Picture this:
It’s Monday after a really long weekend. You have an important work meeting at 9 am that you are dreading. It’s 20 minutes past the time your children are supposed to be up and getting ready for school, but they are still sound asleep. You rush to get them up, much to their annoyance. You jump in the shower, but as you step out, you realize that there are no clean towels left because your partner used the last clean one. Fast forward 30 minutes: your children are out the door to catch the bus with seconds to spare. You are ready to leave, but the car keys are nowhere to be found. You search frantically throughout the room, but this proves difficult with all the clutter – wouldn’t it be great if someone picked up around here? You eventually find them, get in your car, and proceed to get stuck in traffic. Your typically 15-minute commute turns into 45. You arrive at the meeting at 9:01 and realize you left the report you needed on your kitchen counter at home.
Feeling stressed yet? I know I am. Life has a funny way of presenting us with challenges, and it is hard not to respond to those challenges emotionally. How we manage those emotions can have a huge impact on our day and our well-being. When we manage and respond to emotional experiences (i.e. emotional regulation) strategically from a place of self-care and compassion, we can handle the difficult days with much more ease.
First, let’s talk about what emotional regulation is and how it can go right – and wrong.
What is Emotional Regulation?
Emotional regulation means different things to different people, and there isn’t a clear consensus in psychological research on what emotional regulation is exactly. What is agreed upon is that when we experience emotions, we have the ability to harness those emotions towards meeting a goal if we use the right techniques. One way to do this is to change how we think when we are experiencing emotions. We can think about emotions and the situation that is occurring to cause those emotions in two ways: automatic emotional regulation and elaborative emotional regulation.
Automatic Emotional Regulation
Automatic emotional regulation is what many of us lean on when we are experiencing negative emotional events (it’s called automatic for a reason!). This can include rumination, catastrophizing, self-blame, and blaming others.
- Rumination refers to dwelling on negative thoughts or experiences. In the above example, you may have found yourself spending the entire weekend thinking about all the ways your work meeting could go wrong.
- Catastrophizing involves thinking that the emotional event is worse than it may actually be (e.g., “I’m late and unprepared for the meeting! There’s no way this day can get any worse. I’ll be packing my desk up by noon.”).
- Self-blame is when we assign blame to ourselves (“I wouldn’t have left the report at home if I had gotten the kids up sooner. I always drop the ball like this.”).
- Blaming others is exactly what it sounds like. In the above scenario, it may be easy to think “Well, this wouldn’t have happened if I had some help cleaning up around the house. Plus I would have had time to go back home to get the report if people knew how to drive!”
These are all ways you can think about negative events and the emotions that come with them. However, these strategies are not particularly helpful. People who engage in rumination, catastrophizing, self-blame, and blaming others are more likely to experience feelings of depression, anxiety, burnout, and prolonged negative affect (i.e., you feel worse for longer).
Emotional Regulation Toolkit
As moms, it is helpful to keep your toolkit stocked for when you encounter those no good, rotten days. Here are some elaborative emotional regulation tools that you can pull out when needed:
- Positive Refocusing: Sure, things aren’t great right now, but why not focus on positive experiences you have had? Celebrate the small wins! (“This morning is not going to plan, but I am so grateful for that three day weekend I got to spend with the family.”)
- Refocusing on Planning: With this strategy, you use your mental energy to focus on what you can do to fix or ease the current situation. (“Although I don’t have the report right now, I can give a summary and send the report in an email as a follow-up for the meeting.”)
- Positive Reappraisal: If you’re unable to fix the situation, you may find it helpful to think about what you can learn from the situation. Think of this as the “silver lining” method. (“This is tough, but I will get through this. I am strong, and these challenges will only make me stronger.”)
- Acceptance: This may be the most challenging, but it can be very beneficial when you’re experiencing a negative event that is out of your control. You are acknowledging the situation is what it is, but allowing yourself to move on. (“I can’t do anything, so I just need to accept it and move on.”)
Of course, these are all easier said than done.
Now that we have defined emotional regulation and examined some of the unhealthy ways we can try to manage our emotions, our next post will move us to discussing what we can do to more effectively emotionally regulate ourselves and teach our children to do the same.
References and Further Reading
Aghamohammadi, V., Salmani, R., Ivanbagha, R., Effati Daryani, F., & Nasiri, K. (2020). Footbath as a safe, simple, and non‐pharmacological method to improve sleep quality of menopausal women. Research in Nursing & Health, 43(6), 621–628. https://doi.org/10.1002/nur.22082
Allen, T. D., & Kiburz, K. M. (2012). Trait mindfulness and work–family balance among working parents: The mediating effects of vitality and sleep quality. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 80(2), 372–379. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jvb.2011.09.002
Bloch, L., Haase, C. M., & Levenson, R. W. (2014). Emotion regulation predicts marital satisfaction: More than a wives’ tale. Emotion, 14(1), 130–144. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0034272
Bunjo, L., Reynolds, A., Appleton, S., Gill, T., Ferguson, S., & Adams, R. (2020). Does sleep moderate the relationship between work-life balance and depression differentially in men and women? Findings from the North West Adelaide Health Study. Journal of Sleep Research, 27(S1), 200. https://doi.org/10.1111/jsr.12751
Castellano, E., Muñoz-Navarro, R., Toledo, M. S., Spontón, C., & Medrano, L. A. (2019). Cognitive processes of emotional regulation, burnout and work engagement. Psicothema, 31(1), 73–80. https://doi.org/10.7334/psicothema2018.228
Chen, P.-H., Kuo, H.-Y., & Chueh, K.-H. (2010). Sleep hygiene education. Journal of Nursing Research, 18(4), 283–289. https://doi.org/10.1097/jnr.0b013e3181fbe3fd
Deng, Y., Cherian, J., Kumari, K., Samad, S., Abbas, J., Sial, M. S., Popp, J., & Oláh, J. (2022). Impact of sleep deprivation on job performance of working mothers: Mediating effect of workplace deviance. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 19(7), 3799. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph19073799
Härdelin, G., Holding, B. C., Reess, T., Geranmayeh, A., Axelsson, J., & Sundelin, T. (2021). Do mothers have worse sleep than fathers? Sleep imbalance, parental stress, and relationship satisfaction in working parents. Nature and Science of Sleep, 13, 1955–1966. https://doi.org/10.2147/nss.s323991
Hülsheger, U. R., Alberts, H. J. E. M., Feinholdt, A., & Lang, J. W. B. (2013). Benefits of mindfulness at work: The role of mindfulness in emotion regulation, emotional exhaustion, and job satisfaction. Journal of Applied Psychology, 98(2), 310–325. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0031313
Kalil, A., Dunifon, R., Crosby, D., & Houston Su, J. (2014). Work hours, schedules, and insufficient sleep among mothers and their young children. Journal of Marriage and Family, 76(5), 891–904. https://doi.org/10.1111/jomf.12142
Kim, S., Kim, Y., Lim, S.-S., Ryoo, J.-H., & Yoon, J.-H. (2019). Long commute time and sleep problems with gender difference in work–life balance: A cross-sectional study of more than 25,000 workers. Safety and Health at Work, 10(4), 470–475. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.shaw.2019.08.001
Mérida-López, S., Extremera, N., Quintana-Orts, C., & Rey, L. (2018). In pursuit of job satisfaction and happiness: Testing the interactive contribution of emotion-regulation ability and workplace social support. Scandinavian Journal of Psychology, 60(1), 59–66. https://doi.org/10.1111/sjop.12483
Peltz, J. S., Daks, J. S., & Rogge, R. D. (2020). Mediators of the association between COVID-19-related stressors and parents’ psychological flexibility and inflexibility: The roles of perceived sleep quality and energy. Journal of Contextual Behavioral Science, 17, 168–176. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jcbs.2020.07.001
Smith, J. S., Brescoll, V. L., & Thomas, E. L. (2016). Constrained by emotion: Women, leadership, and expressing emotion in the workplace. In M. Connerley & J. Wu (Eds.), Handbook on Well-Being of Working Women (pp. 209–224). Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-9897-6_13
Sullivan Bisson, A. N., Robinson, S. A., & Lachman, M. E. (2019). Walk to a better night of sleep: Testing the relationship between physical activity and sleep. Sleep Health, 5(5), 487–494. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sleh.2019.06.003
Tan, X., Ruppanner, L., Hewitt, B., & Maume, D. (2022). Restless sleep and emotional wellbeing among European full-time dual-earner couples: Gendered impacts of children and workplace demands. Journal of the Academy of Social Sciences, 17(4), 396–411. https://doi.org/10.1080/21582041.2022.2033305
Wang, W.-L., Chen, K.-H., Pan, Y.-C., Yang, S.-N., & Chan, Y.-Y. (2020). The effect of yoga on sleep quality and insomnia in women with sleep problems: A systematic review and meta-analysis. BMC Psychiatry, 20(1). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12888-020-02566-4
Wearick-Silva, L. E., Richter, S. A., Viola, T. W., & Nunes, M. L. (2021). Sleep quality among parents and their children during COVID-19 pandemic in a Southern-Brazilian sample. Jornal de Pediatria, 98(3). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jped.2021.07.002
Zalewski, M., Lewis, J. K., & Martin, C. G. (2018). Identifying novel applications of dialectical behavior therapy: Considering emotion regulation and parenting. Current Opinion in Psychology, 21, 122–126. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.copsyc.2018.02.013