When emotions come in waves, you might feel like you’re in over your head. You can find your footing — and room to breathe — by practicing emotional regulation skills. A care team at ReKlame Health can help you while you understand your feelings and identify what provokes challenging feelings. We strive to make care accessible with insurance coverage or self-pay options. Then, you can learn to embrace positive emotions and let negative feelings go.

Learn how you can regulate your emotions

Ready to build regulation skills and resilience? You can try the emotional regulation skills below to sit with your emotions more easily. It might not be easy at first, but a little practice can go a long way. Just the intention to manage your emotional reactions can put you in a more empowered state of mind. Plus, you can turn to ReKlame for virtual mental health care.

• Avoid common triggers.

In recovery and mental health communities, there is an acronym for some of the feelings that can be most difficult: “HALT”:

• Hungry
• Angry
• Lonely
• Tired

A longer acronym, “HALT BS,” adds boredom and stress to the list. You may maintain more emotional stability by maintaining a healthy diet, working through anger, finding connections with others and sleeping well. Finding healthy ways to entertain yourself and reduce stress can help, too.

• Identify emotions in your body.

Maybe you know exactly what you’re feeling. Maybe it’s hard to put a label on it, especially if you experience alexithymia, a condition that makes recognizing your own emotions difficult.

You can begin getting to know your emotions by thinking of how you feel them in your body. If one emotion is clearest to you, where do you feel it? What physical sensations arise with it?

• Observe emotions like the weather.

When you recognize the sensations that come with your emotions, you can see them as waves of feeling that come and go. By observing them, you can take a watchful perspective instead of a more vulnerable one.

You may find that this slightly distanced perspective allows you to accept your emotions more easily. When feelings are temporary and changeable like the weather, you don’t have to fight them. You can see rain coming, deal with it and let it pass.

• Think through emotional experiences.

After emotional experiences, you can use mindfulness to understand what has happened. Begin by looking for what prompted the feeling. Perhaps it was a place, thing, person or experience.

Try to recall your thoughts and physical sensations. Next, ask yourself how you reacted to the emotion physically or verbally. Finally, how did you feel afterward? What might help make a similar experience easier?

• Prepare emotional self-regulation tools for the future.

Sometimes, an overwhelming moment can catch you by surprise. You might be able to handle it more easily with self-regulation tools at hand.

In dialectical behavior therapy, participants soothe themselves through the five senses. Some prepare self-soothing tools like favorite images and music or relaxing fragrances. They might include something to taste, like hard candy, and something soft or textured to touch. Think of what you could use to make a difficult moment feel a little bit more comfortable.

• Take a moment for yourself.

You might not always have much time to spend on self-care, but you might find moments here and there. You can use these little opportunities to do what makes you feel good, whether it’s taking a short walk, texting a friend, listening to a guided meditation, or journaling in a notebook or your phone.

The little things can add up to an improvement in your mood. A little bit of a lift might make managing occasional emotional highs and lows easier, and so might knowing that you have easy ways to feel better in a few minutes of free time.

The strategies above might help you reduce emotional dysregulation. If you’re struggling with anxiety, additional tips here may help. And if you need additional support, ReKlame can provide diagnostic and psychiatric care. We have bilingual (English- and Spanish-speaking) providers prepared to meet with you virtually within 48 hours.

Begin improving your mental health today

Thinking about building better emotional regulation skills and steadier mental health? You’ve got this, but it may be easier with help. We offer treatment for a variety of conditions, including anxiety disorders and depressive disorders. If your intense emotions might be connected to a condition like these, ReKlame can help you find your footing. We can provide secure, HIPAA-compliant communication and appointments in English or Spanish through an app, so you don’t have to disrupt your schedule or travel to an office.

Give our care team a call today for more information, check your eligibility for free online or book an initial appointment online.