While technical graphics on the concept of emotional regulation abound, I believe overly clinical or technical-looking materials can often make people feel bored, overwhelmed, worried, or pathologized. I created these resources for educators and clinicians as approachable, nonclinical visual aids for teaching about emotions and emotional regulation to all age groups.
Many of these resources are useful with a wide variety of ages, and are adaptable to personal use, classroom, and clinical settings because the resources are approachable, easy to understand, and fun!
Steps to Containing a Mental Health Crisis Printable- RO-DBT model
Traditional DBT helps develop emotion regulation and impulse control in people who struggle in these areas, but Radically Open (RO) DBT is an adaptation of…
Burnout, Compassion Fatigue, and Vicarious Trauma
In the simplest terms: burnout occurs when the stress we experience exceeds our capacity to cope with that stress. While some individuals may be able…
Abstract Emotion Cards | Art Deck by Kate Creech
Shortly after completing my Mindful Grounding Activity Card deck, I had an idea for a deck of visual emotion cards, each card containing an evocative…
Free Printable Emotion Wheel For Kids | PDF Feelings Wheel Download
This post contains linked products from which I may earn a commission. As an amazon associate, I earn from qualifying purchases. Books and/or supplies…
Feeling Forecast: Emotional Regulation Teaching Worksheets
This three-piece worksheet is an adapted excerpt from my COVID Kid’s Activity Book. This bundle includes two worksheets, with three pages total. The Feeling Forecast…
COVID Kid’s Activity Book | A Workbook to Help Families Cope
Most of us are more than a little concerned about the mental health of the kiddos that we care about during this pandemic. The natural…
Emotion Sensation Feeling Wheel Handout by Lindsay Braman
> JUMP TO DOWNLOAD < The Emotion Sensation Feeling Wheel WHAT IS IT: It’s an adaptation of the “feelings wheel” that many therapists…
Worksheet for Cultivating Mindfulness Practices
Why Mindfulness? In a culture where life is often lived digitally, mindfulness matters. This post contains linked products from which I may earn a commission….
Questions Aren’t Connections: Cultivating Conversations beyond Q & A
Shifting from Questions to Conversations It’s normal for parents to worry about kids as they navigate shared spaces, learning, and the social aspects of growing…
Everyone Feels Overwhelmed Sometimes
Even though most humans have had both experiences (getting extremely upset or shutting down) in response to overwhelming emotion, most of us tend to respond to highly distressing situations by consistently returning to one end of the spectrum or the other.
Therapists call these two extremes hypoarousal and hyperarousal. Hypoarousal occurs when we shut down. Our heart rate slows down, our thoughts may become foggy or unclear, and we may find ourselves with nothing to say and no strong feeling in particular. On the other extreme, hyperarousal is, just like it sounds, the opposite of this. Heart rates rise, tears come uncontrollably, and we may talk very fast or with a very strained voice. In a hyperaroused state, thoughts may race and we may find ourselves frantic to express ourselves.
Some theorists propose that our attachment style (read more about attachment styles and access my visual interpretation of the spectrum here) may predict which extreme is a person’s default response to being pushed beyond their window of tolerance. This theory proposes that individuals who are avoidant in attachment style have learned, during childhood, to respond to conflict by shutting down and checking out, because in their family of origin, they learned this was the most effective way to preserve connection with a caregiver. On the other end of the spectrum, individuals who were better able to access care in childhood by expressing big emotions are more likely to default to a hyper-aroused state when interpersonal conflict pushes them to their window of tolerance.
Stress Weakens Our Capacity to Regulate Our Emotions
When we are under high levels of stress, our window of tolerance (i.e. out ability to regulate our emotions) shrinks. A healthy window of tolerance that might have been wide open with lots of room for self-regulation before we were under stress becomes compressed, and we may find ourselves losing our temper or bursting into tears more often.
If this stress is short term, it’s likely that our ability to regulate our emotions will return to normal once the stressor has passed, however, in the case of chronic stress or trauma, the help of mental health treatment or additional resources may be needed to develop a greater capacity to regulate emotions.