Emotional Regulation Is the Manner in Which

Emotional regulation is the manner in which people adapt and/or adjust their feelings both knowingly and unconsciously to the changes or events in their experiences and surroundings. Emotional regulation has become an important topic in psychological models of psychopathology and in hypothesized treatment strategies for various types of mental disorders. There are several different aspects of emotional regulation that have been targeted as important explanatory factors or targets of intervention for psychopathology.

In addition, these maladaptive emotional regulation strategies (or lack of a strategy) have also served as areas of focus for psychological interventions for disorders involving alterations of mood or anxiety. Three of these strategies are rumination, reappraisal, and response modulation. Rumination, in its most basic sense is repetitive thinking. Rumination is most often thought of as the focus on distressing events that occurred in the past, whereas worrying is more focused on distress associated with potential future events.

However there is a relationship between the two as we be discussed shortly. Reappraisal on the other hand involves a reevaluation or rethinking of an event(s), a belief(s), or an attitude(s). While reappraisal might generally be conceived in a positive light by some, when combined with rumination, which is generally conceived as repetitive negative thinking, reappraisal can result in a kind of downward spiral where past events are viewed as increasingly more negative.

Each successive period of rumination becomes in effect a more negative reappraisal of the past. However, the manner in which reappraisal is operationalized in many research studies results in a negative relationship between reappraisal and negative affect or with psychopathological states. Response modulation involves the ability to shift one's focus from the performance of a particular behavior to an evaluation of its consequences. The failure of a person to evaluate the consequences of certain behaviors such as rumination will result in difficulty in altering negative thoughts and beliefs.

Again, this can lead to a downward spiral where events are perceived as increasingly more negative, affect becomes increasingly more negative, beliefs concerning one's locus of control and the future become more restrictive, and pathology can become more severe. So rumination can lead to worry, which can lead to more rumination, etc. However, when individuals are able to employ response modulation one, such as in cognitive behavioral therapy for example, one would expect to observe a decrease in rumination and an overall improvement in the person's emotional regulation strategies.

With respect to depression and anxiety it appears that rumination drives the pathology. The propensity towards rumination appears to be constant in individuals and in many of the cognitive models of depression is viewed as a significant risk factor for the development of mood.