Emotion Regulation Skills: Work One Feeling Through the Model
Emotion regulation skills are the deliberate things you do to influence which emotion arrives, how strong it gets, and how it shows. This page explains the five points in the process model where regulation can happen, the DBT skills that fit each one, and gives you a worksheet that walks a single feeling through the whole sequence.
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About this tool
Emotion regulation skills are the deliberate things a person does to influence which emotion they are having, how strong it becomes, how long it lasts, and how much of it shows on the outside. The phrase comes from the psychologist James Gross, who in 1998 defined emotion regulation as the processes by which people influence which emotions they have, when they have them, and how they experience and express them. That definition is wider than calming down. Deciding not to go to a party, reframing a rejection, and waiting a day before answering an email are all regulation, and only one of them looks like a coping skill.
Gross set those processes out as a five-point model, ordered by when they act on a feeling. Situation selection means choosing which situations you enter at all. Situation modification means changing a situation once you are inside it. Attentional deployment means changing where you look, including distraction. Cognitive change means changing what the situation means, which is where reappraisal sits. Response modulation means acting on the emotion after it has arrived: slowing your breathing, moving your body, deciding not to send the message. The earlier points are cheaper to use, and that is the practical lesson of the model.
The order matters because most people reach for the last point first. A feeling arrives at full volume and the only move that occurs to them is to manage the body or hide the expression. Working backwards opens better options. If Sunday evening reliably ends in dread, situation modification might mean moving the week's planning to Friday afternoon. If one person's name in your inbox sets off a spike, attentional deployment might mean opening it at a chosen hour rather than at midnight. The model does not tell you which point to use. It tells you that there are five.
Dialectical behavior therapy, developed by Marsha Linehan, has its own emotion regulation module, and it is the version most people meet in treatment. It teaches you to name the emotion first, then check the facts to see whether the emotion fits the situation as it actually is rather than the worst available reading of it. If it fits, the skill is problem solving. If it does not fit, or if acting on it would make things worse, the skill is opposite action: doing the opposite of what the emotion urges, and doing it all the way rather than halfheartedly.
Alongside those sit the skills Linehan groups as ABC PLEASE, which lower vulnerability before anything happens. ABC stands for accumulate positive emotions, build mastery, and cope ahead: put things worth something to you into the week, do things you can get competent at, and rehearse a hard situation before it arrives. PLEASE covers the physical floor under all of it: treat physical illness, eat in a balanced way, avoid mood-altering substances, keep sleep regular, and move your body. The worksheets at Check the Facts Worksheet and Opposite Action Worksheet take the two in-the-moment skills further.
The research on all this is more specific than the usual claim that the skills work. Webb, Miles and Sheeran pooled 306 experimental comparisons in 2012 and found that cognitive change had a small-to-medium average effect on emotional outcomes, response modulation a small one, and attentional deployment, on average, none at all. The detail underneath those averages mattered more than the averages: distraction helped, deliberately concentrating on the feeling did not, and suppressing the outward expression of an emotion did more than trying to suppress the experience. These were short laboratory studies of induced emotion, not tests of a course of therapy.
A second line of research looks at what people do habitually rather than what they can do once in a lab. Aldao, Nolen-Hoeksema and Schweizer reviewed that literature in 2010 and found rumination had the strongest link to symptoms across anxiety, depression, eating disorders and substance use, with avoidance and suppression close behind, while reappraisal and acceptance showed weaker links than their prominence in treatment manuals would predict. The honest reading is that dropping the expensive habits may matter more than perfecting the virtuous ones. Those findings are correlational, so they describe associations rather than proving that a strategy caused the symptoms.
Regulation is not the same as control, and it is not a synonym for staying calm. An emotion that fits the facts is information, and the skill in that case is to act on it: leave the job, say the hard thing, grieve the loss. Gross and John reported in 2003 that people who habitually suppress their expressions describe less positive emotion and less closeness with others, while habitual reappraisers describe the reverse. A page of skills can quietly turn into a demand that you never be angry or afraid, and that demand is a problem in its own right rather than a solution.
Use the worksheet below on one specific feeling. Name it, check it against the facts, pick the point in the model with the most room to move, and choose a step small enough that it will survive the next bad evening. If strong emotions are frequent, arrive without warning, or keep costing you relationships, work or sleep, that pattern deserves more than a worksheet. The Emotional Dysregulation Test self-assessment can help you organize what to describe to a professional, and the DBT Skills Library collects the rest of the skills in the module. The sheet itself is our own design, informed by both frameworks rather than reproduced from either one's worksheets.
References
- Gross JJ. The emerging field of emotion regulation: an integrative review. Review of General Psychology. 1998;2(3):271-299. doi:10.1037/1089-2680.2.3.271
- Gross JJ. Emotion regulation: current status and future prospects. Psychological Inquiry. 2015;26(1):1-26. doi:10.1080/1047840X.2014.940781
- Linehan MM. DBT Skills Training Handouts and Worksheets. 2nd ed. Guilford Press; 2015.
- Webb TL, Miles E, Sheeran P. Dealing with feeling: a meta-analysis of the effectiveness of strategies derived from the process model of emotion regulation. Psychological Bulletin. 2012;138(4):775-808. doi:10.1037/a0027600
- Aldao A, Nolen-Hoeksema S, Schweizer S. Emotion-regulation strategies across psychopathology: a meta-analytic review. Clinical Psychology Review. 2010;30(2):217-237. doi:10.1016/j.cpr.2009.11.004
- Gross JJ, John OP. Individual differences in two emotion regulation processes: implications for affect, relationships, and well-being. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 2003;85(2):348-362.
Cite this source
Psychology.com. (2026, November 6). Emotion Regulation. Psychology.com. https://psychology.com/tools/emotion-regulation
Emotion Regulation FAQ
What are emotion regulation skills?
Emotion regulation skills are the specific moves a person uses to influence which emotion arrives, how intense it gets, how long it lasts, and how much of it shows. They fall into five families, following James Gross's process model: choosing which situations to enter, changing a situation from inside it, shifting attention, changing what the situation means, and acting on the emotion once it is here. Dialectical behavior therapy teaches a narrower set built for high-intensity moments, including checking the facts, opposite action and problem solving. Both frameworks treat regulation as learnable rather than as a trait you were born with or without.
How do I regulate my emotions in the moment?
In-the-moment emotion regulation sits at the last two points of the model, so start by naming the feeling in one word and rating its intensity. Then check whether it fits the situation as it is, rather than the worst available reading of it. If it fits, the next move is to solve the problem the emotion is pointing at. If it does not fit, or acting on it would cost you something, try the opposite action: approach what fear says to avoid, speak gently where anger says to attack. Slowing your breathing or walking buys enough time to choose one step rather than five.
What is the difference between emotion regulation and suppressing emotions?
Emotion regulation covers everything a person does to influence a feeling, and suppression is one narrow tool inside it: holding the expression in while the experience carries on. Gross and John reported in 2003 that people who rely on suppression habitually describe less positive emotion and less closeness with others, while habitual reappraisers describe the opposite. Suppression is not forbidden, and there are meetings where keeping your face still is the right call. The problem is using it as the only strategy, which leaves the emotion intact and adds the effort of hiding it. Regulation aims to change the feeling, not only the face.
Which emotional regulation techniques actually work?
The clearest answer on emotional regulation techniques comes from a 2012 meta-analysis by Webb, Miles and Sheeran, which pooled 306 experimental comparisons. Changing what a situation means had the largest average effect, acting on the emotion afterwards had a smaller one, and shifting attention had none on average, although distraction helped while deliberately concentrating on the feeling did not. A separate 2010 review by Aldao and colleagues found that habitual rumination, avoidance and suppression track symptoms more strongly than reappraisal and acceptance appear to protect against them. Taken together: drop the expensive habits first, and expect modest gains rather than transformation.
Why can I not regulate my emotions some days?
Emotion regulation skills fail in predictable conditions. Short sleep, hunger, pain, illness, alcohol and a week with nothing good in it all raise the starting intensity of every feeling, which is exactly why the DBT module puts the ABC PLEASE skills before the clever ones. Intensity itself is the other factor: above a certain level, reappraisal is simply not reachable, and the only workable moves are physical ones. Rehearsing a skill while calm is what makes it available later. If regulation fails most days rather than occasionally, that pattern is worth assessing with a professional rather than treating as a personal failing.
Is emotional dysregulation just a lack of these skills?
Emotional dysregulation is not simply the absence of emotion regulation skills. It describes a pattern where feelings arrive fast, run high and settle slowly, often with impulsive action in between. Skills are part of the picture, and so are sleep, trauma history, ADHD, bipolar illness and borderline personality disorder, all of which affect the system the skills run on. Linehan built the DBT module for exactly this pattern, and the evidence for DBT as a whole treatment is considerably stronger than the evidence for any single worksheet inside it. A self-assessment can organize what you notice, but it cannot tell you which explanation fits.
Is anything I type into this worksheet saved?
No. Everything you type into the emotion regulation worksheet stays in your browser, and nothing is uploaded to us or stored on our side. The PDF is built on your own device, so the only copy is the one you save or print. That has one practical consequence: if you close the tab before downloading, the entries are gone, so save the PDF when you finish a round. If you plan to use the sheet more than once, keep the PDFs together in one folder and look across them for the situations and emotions that keep returning.