Emotional Regulation is Not Mind Over Matter; it’s Body Over Brain

Emotional regulation skills for neurodivergent folks (and everyone else)

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Nervous system-based emotional regulation

Most emotional regulation strategies focus on thinking patterns, logic, problem-solving, and other cognitive (mind)-based approaches. Worse yet, others focus on modifying and manipulating observable external behaviours in an attempt to subsequently change a person’s internal experiences.

Those are — and forgive me for being so blunt — but they’re fucking useless.

Okay, they are helpful when we’re only just entering the very early stages of dysregulation, if we can catch ourselves in time and use cognitive-based strategies to reason with ourselves and work through the issues causing the emotions.

IF. That’s a big if for a lot of people, especially people who don’t have people in their lives who can provide co-regulation, and those who have never been taught emotional regulation skills, or have never seen them role-modelled.

The good news is, we can come at this a different way — a more effective way.