5 Strategies, Skills and Tools for Mastering Self-Regulation
Human nature is defined by feedback loops of emotion, thought, sensation, and behavior that constantly respond to changes in our environment. With self-awareness as the starting point, self-regulation strategies can help you bio-hack your own complex system of causes and effects. Keep reading to learn how.
Very few people truly learn how to master their own nature with these skills. The natural ability to control impulses and emotions varies widely among most people and is shaped over time through one’s identity, life experience, and socialization. The universal truth, however, is that letting one’s impulses, emotions and desires run wild has undesirable consequences, whether that involves throwing an adult temper tantrum, spiraling into a socially-isolated depression, or showing up late (as usual).
Whatever your downfalls might be, cultivating and practicing self-regulation strategies can help you cope and develop new, healthier habits. In this article, learn the what and the why behind building constructive behaviors through simple, 100% learn-able skills.
What is Self Regulation?
In social psychology research, self-regulation is described as: “essentially a matter of altering one's responses, including thoughts, emotions, and actions.” ¹ It is influenced by behavioral (personality), biological (temperament/disposition) and environmental factors.
However, self-regulation doesn't isn’t about forcing yourself to perform certain actions; rather, it involves a process of expanding awareness of your thoughts, feelings, and actions, and mediating your innate responses to achieve a desired outcome. For this reason, the concept of self-awareness and self-regulation go together hand in hand. Self awareness is a reflective and contemplative process and self-regulation can be understood as the action taken with full self-awareness. For most people, the ability to self-regulate has roots in childhood and can continue to develop with conscious practice in adulthood.
If you practice self-awareness and learn self-regulation techniques, you'll find out that the magic can be encapsulated in one important lesson: to take a breath and pause between a feeling and an action.
Behavior, Biological Feedback, and Self-Regulation
Some say that your actions reflect who you are more than any other marker of identity. Your thoughts, ideas, and emotions translate (or don’t) into actions. And our actions, when repeated, become behaviors. In this way, thoughts, emotions, actions, and behaviors form a feedback loop. That's why gaining more control over your thoughts is essential if you want to change your behavior.
Both positive and negative feedback loops exist in the human body to keep all systems go, maintaining what’s known as homeostasis. Both types of feedback loops act via nerve pathways or chemicals such as hormones to cause a stimulatory or inhibitory effect.
In the human body, feedback loops are running on automatic day and night, at various levels of consciousness. You can imagine feedback loops as invisible switches that keep you rolling smoothly through your day, from regulating your sleep cycles to preparing you to give a presentation in front of your colleagues.
Biological feedback loops are essentially the core of human behavior. You can think of them like the operating system that keeps your computer functioning.
Because every person’s bio-chemical balance is unique, it’s a good idea to become aware of your base rhythms and responses before jumping to control impulsive behaviors.
Conscious vs. Unconscious Self-Regulation
Mind and body form a finely tuned system of feedback between sensation, action, emotion, and thought. Within this system of switches, self-regulation occurs on two different levels of awareness:
1. Conscious Self-Regulation: You can consciously control your thoughts, emotions, and actions. For example, imagine you suffer from anxiety and use breathing techniques to control it. This way you're lowering the pace of your breath and your heart rate, and as an effect, your anxiety will progressively decrease.
2. Unconscious Self-Regulation: Your natural ability to control impulses is an innate form of self-preservation. Say for example that you feel anxious. Now, the body and mind can naturally enact a process that can calm you down and reassure you. Maybe you unconsciously start to cheer yourself up, as your thoughts suddenly begin to shift direction to things that can distract you from that feeling of anxiety.
It’s key to distinguish between conscious and unconscious regulation.
Why?
Because how can you possibly change a behavior or reset a feedback loop that you’re not aware is occurring at all?
If you find it difficult to identify your own unconscious patterns of self-regulation when you stop to consider them, it’s a good idea to build some self-awareness before working on your self-regulation skills.
Emotional Self-Regulation
If there's one thing that can be one of the hardest things to manage, it is your emotions. Some emotions can in fact have rather negative outcomes. They can drive you to make irrational decisions, prevent you from pursuing your dreams, and potentially damage your relationships when your cup is full. Poor emotional regulation can even negatively impact your body. If you feel anxious about an upcoming deadline, for example, your body’s stress response kicks into gear, pumping out hormones that increase your heart rate, blood pressure, temperature, and respiration. ²
Emotional self-regulation requires, first-and-foremost, self-awareness. For this reason, emotion regulation strategies don't merely teach you to control the way you feel; they teach you how to acknowledge your emotions, embrace them, and welcome them, without identifying too closely with them. The key here is to allow emotions to come and go while anchoring in the essence of your soul - without judging the emotions or placing unnecessary value on them.
Common Struggles with Self-Regulation
Instead of regulating impulses and actions, most people typically let their emotions, thoughts, and actions control them. You might experience emotional dysregulation when your emotions take such a deep hold that you feel completely overwhelmed and powerless, stuck in a fixed perspective that triggers a viscious cycle of negative emotions. To sum up, some of the most common struggles you can experience when you have poor self-regulation include:
Overreacting to situations
Allowing your emotions to define your reality
Compulsive behavior based in anxiety-fuelled perfectionism
Abrupt, sudden reactions
Controlling behavior coupled with difficulty adjusting change
Experiencing negative emotions that linger for a long time
Constant mood swings
Chronic procrastination and difficulty keeping appointments
Essential Self-Regulation Skills and How to Practice Them
As you've seen, self-regulation can be the key to a more balanced life, in line with your beliefs and values.
But how can you actively practice self-regulation on a daily basis?
Well, you can by learning some valuable skills that can allow you to start planting the seed of self-regulation! These are the most effective ones:
Mindfulness
Being able to regulate yourself starts with becoming more aware of yourself as a whole. And that's exactly the essence of mindfulness. I bet you must have heard this term at least ten thousand times but maybe you're still wondering: what is mindfulness really? Mindfulness is a type of meditation in which you simply try to be fully aware of your thoughts, your actions, and surroundings. And you do it in a completely neutral, non-judgemental way. When you start cultivating mindfulness in your daily life you are making some space in your mind, and learn not to identify yourself with your emotions.
How to Practice: Start practicing mindfulness daily, even just 5 minutes a day. Ideally, when you wake up in the morning, your mind is a bit lighter. The mind is a muscle and as such it must be trained with consistency. Simply try to sit still, with your spine straight and your eyes closed. Feel yourself inside and out. Become aware of your surroundings and then slowly some thoughts and sensations will start to arise. Welcome whatever it's being triggered without judgment. If you're consistent with the practice you'll see that, once you stop identifying yourself with your thoughts and emotions, you also, almost automatically, begin to detach yourself and find peace of mind.
2. Cognitive Reappraisal
Cognitive reappraisal is another effective strategy that can be used to enhance your self-regulation abilities. Essentially when you use this strategy you're aiming to shift your thought patterns. To be more precise, "cognitive reappraisal" means you're reinterpreting a situation so as to change your emotional response to it. Recent research has proved that using cognitive reappraisal in everyday life can lead you to experience more positive emotions.
How to Practice: Imagine a friend or a partner didn't text you back. The first thought that comes to your mind is they don't care about me the way I do about them. The shift of perspective happens when you find yourself in that situation and instead think, they must be really busy. Basically, cognitive reappraisal is the ability to move beyond your immediate response and refresh your own perspective.
3. Breathwork (Pranayama)
Conscious breathing is another incredibly powerful tool you can use to change the state of the body and of the mind. Perhaps you've noticed that when you're anxious your breath is shallow and fast-paced. When you're more calmed and relaxed you can instead experience long, deep, and slow-paced breathing. That's why it is important to learn how to regulate our breath.
How to Practice: Breathing techniques like Bhramari Pranayama (or Humming bee breath) seem to be among the most effective self-regulation techniques for anyone suffering from anxiety and PTSD. Start by relaxing your body. Gently close down your eyes. Use your thumbs to block the ears and place the remaining fingers over the eyes. Inhale fully through both nostrils and fill the belly with fresh oxygen. Then as you exhale make a deep humming sound at the back of the throat. This sound is proven to calm down your entire system.
4. Exercise
Physical activity is essential for a healthy body and mind. When you train you're increasing endorphins, which can boost your mood and help fight stress. But as in everything, consistency is key. Regular exercise will help you be more goal-oriented, gives you more discipline, and allows you to be more in control over your body and your life.
How to Practice: if you have the time, try to carve out some hours or even just some minutes of your time to train. If you don't have time maybe you can simply try to take regular breaks throughout your day to move around a bit, maybe have a stretch, go for a walk and reset your mind.
5. Journaling
Journaling is yet another useful tool to create more clarity in your mind and regulate your emotions. When you write you're making more sense of the things you have inside. Especially if you're going through Chaos, writing down your thoughts and emotions can help you to slow down, and process things more wisely.
How to Practice: try to build a habit that can be compatible with your lifestyle. Ideally, write your journal at the end of the day or whenever you feel overwhelmed with thoughts. You can also use journaling as a way to keep track of your progress on your self-regulation journey.
Is Self Regulation the Same As Self Control?
Many people tend to think that self-regulation and self-control are the same things. They're similar, but not the same. According to a leading psychologist on self-control, ³
A scientific study by the University of Cyprus goes even further in supporting the focus on self-regulation above self-discipline, defined as behavior that emphasizes the conscious control of “adverse personal performance” . ⁴ Researches found that self-regulation was predictive of academic achievement for undergraduate students, while self-discipline was unrelated to the outcome.
Simply put, self-control means hindering sudden, strong impulses while self-regulation is about reducing and controlling your impulses by purposefully monitoring or altering them. Seen on a time horizon, self-control has important short-term benefits that focus on inhibiting un-desirable behaviors (like checking your email for the millionth time today) while self-regulation is a full set of mind-body tools that function to guide you away from not-so-awesome behaviors and toward the most desirable operating system over a long period of time.
While our personalities, genetic traits and environment strongly influence the set of self regulation tools we start with, virtually anyone can benefit from upskilling in this area. And it all starts with self-awareness!
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Baumeister, Roy F., and Andrew E. Monroe. “Recent Research on Free Will.” In Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 1–52. Elsevier BV, 2014. https://doi.org/10.1016/b978-0-12-800284-1.00001-1.
Harvard Health. “Understanding the Stress Response,” July 6, 2020. https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/understanding-the-stress-response.
Shanker, Stuart, Stuart Shanker, and Stuart Shanker. “Psychology Today: Self-Reg vs. Self-Control.” Self-Reg - With Stuart Shanker, December 6, 2022. https://self-reg.ca/psychology-today-self-reg-vs-self-control/.
Michaelides, Michalis P., and Patrick K. Durkee. “Self-Regulation versus Self-Discipline in Predicting Achievement: A Replication Study with Secondary Data.” Frontiers in Education 6 (November 5, 2021). https://doi.org/10.3389/feduc.2021.724711.