In a webinar, Dr Tracy Stewart from the University of Edinburgh talked about the importance of emotion regulation for health, wellbeing, and success at school and in life. Here are some key insights from the webinar:
Emotions help us function in daily life, and it is healthy and positive to experience, express, and be able to manage or regulate emotions. Emotions influence our cognition, our appraisal processes, our decision-making, our learning, our behaviour, and our mental health and wellbeing. Emotions typically arise from a subjective experience, and result in a coordinated response involving neurological activity, a physiological response, and some type of behaviour change. Emotional expression can vary by gender, age, and culture. Difficulties arise when our emotional reactions become too intense or are not appropriate to the situation in nature or magnitude. For emotions to be helpful to us, our responses to emotions need to be flexible, which means that we need to be able to regulate our emotions.
Emotion regulation is the influence we have over the emotions we experience: when we have them, how we experience them, and how we express them. Many people, particularly children and young people, do not realise that they can influence or change their emotions, but in fact we are able to change the type of emotion we feel, the intensity of our emotions, the course of the emotion (how long it lasts), and the quality of the emotion (how it is experienced and expressed). These are skills that can be learned and developed, although some emotional experiences are easier to regulate than others and some people are better able to regulate some situations than others. Often we regulate emotions automatically or unconsciously, but we can also do it consciously. Regulating our own emotions is known as intrinsic emotion regulation, and we can also regulate other people’s emotions, which is called extrinsic emotion regulation. We can also regulate both positive and negative emotions, and we can up-regulate (for example, by raising our own or someone else’s energy levels) or down-regulate (for example, by helping ourselves or others to slow or calm down).
Effective emotion regulation is linked to a number of important life outcomes, including success at school. Research has demonstrated a link between higher levels of emotional regulation and academic performance, persistence with school tasks, improved attention, improved memory, increased motivation to learn, positive behaviours towards learning, positive social relationships, and improved mental health and wellbeing. Children and young people who can regulate emotions efficiently are not necessarily always happy (or never sad), but those with effective regulation can express a range of emotions for the purpose of accomplishing goals.
Many factors influence emotions and emotion regulation. One of the most significant is age: children become more efficient at regulating their emotions as they age. Babies may use strategies such as sucking their thumb for emotion regulation, while children primarily use behavioural strategies such as distracting themselves, or going to a comforting adult. In adolescence there is quite a change, which mirrors the changes occurring in the brain during adolescence, and young people begin to use more cognitive strategies such as reframing how they think about a situation or problem-solving strategies.
Another factor in emotion regulation is environmental influences, particularly when children observe and follow the example of others. This means that adults play an important role in role-modelling effective emotion regulation. Peers are also important, with positive peer relationships contributing towards better emotion regulation, especially in adolescence. Other factors include culture, genetic influences, and brain and neurochemical influences (such as variation in serotonin levels).
Emotional dysregulation is defined in a number of ways but generally refers to an emotional response that is poorly regulated and does not fall within a traditionally accepted range of emotional reactions to a particular event or situation. Emotional dysregulation involves heightened distress, emotional sensitivity, and the inappropriate use of emotion regulation strategies. It is associated with various mental health conditions as well as some neurodevelopmental conditions, such as ADHD, but this does not mean that people cannot be supported to learn and practise effective emotion regulation strategies.
There are a number of effective ways that teachers can support their students to emotionally regulate, although it is important to ensure that any strategies used and taught are research-informed and have been evaluated for impact. What is important is that children and young people learn how to regulate emotions efficiently, so that they can express a range of emotions and have a category of strategies to use for the purpose of accomplishing goals. One well-researched approach involves teaching students about emotions: this can include teaching them about the range of physiological responses to emotions, learning how to identify and label positive and negative emotions non-judgmentally, and being able to differentiate between emotions (for example, saying ‘I feel sad’ or ‘I feel scared’, rather than simply ‘I feel bad’).
Another evidence-based approach is to explicitly teach appropriate, effective emotion regulation skills. These include using strategies such as distraction (thinking about something else, or focusing on a non-emotional aspect of the situation), or cognitive reappraisal (looking at a situation in a more positive and realistic way). These strategies are hallmarks of numerous therapies and interventions to support emotion regulation and mental health, and support children and young people with neurodevelopmental conditions. There is current and ongoing research to embed these strategies into curricular tasks. For example, if a student is feeling worried about doing a speech in front of the class, the teacher can, if appropriate, support them to reappraise the task and look at it in a different way, or support them to focus on non-emotional aspects of the speech or to modify the situation in some way (such as completing the speech with a peer, or in small groups as opposed to the whole class). It is important to note that reappraisal is not to be used to make a student comfortable with the status quo. Sometimes situations need challenged or changed, not how we think about them.
Teachers can be powerful role-models of emotion regulation skills by talking through how they are managing their emotions in particular situations, provided this is done in an appropriate way. Another important way to support students’ emotion regulation is by creating a positive but realistic emotional environment in which emotions are accepted, and everyone understands that emotions may be expressed in a range of ways. Encouraging student participation and involvement in the classroom and validating emotions, whether positive or negative, helps students learn to manage their emotions in positive, proactive ways. Teachers can remind students that there is nothing wrong with them when they experience strong emotions, but explain that you want to help them find ways to reduce their experiences of negative emotions.
It is also important for teachers to use their professional judgment. If a child or young person seems excessively anxious or sad, or is experiencing intense emotions, they will likely not be able to use many cognitive or adaptive behavioural strategies, and the aim in this case would be to down-regulate their emotional experience (for example, helping them become calm to then later discuss other strategies they could use that might be more helpful for them). If a teacher is worried about a child or young person’s emotion regulation, such that they experience intense emotions, act in behaviourally inappropriate ways in response to their emotions, or are at risk to themselves or other people, teachers should always refer them to the relevant colleagues and ensure they follow the specialised pathways set out in their policies and procedures.
