Four Types of Emotion Regulation Strategies

Currently, the core emotion regulation strategies that have been widely proven to be effective in psychology and clinical practice are divided into four categories: cognitive reappraisal, attention shifting, expression suppression, and experience acceptance. There are no absolute advantages or disadvantages among these four types of strategies. They have different applicable scenarios, speed of results, and long-term impact. There is no such thing as "one strategy is suitable for all emotional scenarios."

Many people think of "suppressed emotions" as a scourge. Freud's earliest psychoanalytic theory indeed proposed that long-term emotional suppression may transform into subconscious conflicts and induce somatization or psychological problems. But in actual counseling and life scenarios, expression suppression is the most common and life-saving strategy used by many people. Think about it, if you are holding a company-wide project review meeting and you just received news that your cat picked up the limited-edition figure that you saved half a year's salary to buy and smashed it to pieces, you can't just slap the table and cry on the spot, right? At this time, gritting your teeth to hold back the curse words and tears that came to your lips, and finishing the meeting first, is a typical expression suppression. In recent years, new research from the cognitive behavioral school has also clarified the name of expressive suppression: short-term, situational emotional suppression, as long as there is a suitable outlet channel afterwards, will not cause psychological harm at all, but can avoid secondary troubles caused by emotional out-of-control. I have met many clients before who equate "cannot help losing temper" with a failure in emotional management. In fact, it is completely the opposite - being able to control one's emotions in situations that are not suitable for venting is inherently part of emotional ability.

Speaking of which, many people may not know that the "look at the problem from another angle" advocated by the entire Internet is essentially cognitive reappraisal. For example, when you're queuing up to buy milk tea, the person in front of you turns around and accidentally spills the ice on the white shirt you just bought. Your first reaction will definitely be to get angry. If you think about it later, "Fortunately, the ice didn't burn me. Besides, I thought the collar of this shirt was a bit too small, so I can just change it to a new one." Most of your anger will be gone in an instant. As the core technology of cognitive behavioral therapy, cognitive reappraisal has always been regarded as the "golden strategy" of emotion regulation because it can adjust the triggering logic of emotions from the root. However, this strategy is actually quite controversial. Counselors of the existential school are generally very opposed to the indiscriminate use of cognitive reappraisal regardless of the situation: If the client is experiencing a major loss, such as a loved one who has just passed away, and you go up to persuade the person to "think from another perspective, it is a blessing that the old man did not suffer when he passed away." This is essentially a denial of the client's pain. It is not emotional regulation at all, but emotional violence. In a bereavement case I received before, relatives and friends took turns to persuade me to "open up". After holding it in for three months, I developed severe anxiety and couldn't even go to work normally. To put it bluntly, cognitive reappraisal is only suitable for resolving unactivated, mild emotional conflicts. When you really encounter heartbreaking pain, if you insist on "thinking more openly", it will cause secondary damage.

Compared with the first two, the threshold for attention transfer is much lower. Go for a run when you are angry, watch funny short videos for half an hour when you are sad, and take the initiative to get a glass of water when you have an argument with someone and it is almost out of control. These are all practical methods of attention transfer. Interestingly, the evaluation of this strategy in academic circles is extremely polarized: the behavioral activation school believes that this is a short-term and quick "emotional first aid magic skill" that can instantly pull people out of the emotional whirlpool and avoid overthinking. For example, if you are broken up and are sitting at home scrolling through your ex's friend list, and the more you look at it, the more you look at it. However, humanistic counselors also feel that if they only rely on deflection and avoidance every time they encounter emotions and never dig out the real needs behind the emotions, the problem will never be solved. I once met an operator of an Internet company. Every time he was scolded by his boss, he went to buy a bag. Over the past year, he spent hundreds of thousands to buy a bag. Still, he felt uncomfortable every time he was scolded. He never thought about either adjusting his working methods or simply changing his boss to a non-PUA boss. In essence, he used the diversion of attention as an excuse to escape.

Finally, let me talk about experiential acceptance, which has become popular in recent years through mindfulness and acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT). Simply put, it means not judging whether the emotion is good or bad, and allowing it to exist. For example, if you are going to give a speech tomorrow, but today you are so nervous that your palms are sweating and your heartbeat is racing. There is no need to force yourself to "don't be nervous." Just sit quietly for a while and feel your own heartbeat. You can even say to yourself in your mind, "Oh, I am nervous now, it's normal." Many people understand acceptance as showing off. In fact, it is not the case at all. The core of acceptance is not to confront emotions and avoid secondary escalation of emotions due to self-attacks such as "Why am I nervous again?" Of course, this strategy is not a panacea. Many scholars of the cognitive behavioral school have proposed that for people who are overly introspective and highly sensitive, forcing acceptance will cause them to focus too much on the emotion itself, which will aggravate the symptoms. I once had a client who was anxious about giving a speech. I initially asked him to try mindfulness acceptance. As a result, before he went on stage, all he could think about was "I have to accept my nervousness." Instead, he paid more attention to whether his hands were shaking and whether his voice was trembling.

In fact, in the final analysis, these four strategies are the four tools in your emotional toolbox, hammer, screwdriver, wrench, screwdriver. There is no better one, the only difference is whether it is suitable or not. You can't hit it with a hammer when tightening screws, or shake it with a wrench when driving nails, right? I saw a blogger say before that "really powerful people all use cognitive re-evaluation", which is pure nonsense. In an emergency situation, if you spend half a minute re-evaluating, you may have already started an argument with someone. It would be better to just hold it in or turn around and walk away. Oh, by the way, if you really don’t know what to use at the moment, stop and take three deep breaths. There is nothing wrong with it.