What actually *is* emotional regulation??

Most people gain the ability to guide and then to some degree control their emotions by young adulthood. This is much more difficult for people with ADHD.

I am middle aged and do not have ADHD. My son is 11 and does have ADHD. Here’s an example:

I was reminded of something sad to me today when I was in public and tears came to my eyes. I was able to direct my vision and thoughts to something cheerful. I stopped feeling sad within 60 seconds with no change in my activity. 

When this kind of thing happens to my son, he has to wait until something else distracts him naturally or he has to go to another room and switch activities. When he was, say, 6 or 7, and also less medicated, he did not know to change environments or activities. He was entirely dependent on others to help him change the outward world so he could change his mood.

Emotional regulation is one of my biggest struggles with ADHD. I just feel big things all the time, but I have a really hard time processing and creating stability for all the highs and lows. I don’t get mad all that often, but if I get mad there’s a very short road to seeing red if I’m not consistently taking my medication. Once I get upset, I have a hard time redirecting myself. I think of regulating more like stabilizing. There’s little neutrality in a feeling for me where the people around me can make more conscious decisions about their feelings and how they handle them.

If toddler doesn't get the toy they want, the entire world is ending. They are distraught, they throw a tantrum. Its a disaster. If a teenager falls in love, its the most amazing wonderful thing in the world, they cannot live without that person, no one has ever felt like this before. If they break up, they will die from the pain. Because the toddler and teenager have never felt this way before, they are unable to look past their immediate visceral reaction.

When (usually) we get older, we draw on our past experience to regulate our emotions. For instance , we have been in love and broken up before and we remember that we have gotten over it. So instead of feeling like its the end of the world, we can see it will get better. We are able to look at our emotions from the outside and stop them spiralling.

With ADHD, its like we are unable to emotionally remember the past and use that experience to temper the feelings of our inner toddler.

I have had CBT, which has really helped me in this respect. I have to make a conscious effort but I can do it.

I am now on medication that helps with my emotional regulation, and I think the main thing it does is give me the ability to pause and think “I’m having a really strong feeling of anger / fear / sadness right now. What do I actually want to do about it?” If I decide there’s nothing I want to do, I can move on to a different activity and the feeling dissipates. I still feel the feeling, but it’s much less urgent and more intellectual — I know this person made me feel anxious, but I decided I need to get work done and it wouldn’t be helpful to confront them, for example.

Before being medicated, I was very consumed by things, so even if I’d decided not to confront them, I would find it hard to do anything else for several hours because I’d be consumed with anxiety about it and a sense of urgency that I MUST do something about it that was very hard to ignore. I think going on meds gave me a greater ability to say “I’ve been wronged in this situation. That sucks. This person is being an asshole. But there’s no solution and it’s not worth my time to dwell on right now” when previously I’d be more likely to think “Maybe I did something wrong if I made them mad and I must fix it” or “I have been wronged and I demand justice right now”

Another way this manifests is I’m prone to getting really depressed if I’m underestimated. Meds help me appreciate quiet moments where not a lot is going on more (and also makes the feeling less extreme, so if I’m understimulated it’s easier to just go outside or something).

Lots of great responses, here’s my personal experience to add.

When I am emotionally regulated, I have the capacity to handle most all stressors and navigate life without feeling overwhelmed. My thoughts are relatively clear and logical. I can control my emotions from overtaking my thoughts.

When I am emotionally disregulated, I cry at the littlest things like spilling my drink. I am bitchy and snappy to those around me- and that is NOT apart of my cors personality. My senses are SENSITIVE, I cannot handle loud/repetitive sounds, heat/cold, bright lights etc. When I’m really disregulated I want to strip off all my clothes and if I can do I do LOL Essentially I am incapable of being a totally functional human adult.

Being Emotionally regulated to me is feeling safe and comfortable in my body, being able to logically and coherently have conversations and problem solve, and complete daily tasks without overwhelm

Ok, think about a child growing up.

When they're a baby they cry constantly, they have no emotional regulation capacity.

When they get old enough to walk, and talk, they don't necessarily cry at every upset but when they fall and scrape their knee, the pain is unbearable, and that it has happened to them is overwhelming and they burst into tears. At first inconsolable, but with talk and comfort they can slowly be brought back to a stable emotional state.

When they get a little older, they go through a phase where they fall, hurt themselves, start to cry a little bit but actually verbally talk themselves through the process and tell themselves it's ok.

Eventually it becomes internal, thinking to yourself, and eventually almost instant.

A similar process takes place with emotional pain, though it takes to about to the late teens. First insults or rejection cause a total loss of control, even fights, then the talking through stage, then just hurt feelings and grumpiness and eventually mature stability.

This is all handled by the part of the brain impaired in ADHD, so development tends to be slower in ADHD kids. An ADHD ten year old might have the emotional regulation of an eight year old, for example, until growing stops and settles in.

ADHD people get stuck somewhere around 17-19 for the rest of their lives.

The result isn't outbursts necessarily, though it is for some, but just about your ability to process emotions internally. Taking longer to get your balance back after an upset, being more hurt by something than is proportionate, needing to more actively talk yourself though things. Being more prone to overwhelm because you aren't closing the book on your feelings.

But it's also not a requirement, different people have different balances of symptoms.

Emotional regulation is also the ability to hold off on impulsive reactions when you have big feelings about something and stopping to take the time to ask yourself: “Where is this coming from? Is it really this intense? Is there a way I can express this in a more manageable way? What is my intent in my current actions? What should I do in order to make my intent clear?”

Acting with calm intent even during emotional times comes to people without ADHD a bit easier than it does to those with it, largely because of the delays in the regulatory processes during our brains development.

We’re a little slower to it, but boy do we do well once we get there.

To very literally answer your question:

It’s the ability to feel a certain way but then regulate that feeling to what is appropriate and or desired on command.

It is also the natural ability to not become over stimulated as easily and actually process things around you that could be overwhelming.

A dramatic example is being really angry about losing in a video game and instead of imbedding your controller into the screen, you settle into just being frustrated.

Obviously for most of us, aggression over small things comes out in moments of strong sarcasm, complaining, shutting down.. etc. When it shouldn’t last longer than 10 seconds.

Deep, overwhelming feelings that override rational thought and critical thinking. They may be appropriate feelings, but they can be all consuming. Being able to regulate your emotions is to control them and not let them take over.

My supposed best friend had been talking about his 40th birthday for several weeks, and we'd talked about how we wanted to make it special and planned for the week after he got back from a trip. Out of the blue his girlfriend decided to throw a party with 4 days notice, I was cut out of the planning, but was also working the night of her party. I felt deeeeply wounded and it screwed up my rational thinking for like 3 days. It was all consuming sadness. That doesn't happen much anymore, but that was a pretty significant dysregulation.

It can be more obvious, too. Blowing up over small things, then later realizing it was inappropriate, for example.

It's the ability to identify and control your reactions to your emotions.

Nobody is born with the ability to emotionally regulate, but it is a skill most people develop gradually over time (to greater or lesser degrees).

When you think of babies, they are freely expressing everything they feel with zero filter, and they have no ability to self-soothe or even any understanding of what is causing their distress (or happiness).

As we get older, we develop the ability to identify our feelings, to manage our reactions to our feelings, and even to consciously alter our feelings by changing our situation or perspective. ADHD just makes all these things harder. Alexithymia is difficulty identifying emotions and often occurs with ADHD, and it's hard to regulate something you can't even define to yourself. Impulse control struggles make it harder to resist acting on our first reactions to things. Rejection sensitivity can make us spiral into overreactions to perceived emotional threat. Poor memory can make it harder to accurately contextualize experiences in the moment ("This is the worst thing I have ever felt, I will never feel better than this" etc).

Not everyone with ADHD struggles with emotional regulation and lots of people without ADHD do. It's just one of many things that can contribute to emotional dysregulation.

Example from our kid: You are really angry at your parents and you tell them you are angry and need time to cool off vs biting, hitting, yelling, or worse.  In our house it presents as an ability or lack thereof to calmly discuss differences vs getting angry and doing things you regret. 

I just recently discovered this. My initial problem with ADHD was that I m dumb as wood and maybe Concerta isn’t working on me.

But taking constant breaks from the pill, I discovered that I can control and regulate my emotions, my temper, my thoughts much much better.

On a day without my pill, my patience and tolerance is really low, like a 3/10. Anything ticks me off: a weird stare (maybe i actually imagined that it was weird), a different tone, one or two drops of sweat, a car horn, some stupid website that I work with and loads slow.

But when I take my pill, suddenly all of those things don’t seem that much of a big deal anymore. That weird stare was maybe because that person had a crappy day, maybe that website has some problems and so on. I also am much calmer behind the wheel. Granted I still drive like i m an f1 driver (and not a good one anyways) but at least I don’t get impatient anymore. I can wait for others, maybe their foot slipped the gas pedal and that’s why they were slow at the red light or maybe they care groceries and need to drive slow.

Emotional regulation or to me: a bit more positive, balanced thinking, not catastrophic all the time.

For me, a few examples of dysregulation are:

1. crying will often catch me kinda by surprise, when I really don't want to cry. It's like I underestimate the pain I'm going to feel, or it's a situation where I'm not expecting at all to cry, like asking for an extension at school, or trying to talk to my boss about something stressful, and then bam it's there and I'm trying to suppress it and that attempt to suppress makes it 10x worse. I cannot for the life of me talk myself out of crying especially if someone sees I'm on the verge of crying. It's like a shame spiral. Self-fueling thing. Why can other people stop their tears? So frustrating.

2. Getting angry about something at work for example, sometimes I just can't let it go, it goes on and on in my head, sometimes to the point of needing to take a break or call in sick for the rest of the day. I often don't care that much about office politics, I'd rather the person know they are wrong or being dumb or making things hard for everyone or whatever. I hardly ever act on that though, but it gets me all riled up inside seemingly way more than other coworkers. They're more able to just say, "oh well" and redirect their focus onto other work.

3. Acting weird and childish when I get really excited. Granted this emotion rarely hits me, so maybe I just don't have a lot of practice dealing with it. I used to try to hide all my emotions for a long time growing up maybe that's why I don't know how to regulate them now.

My friend described what I have as “big toddler feelings” like as in you don’t dislike it you HATE it, you don’t like something you LOVE it.

Also reacting rather than responding as in I used to blow up over things which did not warrant it because of how the extreme emotions affected me.

I didn’t notice until I was medicated that now pretty much anything that used to make me go one way or the other is now much more level and I can recognise it and then respond appropriately. So take anger for example what used to send me into a rage now kind of sits there and I’m thinking ooo that’s really pissed me off but I don’t outwardly show it I kind of process it in a much better way.

Similar to you, I don't get angry often, and turn inwards when I get upset. But I definitely struggled with emotional regulation. Several years ago I was working in an office, and my supervisor came up to me, pointed at her chest in a circling motion and said "THAT looks very nice, but you are distracting the men."

I was caught so off guard! To paint the picture here: I was wearing a bra, a cami, a blousey top AND a cardigan. There wasn't much skin showing at all, but I do have a fuller chest, so you could see just a few mm of where the cleavage starts. It was also a very small office, the few men who actually saw me only passed by when they entered the office.

Even though I thought her comment was ridiculous, I spent the entire day at work fighting back my tears. I actually wanted to walk out on the spot. The comment kept repeating in my head, along with the things I wished I had responded with. I felt upset, embarrassed, angry, sad. It was incredibly overwhelming. And at the same time I felt stupid, dramatic and childish for having this strong reaction to such nonsense. I cried in the car, cried some more at home, and it took several days for my internal turmoil to settle down.

Since I've been medicated, I notice how much of a difference it makes. My brain still functions when I get upset. There's room to pause and think about the situation. And I can articulate what I'm thinking and feeling. A common analogy for adhd is having 100 channels on at the same time, and they're all loud and trying to get your attention. That's how it felt for me. If someone asked me what was going on, I couldn't even begin to tell them. Because every thought and emotion was flooding in at the same time, which was completely overwhelming. I couldn't focus on just 1 channel to tell a coherent story. With my meds, I feel much more grounded and balanced.

Most comments are about impulsive reactions to an upseting situation. That definetely happens but emotional dysregulation for me is when after a conflict I can't function for days in areas of my life that had nothing to do with that conflict. When one situatuon, thought, word or belief can paralyze me. When I can't get over it for days. When my mood is destroyed and my life has stopped until I become fine again. Meanwhile, the clutter in my space grows and grows and so do my tasks at work too. No need to mnetion I don't properly take care of myself either. That's how unability to navigate a simple emotion of fear, anger or insecurity, or maybe feeling les worhty - can affect your whole life and that's what makes ADHD a serious, serious problem. Personally, emotional dysregulation, for what I have understood it to be, has always been the worst and hardest part of ADHD. I am too busy feeling that dissapointment, or sadness or what ever that I can't focus on my life that's passing by. That's why that for me means emotional dysregulation.

I was 32 when I first really asked myself how I was feeling. I wouldn’t say I don’t feel anything, but it was never the right time to ask myself that. What I can tell you: the last time I cried was as a child. The next time was when I was 27, and I was drunk. I was watching a scene from How I Met Your Mother where Barney holds his daughter for the first time and says, “You are the love of my life. Everything I have, and everything I am, is yours… Forever.” I cried for no real reason (well, not entirely for no reason—I just thought it was beautiful). That was the first time I truly let my emotions out (at least the first time in a positive sense). After that, it never happened again. In the position I was and am in, controlling emotions is simple: don’t show them.