressed” often leaves emotions swirling around shapelessly. Saying “I’m actually disappointed” or “I’m feeling rejected” suddenly makes the experience clearer — and usually less frightening, too.

Human beings are extraordinarily talented at emotional reruns.

A difficult interaction that lasted 45 seconds somehow becomes a six-hour internal Netflix series complete with imagined alternative endings, revenge speeches, and increasingly dramatic interpretations.

Part of emotional regulation therefore involves noticing when the mind is actively feeding a feeling long after the original moment has passed.

That does not mean pretending nothing happened. It simply means recognizing that endlessly rehearsing pain rarely softens it.

This is perhaps where emotional advice often becomes frustratingly vague.

People are constantly told to “accept their emotions,” which can sometimes sound suspiciously like being instructed to marinate permanently in anxiety while drinking herbal tea.

Yet there is probably wisdom in recognizing that fighting emotions aggressively often intensifies them too. Fear denied tends to grow louder. Sadness ignored has a habit of resurfacing elsewhere.

At the same time, acceptance does not mean resignation.

One helpful approach can simply be learning to scale emotions more honestly. Instead of declaring “Everything is awful,” it can help to pause and ask:
How angry am I actually?
A four out of 10? An eight?

And perhaps more importantly:
Is there anything I can do to gently bring that number down?

Sometimes the shift is surprisingly small but still meaningful: stepping outside, speaking to someone calming, eating properly, praying, exercising, sleeping, laughing, or deliberately introducing another emotional experience into the day rather than feeding the same spiral repeatedly. Because human emotions are rarely pure states.

People can feel grief and gratitude simultaneously. Anxiety and excitement often overlap. Happiness and sadness regularly coexist too. Someone can be deeply worried about a situation while still noticing beauty, friendship, humor, sunlight, music, or the comforting stupidity of a dog chasing a tennis ball.

That does not invalidate difficult emotions. It simply prevents them from becoming the entire emotional landscape.

Anselem also emphasizes the importance of regulating the body itself, since emotions are never purely intellectual experiences.

Anxiety accelerates breathing. Anger tightens muscles. Fear alters heart rate. Sometimes emotional regulation begins less with philosophical insight than with something as basic as slowing down physically enough for the nervous system to stop sounding the internal fire alarm.

This may partly explain why small physical actions can shift emotional states so effectively: walking outside, kneeling or closing the eyes to pray, breathing more slowly, sleeping properly, or even laughing with someone you trust. In fact my kitchen is never cleaner than when I'm feeling angry, and after a good tile scrub the anger dissipates into quiet satisfaction.

You might notice yourselves that the body often calms before the mind catches up.

Most people are not trying to become emotionless robots. They simply want a little more freedom from the exhausting feeling of being dragged around internally by every passing fear, irritation, or anxious thought.

And perhaps that begins by realizing that not every thought deserves equal authority.

Some thoughts are informative. Others are tiredness wearing a disguise. Some are worth listening to carefully. Others are simply emotional weather passing through.

Learning to distinguish between the two may be one of the most important emotional skills of all.

Because emotional balance cannot come from suppressing feelings completely, nor from surrendering entirely to them. More often, it emerges slowly (and imperfectly) through learning which inner voices deserve to remain at the table — and which are better allowed to leave quietly after making their point.