DBT Emotion regulation skills help us respond to emotions in ways that make them more tolerable and manageable. The video below helps us decide which emotion regulation skills to use depending on the situation and what’s happening in the moment, laid out in a simple flow chart.
We can’t control our emotions. We can’t suppress emotions we don’t want to feel, or force ourselves to feel a certain way. But through emotion regulation we can influence our emotions and how we feel.
This doesn’t mean we can completely change how we feel. We can’t flip a switch and instantly go from sad to happy, or anxious to calm. Emotion regulation skills help us manage our feelings. They let us reduce the intensity or duration of an emotion so it is easier to handle. And this flow chart guides us through the process.
DBT Emotion Regulation Flow Chart
Do you ever find it hard to cope with emotions and don’t know what to do or just want to learn to manage emotions better? Here’s a step-by-step process to regulate emotions and make them less intense and easier to handle.
The first step is to be mindful of our emotions. We stop and take a step back and observe how we’re feeling. We take a few breaths and simply name our emotion. I’m feeling sad. I’m angry. I’m anxious right now.
If we’re not sure how we’re feeling, our bodies can give us a clue. A lump in the throat or heaviness in the stomach might point to sadness. Tension in the jaw or feeling hot might mean anger. Tightness in the throat or chest or a racing heart can signal anxiety.
No matter how we’re feeling, we start by accepting it. I’m feeling sad and it’s okay to feel sad. I’m angry and it’s okay to be angry. I’m anxious and that’s okay. Accepting doesn’t mean we want to feel this way.
It’s simply acknowledging how we’re actually feeling in this moment instead of fighting it, which usually makes the feeling stronger. Naming and accepting emotions is the first step in regulating them. This alone can help us feel better.
Now we figure out what to do with these feelings. We start by asking ourselves, does my emotion fit the facts? An emotion fits the facts if it’s appropriate for the situation and its duration and intensity are reasonable.
For example, a friend cancels our plans last minute and we feel moderately sad for the rest of the evening. That’s an appropriate emotion with a reasonable duration and intensity. But if we’re so sad that we find it hard to get off the couch for the next few days or are so mad that we fire off a bunch of angry texts and then won’t talk to them for a week, that probably doesn’t fit the facts.
If we’re not sure if our emotion fits the facts, we can use the check the facts worksheet. If our emotion does fit the facts, then we ask, “Is acting on this emotion effective or helpful to me?”
Our emotions usually come with an action urge, something we want to do based on how we’re feeling. With sadness, we may want to withdraw from the world and just lie on the couch all day and isolate ourselves. With anxiety, we may have the urge to avoid or escape. With anger, we may want to attack or ignore.
Acting on these urges usually isn’t helpful. What can be effective is opposite action, acting opposite to what our emotions are telling us to do. If we’re sad, instead of lying around, we go for a walk or make plans with a friend. If we’re anxious, we face our fears and do what we’re avoiding.
If we’re angry, instead of lashing out, we step away from the situation and do something else for a while until we’re feeling more calm. Then we come back and assertively express how we’re feeling, or do something constructive that addresses the problem without making it worse.
But sometimes acting on our emotion urge can be effective, so we do it. Maybe we’re sad and stressed because we’ve had a tough week at work and our urge is to go out for a coffee with a friend and vent. And this probably will help us feel better.
So, we make plans to meet up and go out. Or we’re anxious we’re going to be late for a meeting and our urge is to leave early to make sure we get there on time. Acting on this urge is effective because it prevents us from running late and reduces our anxiety.
Whether or not acting on our emotion is effective, when our emotion fits the facts of a situation, we can often improve the situation through problem solving, which then leads to a change in how we feel.
We’re stressed and overwhelmed by everything we’ve got going on, and we don’t even know where to start. So, we take some time to problem solve and get organized. Then we tackle one small thing that feels manageable, which helps us feel more in control, and we start feeling less stressed.
Now, if the emotion doesn’t fit the facts, we reframe our thoughts and work on changing our perspective and how we’re thinking about the situation. We find out our friend just got a new job and we feel really sad because we’re reminded how we have nothing going on in our lives.
Then we check if our emotion and its intensity and duration fit the facts. It’s natural to feel disappointed when we compare ourselves negatively to someone else, but we’ve been feeling really sad about this all day long. So, we decide our emotion doesn’t fit the facts.
To bring our emotion more in line with the situation, we look at our thoughts to see how accurate they are. If they’re exaggerated, distorted, or negatively biased, we adjust them accordingly. We can use the checking the facts worksheet from DBT, a CBT thought record, or just ask ourselves some questions to help reframe our thinking.
So, first we write down our thoughts. I haven’t accomplished anything with my life, and it feels like I’m going nowhere. I’m such a failure. Then we ask ourselves, what’s the evidence for and against? I have a job I don’t like and it feels like I’m going to be stuck here forever. Whenever I apply for another job, I never even get an interview. I did finish school and at least I have a job and I’m able to afford an apartment and pay my bills.
If a friend or someone I cared about was in a similar situation, what would I tell them? There’s no point in comparing yourself to someone else. That’s not fair to you. And you can never know what someone else’s circumstances really are. Is there any other way of looking at this? Even though I haven’t done much with my life, I have done some things. And that doesn’t mean I’m a failure, just that I’m not where I want to be.
And I can be happy for my friend’s success without comparing myself to them. With this new way of thinking, we still feel a little sad and disappointed, but now our emotion fits the facts of the situation better. And maybe that’s all we need to do for now. We can just be mindful of how we’re feeling, naming and acknowledging the emotion and just allowing it to be there.
Or if it still feels too uncomfortable, we can continue trying to regulate it and go through the steps we looked at earlier. Another example, we have to give an important presentation and we’ve been feeling really anxious about it non-stop for days. We check the facts. Feeling nervous about it makes sense, but we’re way more anxious than we need to be.
So, we ask ourselves, what am I expecting will happen? I’ll completely forget everything. I’ll start to panic and embarrass myself, and everyone will think I’m incompetent. What’s the evidence for and against this? My presentations never go as well as I’d like, and I’m really anxious about this one, but I know the material well, and I always get really anxious before presentations, but they’re always okay in the end. And how likely is it that what I’m worried about will happen? Not very likely.
I might forget some things and feel a little panicky, but I probably won’t embarrass myself and nobody will really notice or care. What’s the most likely outcome? I’ll get through the presentation. I’ll maybe stumble a little, but overall it’ll go okay. But no matter how much we try to convince ourselves that there’s no need to be this anxious, our anxiety stays as strong as ever.
So now what do we do? If our anxiety about the presentation is making us procrastinate or avoid preparing, we can take opposite action and go over our presentation and rehearse it. Often the more we work on it, the more confident and less anxious we’ll start to feel. Or we can try using distress tolerance skills to help manage the anxiety. We might distract ourselves temporarily, get some exercise, or reach out to a friend.
Then once we’re feeling calmer, we can try again and see if some of the other emotion regulation strategies are more effective now that the emotion is less intense. Or we can just be mindful of the emotion and allow it to be there without having to do anything about it at all. So we name our emotion and accept how we’re feeling and see if it fits the facts.
And if it does, if acting on it is effective, we do that. And if not, we take opposite action. And either way, we can engage in problem solving. And if it doesn’t fit the facts, we reframe our thoughts and then see if our emotion fits the facts. And if it does, we see if acting on it is effective. And if it doesn’t fit the facts, we can try opposite action, distress tolerance, or just be mindful of the emotion.
Goals of Emotion Regulation
The goals of emotion regulation include:
- Understanding, naming, and accepting current emotions
- Changing emotional responses
- Decreasing the frequency and intensity of unwanted emotions
- Decreasing emotional vulnerability and vulnerability to emotion mind
- Increasing resiliency and our ability to cope with difficulties
- Increasing positive emotions
- Decreasing emotional suffering
Some of the emotion regulation skills rely on mindfulness skills, which are the foundation of DBT. If you’re not familiar with DBT mindfulness skills, consider going through these first. Or if you want to jump right in to the emotion regulation skills, make sure to check out the mindfulness skills later.
Emotion Regulation Flowchart
(Checking the Facts and Thought Record and Questions for Reframing Thoughts worksheets.)
This flowchart is based on a flowchart by Marsha Linehan, who developed DBT. I find my flowchart more clear, but click below to view her flowchart and my old video about it.
Changing Unwanted Emotions
Dialectical behavior therapy there are a number of different emotion regulation skills. So how do we know which one to apply in this video? We’re going to look at an emotion regulation flow chart that helps us figure out what skills to use to change our unwanted emotions.
Start by identifying the emotion we’d like to change or influence. Then we ask ourselves: does this emotion fit the facts?
An emotion fits the facts if it’s appropriate for the situation we find ourselves in and if its intensity and duration are in line with what’s reasonable for the situation.
There’s a worksheet we can use to evaluate whether an emotion fits the facts, which you can learn about in my check the facts video. You’ll find all the videos I mentioned organized together on my site, selfhelptunes.com, where you can download a copy of the emotion regulation flow chart.
If our emotion fits the facts we go down this path. If it doesn’t fit the facts then we go down the other path. Either way, the next question we ask ourselves is: is acting on this emotion effective or helpful to me?
Every emotion has an action urge—some action or behavior the emotion makes us feel like doing. For fear or anxiety, the urge is to run away and avoid. For anger, the urge is to attack. For sadness, the urge is to withdraw or isolate ourselves.
Acting on this urge would be acting based on what we call emotion mind. It’s our emotions that are driving our action. But before we act on this urge, we ask our wise mind if expressing or acting on this emotion is effective in this situation.
Wise mind is a bit tricky. In DBT there are three states of mind we can operate out of. In emotion mind, our emotions control how we think and act without taking reason and logic into account. In reasonable mind, we think and act reasonably and rationally without taking our emotions into account.
In wise mind, we think and act reasonably and rationally while also taking into consideration our emotions and how we feel. Wise mind is important when making decisions because it helps us access our intuition and inner wisdom. For a more detailed description of wise mind, emotion mind, and reasonable mind, I have a video about this you can check out.
Sometimes wise mind can be difficult to access. In that case, we can try using a pros and cons list to help us determine whether acting on this emotion would be effective.
If we’re feeling angry and have the urge to lash out, we can ask ourselves: what are the pros of acting on this emotion? What are the cons? And then what are the pros of not acting on this emotion? What are the cons?
If we’re having trouble accessing wise mind, sometimes a pros and cons list can help us figure out whether or not to act on an emotion.
Depending on our answer to the question “is acting on this emotion effective?” there are a few different options. In DBT, there are three main strategies we use to help change unwanted emotions. The first is checking the facts, which involves looking at our thoughts and interpretations of a situation or event to see how accurate they are.
If they’re not accurate, we modify these thoughts and interpretations to make them fit the facts better. Since our thoughts have such a big influence on how we feel, changing our thoughts results in changes in our emotions as well.
The second way we can change our emotions is through opposite action. When acting on an emotion action urge is not effective, we can regulate our emotion by using opposite action. Since our actions and emotions are so closely connected, when we act opposite to an emotion action urge we start to change that emotion.
I have a whole video that explains how to use opposite action in more detail. If our thoughts are already accurate, so there’s no benefit in trying to change them, and acting on our emotion urge is effective, then we can engage in problem solving. This means going back to the situation or event that’s triggered the emotion and seeing if we can’t come up with a plan to change that situation so that it doesn’t provoke such a strong emotional reaction.
So now let’s plug these options into the flow chart. If we’ve determined that acting on our emotion is effective, then the next step is to be mindful of our current emotion. I talk about how to do this in my video on emotion regulation and acceptance. When we become mindful of our emotion and accept how we’re feeling, it usually helps regulate the emotion, and we’ll notice a decrease in how intense that emotion feels.
Then the next step is to act on that emotion. If our emotions do fit the facts, then the next step is problem solving. Even if our emotions don’t fit the facts, if acting on our emotion is effective we can still act on our emotion action urge, or we could consider using opposite action instead. We can also come up with a compromise between acting on the emotion and using opposite action.
If we’ve determined that acting on our emotion is not effective, then the next step is to not act on that emotion. If our emotion fits the facts, instead of acting on our emotion urge we take opposite action. Once we use opposite action, we can try problem solving to see if we can improve the situation that provoked the emotion in the first place.
If acting on our emotion urge is not effective and our emotions don’t fit the facts, then we use the check the facts worksheet to change our thoughts and make them fit the facts better. Once we’ve changed our thoughts to make them fit the facts better, we can then use opposite action.
Let’s look at some examples. Let’s say we’re sad because we’ve had a tough week at work and we feel stuck in a job we don’t like. We find this emotion does fit the facts. Based on this emotion, our urge to act is to call a friend and go out for coffee and vent. We find that this action urge is an effective way to manage sadness, so we act on it. Since our behavior influences our emotions, we probably feel better afterwards.
Or let’s say we have an exam coming up and we’re really anxious and worried that we’re going to fail. We find this emotion does fit the facts, but if our action urge is to avoid even thinking about the exam because it makes us so anxious, ignoring the exam coming up is not effective. So we don’t act on this urge. Instead, we take opposite action. We don’t avoid what’s making us anxious and instead we spend some time studying. Since our behavior influences our emotions, we’ll probably feel less anxious once we start to study.
Now in both of these scenarios, since our emotions fit the facts, we can use problem solving to try to figure out a way to change the situation that’s prompting our emotion. For example, figuring out a way to get a different job or coming up with a plan to prepare for the exam that doesn’t leave us so anxious.
Now let’s say we’ve ordered some takeout and it gets here really late, it’s already cold, and part of the order is missing. We’re furious about this and check the facts. We find our emotion does not fit the facts. Being a little mad would be appropriate, but we’re not just a little mad, we’re enraged.
If our action urge is to call the restaurant and complain, even though our emotion doesn’t fit the facts, this action is effective, so we do it. But maybe we’re feeling so angry right now, we’re liable to start yelling on the phone. This could still be effective, but we could also consider opposite action. Opposite action for anger involves taking a time out, calming ourselves a bit, and then being nice to other people instead of attacking them.
Here’s the combination situation: we act on an emotion urge while also using opposite action. We still act on the urge to complain and let the other person know we’re upset, but we do it in a manner that’s not going to alienate people by yelling or screaming at them. We can use our interpersonal effectiveness skills to help us do this assertively and get what we want from the interaction.
Or let’s go back to a situation where we have a test coming up and we’re panicking about it, afraid we’re going to fail. This time we find the emotion doesn’t fit the facts. We’ve been studying for weeks and know the material inside out, but our emotion action urge is telling us to stay up all night studying. We realize this is not effective. It will just make us tired tomorrow and make it harder to focus when we write the test.
Since acting on our emotion is not effective, we want to change our thoughts about the situation to make them fit the facts better. We use the check the facts worksheet, and when we change our thoughts, we realize how well prepared we are and that there’s no chance we’re going to fail. Since our thoughts have such a big influence on how we feel, our emotions will change as well and will no longer be as anxious.
Then we can use opposite action. Instead of staying up all night studying and panicking, we can do something to relax, take our minds off the test, and then go to bed at the usual time and get a good night’s sleep. When we take this opposite action, our anxiety will decrease even further.
That’s how we decide which emotion regulation skills to use in order to change our unwanted emotions.
Click to download the Emotion Regulation Flowchart, which is adapted from DBT Skills Training Handouts and Worksheets by Marsha M. Linehan. If you have any questions or comments, please leave them on the YouTube video page.
If you have any questions or comments, please leave them on the YouTube video page.