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Why Coping Strategies Are Only a Bandage?
Coping strategies are only a temporary fix. Learn how to regulate your emotions for lasting change.
Sol TV
June 22, 2023
This Newsletter at a Glance:
🔍 What is Emotional Regulation?
📝 TL/DR: Ask Yourself One Question
🌤️ Sol Bites: 3 Strategies: Bad, Better, Best
🎬 Video Bite: Ekta Hattangady on Emotional Regulation
🧠 Words of Wisdom
Have you ever…
😭 Wanted the self-control to overcome the temptation to drink away feelings of sadness or anger.
🥴 Wished you could stay calm despite feeling overwhelmed and worried about work or school.
💔 Struggled to face grief and experience it with courage instead of trying to distract yourself.
Growing up, we all learn about different emotions, but only some of us are taught about their functions. As a result, many of us end up feeling powerless when we have to deal with them—and that’s understandable (and also a major reason why we created Sol TV!). It’s probably safe to say most of us wish we had better control over our emotions.
People unfamiliar with properly regulating emotions rely on makeshift strategies, such as avoidance and wishful thinking that the feelings will go away. While strategies like these may feel adequate or have worked in the past–there is room for improvement.
But first, what is emotional regulation?
🔮 TL/DR: Ask Yourself One Question
Technically speaking, you can’t regulate or control your emotions—you will feel them whether you like it or not. You can change how you think and act when facing certain emotions.
For example, when you feel weighed down by sadness, you can force yourself to go for a walk (🔺action). Or if you’re feeling jealous and obsessing over a situation, you can alter your mental talk tracks (🔺behavior).
When trying to “regulate” your emotions, the key is asking yourself:
“What changes can I make in my thinking or behavior to lower the intensity of this emotion?”
🌈 Sol Bites: 3 Strategies: Bad, Better, Best
To improve your emotions and moods, start familiarizing yourself with the three levels of emotion regulation. They will help you catch and curate your feelings before they become overwhelming, allowing you to stay in control and maintain a healthy emotional equilibrium. With practice, you can become an expert emotion regulator. In the next few weeks, we’ll dive deeply on how you can dramatically improve your ability to regulate complicated feelings.
The payoff: Along with a good diet, sleep, and exercise, these techniques can take you far in developing mental calmness and emotional serenity.
The Bad Way
Most of us regulate our emotions by ignoring or avoiding that feeling—you know what it is. That strategy doesn’t work but don’t blame yourself. Once again, if you weren’t taught how to deal with your emotions, pushing them aside is a natural reaction.
The Better Way
Think of the coping strategies you read about in self-help books or hear from friends or experts as a temporary fix. Get into a big fight with your best friend and go for a run, or you do breathing work to handle anxiety about an exam. You may feel better at the moment, but those strategies won’t help you uncover the root of a problem or get you to ask yourself important questions:
What caused me to feel upset in the first place?
Was there an explanation for my sadness?
Was my annoyance attempting to show me something?
Are my worries attempting to indicate something to me?
When you stop trying to manage your feelings, you'll have time to investigate them more closely. Gaining insight into your emotions requires a certain level of curiosity, but it’s worth it. Accepting and journeying through painful emotions can help you appreciate what matters or what you want in life.
The Best Way
The third and “best” way to handle painful moods and emotions starts with being proactive—creating habits that prevent emotions from becoming unmanageable. Prevention is the best medicine.
Let's start here…
5 Habits to Improve Your Ability to Regulate Emotionally
💡 Mindfulness. If you can strengthen your attentional muscles, you’ll have better focus and improved control over your thoughts.
🤗 Self-compassion. This can help with reducing feelings of judgment and harshness toward yourself.
🧠 Cognitive restructuring. You want to be able to recognize and identify unrealistic negative self-talk and restructure it to be more helpful.
🗺️ Values clarification. Understanding your values can help you tolerate difficult emotions better.
🗣️ Assertiveness. This is essential to communicating your feelings and needs honestly and respectfully.
🎞️ Video Bite
Meet Sol TV Creator, Ekta Hattangady, a seasoned psychotherapist and a mindfulness educator. Her personal journey of mindfulness and meditation spans across more than ten years, enabling her to guide others with authenticity and depth.
Ekta's approach is beautifully universal, drawing from her ancestral practices as well as various philosophies.
In this video, Ekta shares a mind-body technique, using bilateral stimulation, that can help you regulate your emotions, feel grounded and connected to your own resilience.
💡 Words of Wisdom
Regulate your emotions by clarifying your values and nourishing assertiveness.
Along the Same Lines…
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We love you,
Mona & The Sol TV Team ❤️
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