How to Down-regulate in Times of Emotional Distress

Whether it be the burdens of day-to-day stress or the overwhelm of an acute trauma or crisis, part of the human experience is facing emotional distress. The struggle to rebound and calm ourselves during distress is not straightforward, and it is frustrating that time marches relentlessly forward regardless of how hard our lives may currently be, not allowing us much emotional margin to work through deep emotions like confusion, pain, or anger. Honing our emotional regulation abilities when times are steady can help us learn how to return to our baseline more quickly when we are faced with the inevitable struggles of life. 

What is down-regulation?

Down-regulation refers to our ability to not only recognize when we are in a state of distress, but our capacity to stabilize our nervous systems during these experiences. Our upbringings, life experiences, personalities, and even simple biology all contribute to our intuitive insight and ability to activate these skills, but we can absolutely train ourselves to improve over time if it is an area of weakness. Down-regulation can be quite difficult, especially if it was not well modeled or if there has been extensive emotional trauma. Counselors and other mental health professionals regularly coach their patients in emotional regulation skills for these purposes.

Healthy down-regulation skills contribute to improved overall wellbeing—evidence of a thriving life. And a thriving life isn’t only important for us as individuals, but for us in the context of communities and the world because we are so interconnected and dependent on one another. We actually lean on each other for co-regulation—our lives do not exist in a vacuum and our regulation skills affect our families, friends, and neighbors. Our personal thriving serves a greater purpose.

Building Resilience

Resilience is a word often used to describe the ability to effectively regulate our nervous system in the face of difficulty. “Psychological resilience has been characterized by the ability to bounce back from negative emotional experiences and by flexible adaptation to the changing demands of stressful experiences” (J. H. Block & Block, 1980; J. Block & Kremen, 1996; Lazarus, 1993). However, regulation is not a passive process and it involves awareness and intentionality. Thankfully, we have agency in both of these matters.

When we are living in this space of resilience, it is further described by psychologist, Dan Siegel, as living optimally integrated between the two extremes of rigidity and chaos, both of which are characterized by low capacity for resilience. He observed that his patients could either be classified as coming to him with either (or a combination of) issues pertaining to rigidity—being unreceptive to new information—or chaos—the lack of structure and increased reactivity—in their lives. 

We all flow between these and can even experience them simultaneously. It is not the absence of emotional dysregulation, but our ability to recover and reestablish control that defines our state of resilience. 

Dr. Siegel created the acronym, FACES, to describe what this self-integration actually looks like. He argues that when these traits are present, we are our most resilient, integrated selves: 

Flexible

Adaptive

Coherent (holding together dynamically over time)

Energized

Stable

How can we improve our ability to down-regulate?

Grounding the Body

We experience our emotions in our bodies, and when we face threatening or stressful situations our sympathetic nervous system kicks into gear, preparing us to deal with the threats at hand. Our heart rates increase, our digestion slows, our kidneys increase adrenaline production. We are reactive and ready.  In the face of threat, we need this system to help move our bodies out of harm’s way and keep us out of danger, but when faced with trauma or chronic stress, this system can remain in a constant state of activation. This is where we can intentionally practice activating our parasympathetic nervous system in order to slow our heart rate and adrenaline production, allowing us to relax and regulate. Breathing practices, humming, and other grounding practices stimulate the vagus nerve and help us regulate our emotions.

Positive Emotional Experiences

Based on her research of positive emotions, psychologist Barbara Fredrickson theorized that “positive emotions (e.g., joy, contentment, interest) broaden one’s thought–action repertoire, expanding the range of cognitions and behaviors that come to mind. These broadened mindsets, in turn, build an individual’s physical, intellectual, and social resources (for reviews of the Broaden-and-Build Theory, see Fredrickson, 1998, 2001).”

In other words, having positive emotional experiences helps us integrate ourselves between chaos and rigidity, giving us emotional resources to draw from to down-regulate during dysregulation brought on by any number of life experiences. These positive emotions (awe, gratitude, joy, compassion) elicit a form of learning that is different from what we learn from negative emotions (such as fear, anger or a fight/flight response).

We have the ability to seek out positive emotional experiences, such as pursuing awe, engaging in playful activities, connecting with friends, and practicing gratitude. Each of these micro experiences become part of our future selves and give us a repertoire of emotional templates that we subconsciously draw from during times of distress.

Healthy Relationships

Not to be overlooked is the importance of how relationships influence our resilience. Co-regulating is paramount to our emotional elasticity, which is why we need regular interaction with friends and people we trust. Our brains contain mirror neurons, which cause us to subconsciously “mirror” the emotions of others. They help us develop empathy, emotional connections with others, and allow us to perceive how others navigate stressful situations and learn some of those skills. If we are in a state of dysregulation, being around another dysregulated person is not going to help us stabilize—quite the opposite. But when a stable person comes alongside us, our brains instinctively seek to match their emotional state. 

My husband and I went through a debilitating few weeks of sickness during Covid. We were completely out of sorts for months—isolated (like so many others), caring for our young kids, and so sick. I will never forget the day that a father-figure to us found out how rotten things had become and came to our home. He stayed with us for hours, treating us not like pariahs, but as though the world were completely normal. His presence brought emotional and mental stability to our demolished sense of safety, and from that day forward we had a renewed hope that we would make it through, even though we still had a long road ahead. Left to ourselves in isolation, like so many during that time, we were cut off from a regulating support system to mirror and draw from. Our lives were in chaos, and through this relationship, we were able to reorient ourselves towards emotional integration.   

Healthy Spirituality

At Thrive, our mission is to walk with others on their journey to a thriving life, offering what research has taught us and continually growing together. Our research supports that healthy spirituality is essential to a thriving life. Not all spirituality is healthy, but the elements that have emerged as part of a healthy spirituality have been: transcendent experiences, habits that support us, loving relationships, a positive identity, a vocation that can provide us with purpose, and ethics—when our actions align with our beliefs.

Having an abiding, life-affirming spirituality is a buffer against the battles and difficulties we face. When we are engaged with something beyond ourselves, such as spirituality, our hardships become more bearable, are more likely to be assigned meaning, give us the comfort that we are not alone in our sufferings and that, ultimately, we have hope for the future.

It’s comforting to acknowledge that even the most seasoned and emotionally stable among us is not immune to dysregulation and emotional distress. We are all in this wild and precious life together! Each stressor is different and triggers varying degrees of emotional responses. Being grounded in practices, positive emotional experiences, loving relationships, and a foundation in spirituality supports us with a steady baseline when we experience distress. They are trustworthy companions we can always lean into as we continually navigate the ebbs and flows between the shorelines of rigidity and chaos in the river of life.