From the moment you wake up, your “emotional thermostat” kicks in. Irritable from an early alarm and a snoring partner, you adjust the dials and remind yourself that you love your partner and their snoring wasn’t intentional. While you frantically get ready for work, it keeps you from losing your temper and allows you to get out the door in time. You then find yourself stuck in traffic, and knowing this will make you late for work, you feel the temperature rise again.
But somehow you manage to walk into work and bid a cheerful “good morning!” to all your colleagues. They have no idea of the irritation within. Finally, things cool off and you feel comfortable. Until your morning meeting runs late, and cuts your lunch break short. But rather than throwing a tantrum (which is what your emotions tell you to do), you smile and thank everyone for attending the meeting.
Despite repeated emotional insults, on the outside, you’re able to maintain a smile and a can-do attitude. This wouldn’t be possible without an “emotional thermostat”.
Our “emotional thermostat” allows us to manage responses to both real-world and imaginary stimuli. It helps us maintain emotional stability while we’re pulled and ricocheted in all directions.
A working “emotional thermostat” can be the difference between an empty bank account and a dream house; a ruined friendship or a best friend for life; a miserable divorce or a lifelong happy marriage.
Some are better at regulating their emotional temperature than others. We’ve all witnessed in horror that person at the airline desk screaming at staff like an irritable toddler, their “emotional thermostat” apparently having malfunctioned. At some point in our lives, we’ve probably been that person.
Life will always push our buttons to the point where our “emotional thermostat” can no longer regulate our emotions. Fortunately, this usually only occurs with close friends and family, where we tend to relax the settings of our “emotional thermostat”.
Working with children and adolescents as a clinical psychologist has taught me a lot about how we develop this ability to self-regulate. It’s also shown me the difficulties that can arise from not having this ability.
But we can learn how to improve the functioning of our “emotional thermostat”, and gain freedom from the roller coaster of emotion.
So if you’re finding your emotions are getting the best of you, or you’re losing your cool every time someone pushes your buttons, this article is for you. I’ll give you some tips on how to regain control of your “emotional thermostat”, and remain calm and collected in the face of chaos.
The origins of self-regulation
“The baby looks at the mother’s face and finds himself there” — Donald Winnicott
You’re not born with a working “emotional thermostat”. It’s your primary caregiver’s role to help you develop it. As a crying baby you have no idea why you are so upset — you don’t yet understand the concept of being upset. Moreover, you don’t even know that you’re separate from the external world. As a baby, you experience a chaotic mishmash of alien sensations and stimuli with only one reference point — your primary caregiver. It is the caregiver’s job to teach you how to make sense of your world.
If you watch the relationship between a mother and baby closely, you’ll see a fascinating dance of “coregulation”. When the baby gets upset, the caregiver soothes them. They do this by first imitating their baby’s mental state; with the tone of someone who’s upset they might say “oh there there little one, aren’t we a sad little baby today”. The caregiver then gives the baby clues as to what may be going on “Is baby hungry? Is baby tired? I think she is!”. This simple narration conveys deep meaning. It’s saying “baby, I can tell you something about yourself. Here’s what might be going on for you: you’re hungry and tired, and this is giving you unpleasant sensations that make you want to cry. This is you feeling this way, and not me”. The solution is then offered “does baby want the bottle? I’ll bet she does”.
The caregiver tries to establish an emotional equilibrium for their baby by responding to their different emotions. They act as the baby’s external “emotional thermostat”, turning the dials for them. This dance is repeated over and over, and the baby learns to make sense of their emotions for themselves. They learn they have a mind that can exist in different states; happy, angry, sad, and frightened to name a few.
Eventually, they develop their own “emotional thermostat” and are able to adjust the dials themselves. This is all thanks to a primary caregiver who teaches them that emotions are bearable and can be soothed, either by others or by ourselves.
When the “emotional thermostat” malfunctions
But even if we were lucky enough to have a primary caregiver who provided us with a working “emotional thermostat”, there are times in life when it malfunctions. It does this more when we’re stressed.
Our brain’s fear “alarm”, the amygdala, scans for and gets immediate input from our senses about safety and danger. When it perceives a threat, stress hormones cortisol and adrenaline circulate our system to mobilize us to react. The amygdala can activate before our mind is even conscious of a potential threat. This makes intervening difficult. Anxious thoughts alone can trigger the amygdala to initiate a fight-flight-freeze response.
Most of our emotional reactions are automatic. Deep, subconscious templates for how we relate to the world, generated from early experience, get triggered in various situations. This makes changing our reaction challenging.
When in a stressed state the amygdala becomes more reactive, which further increases stress in a vicious cycle. A reactive amygdala means our responses to typical emotional insults become exaggerated and turning the dials of our “emotional thermostat” is harder. So what can we do to reduce this reactivity?
In the book ‘Altered Traits’, psychologists Daniel Goleman and Richard J. Davidson found meditation can calm an overactive amygdala. Non-meditators practiced mindfulness for 20 minutes a day for one week. They then had their brains scanned while looking at images, some of which were distressing — images of burn victims or gruesome injuries. When they viewed these images using mindful attention skills, they showed a lower amygdala response compared to non-meditators.
This was seen after just one week of meditating. Advanced meditation practice of over 1000 hours led to even bigger improvements in the ability to lower stress levels, and was reflected in lower levels of the stress hormone cortisol. When presented with a painful stimulus, these advanced meditators recovered significantly quicker than non-meditating controls, as their ability to regulate the emotional component of pain meant their suffering didn’t extend beyond the painful stimulus.
How to improve your ability to self-regulate
As neuroscientist Dan Siegel says about regulating emotion, you need to “name it to tame it”. We need to immediately recognize when strong emotions arise and make a mental note of them. This creates a gap of awareness between us and our emotions.
Next, try and watch your emotions without getting carried away by them. Emotions are like the postman: there to give you a message, not take you for a ride. Observe the physical sensations that the emotion brings with it, then watch them subside.
In Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, we take the perspective of the “observing self” to unlatch from inner experience. For example, “I am angry” transforms into “I feel angry”, and then “I notice I am feeling angry”. We recognize that we are not the emotion. This makes it easier to allow the emotion to pass through without becoming identified with it.
Once we’ve acknowledged an emotion, and heard the message it’s delivering, we can let it go. But sometimes the mind refuses to. We’ve all felt those stubborn emotions that linger around long after they’ve served their purpose.
When this happens it can help to “interrupt” the emotion. We can do this by looking for comic or ironic elements to a difficult situation. For instance, when a truck cuts you off on the highway and you just can’t let go of the anger, find humor in the fact they have a “how’s my driving” bumper sticker. Quite terrible actually!
Humor is one of the “mature” psychological defense mechanisms. It can reduce discomfort and allow distance and objectivity so you can reflect on what is happening. It also offers a reframing of a situation, allowing you to see it in a less threatening way.
We can reframe in other ways too. Why not turn a miserable situation into a brighter one by looking for some wisdom? What has the experience taught you about yourself and the world? Is there a silver lining to your hardship, even if you have to squint to see it?
Combining these techniques with careful management of your stress levels can turn your “emotional thermostat” from a malfunctioning mess into a well-oiled machine. The best way to manage stress is with meditation.
Taking just 10 minutes each day to follow a guided meditation can help keep your amygdala calm, so you’re less reactive when challenges come your way. It really will keep your stress levels manageable, which in turn will make regulating your emotions easier.
A new relationship between you and your emotions
In our quest for better emotion regulation, it’s important that we don’t avoid or suppress our emotions.
When our emotions scare us with their intensity, we may prefer to not feel them. But trying to suppress or avoid them only gives them more power over us. Instead, we can develop a more positive relationship with our emotions by facing them head-on.
Emotions are just a form of communication to the self and others. My anger alerts me that someone has violated a personal boundary, while my tears show you that you matter to me.
Changing the way we view and interpret our emotions may liberate us from their grip. By learning to acknowledge the emotions we feel, and understand why we feel this way, we’ll be better able to allow them to pass.
In time you’ll learn to see that even the most intense emotions are just physiological reactions in the body. They can’t cause you any harm.
So next time you’re overwhelmed by fear or anger, just say hello, and hear what they have to say. Then gently adjust the dial on your “emotional thermostat” to a more comfortable temperature.
