Emotion Regulation & Coping
When emotions go from zero to one hundred—or become something you try not to feel at all
Maybe you experience emotions intensely.
A disagreement can stay with you for hours. Small frustrations can suddenly feel enormous. You may say or do things when you're upset that you later regret—or shut down completely because you don't know what else to do.
Other people cope in the opposite way. They become skilled at pushing emotions away, staying busy, distracting themselves, or disconnecting until they barely know what they're feeling at all.
And sometimes, the things that help us cope in the short term can create problems of their own. Drinking, gambling, overeating, spending, scrolling, withdrawing, or other impulsive behaviours can offer temporary relief from distress—even when they ultimately make life harder.
Emotion regulation isn't about becoming less emotional or never relying on coping strategies.
It's about understanding what you're feeling, increasing your ability to tolerate difficult moments, and developing more choice in what you do next.
You might want help with...
Feeling overwhelmed by strong emotions
Anger or irritability
Emotional reactivity
Difficulty calming yourself once you're upset
Shutting down during conflict
Acting impulsively when emotional
Difficulty identifying what you're feeling
Feeling embarrassed or ashamed of your emotions
Avoiding emotions until they become impossible to ignore
Relationship conflict related to emotional reactions
Feeling like your emotions control you
Emotions are information
Emotions have functions. Anxiety can alert us to potential threats. Anger can signal that something feels wrong. Sadness may tell us that something matters and has been lost.
The difficulty often isn't simply that an emotion exists. It's what happens when the emotion feels too intense, lasts longer than we expect, or seems impossible to tolerate.
When distress feels unbearable, it makes sense that we look for ways to make it stop. Some strategies are helpful. Others work remarkably well in the moment but come with consequences later.
Therapy can help you understand these patterns without judgment: What am I feeling? What triggered it? What am I trying to get away from? What does this behaviour do for me in the moment—and what does it cost me afterward?
Learning to tolerate what is difficult
An important part of emotion regulation is distress tolerance: developing the ability to experience difficult emotions, urges, uncertainty, or discomfort without immediately needing to escape them or make them go away.
This doesn't mean simply enduring overwhelming feelings. It means building skills for getting through difficult moments safely, recognizing when an urge doesn't need to become an action, and learning that emotions can rise, change, and pass without always requiring an immediate response.
Over time, there can be more space between feeling something and doing something about it.
Building an emotional toolkit
Depending on your needs, your therapist may incorporate strategies from CBT, ACT, mindfulness-based approaches, Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (DBT)-informed skills, and emotion-focused approaches.
“You can’t stop the waves, but you can learn to surf.”