5 things to remember to regulate your emotions better

Below, Marc Brackett shares five key insights from his new book, Dealing with Feeling: Use Your Emotions to Create the Life You Want.

Marc is the founding director of the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence and a professor at Yale’s Child Study Center. He is the author of the bestselling book Permission to Feel and over 200 scholarly articles, with his research featured in the New York Times, Good Morning America, and Today. Together with Pinterest cofounder Ben Silbermann, Marc launched the award-winning How We Feel app. He is also the producer of the documentary America Unfiltered: Portraits and Voices of a Nation and host of the podcast Dealing with Feeling.

What’s the big idea?

Emotion regulation is one of the most important skills for both personal and professional success. With the right training, we can all replace poor habits (yelling, isolation, blame) with better strategies (breath, positive self-talk, reframing) that strengthen connection and well-being.

1. We need to give ourselves permission to feel.

Most of us grew up hearing things like:

• “Stop crying.”
• “Don’t be so sensitive.”
• “Shake it off.”

And so, we learned—explicitly or implicitly—that emotions are problems to avoid, not signals to explore. But ignoring or suppressing emotions can lead to anxiety, chronic stress, headaches, digestive issues, sleep disturbances, and even long-term impacts on physical and mental health. It also makes it harder to connect with others and regulate emotions effectively.

Giving yourself permission to feel means embracing all emotions with curiosity, not judgment. It means saying to yourself: “This is how I feel right now, and it’s okay to feel this way. Let me understand it.” That moment of acknowledgment is the gateway to healing, growth, and making wiser decisions. Emotions are not weaknesses. They are data.

When we approach emotions with empathy—for ourselves and others—we create the conditions for insight and resilience. The challenge is that only a third of people report having “permission to feel” when they were young. What will make us all feel that we have permission to feel?

2. Emotion regulation is 100 percent learned.

Where did you learn how to manage emotions? Was it through watching your parents? Was it from teachers? Friends? Maybe no one ever taught you directly, but you still learned. We all did.

Ask yourself, on a scale from one to five, how much emotional education you received growing up. And how much of that education helped you develop effective regulation strategies? My research shows that only about 10% of people feel as if they had a solid education in emotion regulation.

Common default strategies (especially in moments of stress) include avoidance, yelling, eating, scrolling, numbing, blaming others, or blaming yourself. These are not character flaws. They are just what you learned. But the good news is that because emotion regulation is learned, it can also be relearned.

“My research shows that only about 10% of people feel as if they had a solid education in emotion regulation.”

You can upgrade your emotional regulation strategies to include techniques such as deep breathing, accurately labeling emotions, practicing positive self-talk, reframing situations, or seeking support. These are teachable, learnable, and they work. But they require intention, practice, and sometimes unlearning what no longer serves you.

3. Breathing is necessary but not sufficient.

Breathing is a powerful tool, and I teach it to everyone, from kindergartners to CEOs. Conscious breathing activates the parasympathetic nervous system, helping us move from the fight-or-flight response to the rest-and-digest state. It deactivates our stress response and creates space for wiser choices. That’s why I call it the “master strategy.”

But breathing is only the beginning. The real transformation happens after breath. Once you’ve calmed your body, what do you do with your mind? What story do you tell yourself? What action do you take? Breathing helps you press pause, but it doesn’t solve the problem. That takes reflection, strategy, and sometimes courage.

The other day, I visited a middle school classroom and asked a student what he’d do if someone were mean or hurtful to him. He said, “Take a deep breath.” I replied, “That’s great, but what’s next?” He couldn’t answer. Breath is only the bridge that takes you to the side where real emotion regulation work can begin.

4. You are what you think.

When you make a mistake, what’s the first thing you say to yourself? Do you call yourself an idiot, or do you say, “Hey, everyone messes up. It’s okay. I’ll apologize, learn from it, and move on.” That inner voice shapes everything from your emotional state to your behavior to your sense of self-worth. And that voice can be trained. Two of the most powerful strategies are positive self-talk and reappraisal.

Positive self-talk isn’t about pretending everything is fine. It’s about being kind and encouraging to yourself, especially in tough moments. It’s even more effective when spoken in the second or third person: “Marc, take a breath. You’ve got this.” That subtle shift—called psychological distancing—helps us regulate better by stepping back from the heat of the moment.

Reappraisal, or reframing, means choosing a new lens through which to view a situation. It’s the difference between “This is a disaster” and “This is a challenge I can learn from.” I like to say: reframe instead of blame.

“That inner voice shapes everything from your emotional state to your behavior to your sense of self-worth.”

For instance, I tend to repeat myself a lot during keynote presentations. There are days when I say to myself, “Really, Marc, this is what you are going to do for the rest of your life?” But I know better than to go on stage with that mindset. So, I reappraise. Recently, I gave a big talk at a tech company, and I switched my internal dialogue to, “Marc, you are going to present your life’s work to over 1,000 engineers, managers, and leaders. Think about the impact you can have on their personal and professional lives.” With that mindset, I gave one of my best talks!

5. Focus on other people.

When we’re anxious, angry, or overwhelmed, the instinct is often to withdraw, ruminate, isolate, or spiral inward. But research tells us that reaching out to support others who are suffering is a helpful strategy for healing not only them, but us too.

This is a form of co-regulation. When we help others manage their difficult emotions, we simultaneously help regulate our own. Parents do this with their children all the time, but it’s just as relevant in friendships, workplaces, and partnerships.

When you show up for someone else with empathy, patience, and presence, then you also create connection. You model emotional intelligence, and your kindness has the potential for ripple effects. Even witnessing someone else being emotionally supportive can inspire others to do the same.

Next time you’re feeling low, ask: Who else might be struggling? And how can I help—even in a small way? You might find that helping someone else is the most effective way to help yourself.

This article originally appeared in Next Big Idea Club magazine and is reprinted with permission.

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