I thought I’d mark the new year (2026) by starting a series on a topic I’ve long wanted to talk about: emotion regulation.

Introduction

I’m going to guess that you have emotions, feelings and moods. And probably a wide variety of them. Congratulations, you are the proud owner of a nervous system!! 🧠

Now as you’ve no doubt experienced, some are them are quite desirable and we generally want more of them: joy, excitement, curiosity, serenity.

Others aren’t always as welcome and we generally want less of them: sadness, irritability, emptiness, shame.

‘Emotion regulation’ refers to our ability to recognise, understand and respond effectively to our emotions, feelings and moods, especially the intense ones that can derail us.

And this applies to those experiences we might describe as ‘positive’ as much as it does to emotions we might label as ‘negative’. For example, being too excited can be just as disruptive as being too angry. Both can lead us to make poor choices or decisions. Both can put us out of sync with a particular situation.

If we’re lucky, as we grow up, the important people in our lives (e.g. parents, teachers) show us how to manage our feelings. Perhaps you’ve seen an adult responding to a child (it is usually happening in a supermarket) who is having some big feelings (e.g. a tantrum). Helpful responses include those that coach the child on what they’re feeling, why, and how to deal with it.

But that isn’t always the case and there are many reasons why we might find ourselves, as adults, struggling with certain feelings.

The good news? Regardless of life-stage, we can learn skills to manage our feelings better.

And that is what this series of posts is about.

Nowadays, some of the best descriptions of emotion regulation skills come from evidence-based therapies like Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (DBT) and Affect Regulation Training (ART).

In fact, the skills that are taught to individuals receiving therapy for specific mental health conditions are often skills that are useful for anyone to learn, regardless of whether they have a diagnosis or not. These are skills that help us navigate stress, relationships, study, work, and life.

I was reminded of this in one of the many emails I get on mental health. In it was linked an emotion regulation fact-sheet from https://www.borderlinepersonalitydisorder.org/ that I thought was a really nice summary of emotion regulation.

So I decided to use it as inspiration for a blog series on Emotion Regulation – and this is the first blog post in that series. Booyah!

[Note that you don’t need to have Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) or any clinical mental health condition to get value from these emotional regulation skills. This and future posts in this series are intended for everyone]

So let’s get started.

A quick note on terminology

Before going any further, it’s worth clarifying a few terms.

Words like emotions, feelings, and moods are often used interchangeably in everyday language. I’m as guilty of that as the next person. But for the purposes of this series, it helps to be a little more precise about what I mean.

Here’s the way I’ll be using these terms.

Emotions

I tend to think of emotions as relatively fundamental, built-in ways that our nervous system orients itself to a situation. They’re broad patterns that prepare us to respond to what’s happening around us. There are probably only a relatively small number of these at a basic level (things like fear, anger, sadness, joy).

Feelings

Feelings are the lived, experiential side of emotions. They include the body sensations, thoughts, memories, images, urges, intentions, and desires or aversions that colour the underlying emotion. While there may be only a limited number of core emotions, there are countless feelings, because each person’s history, circumstances, and interpretation of events shapes how those emotions are experienced in the moment. For example, two people leave the same meeting. One feels bored because nothing interesting to them was covered. The other feels angry because their views on discussed topics weren’t heard. Same experience elicited very different feelings.

Moods

Moods are patterns of feelings that extend over longer periods of time. When we talk about mood, we’re usually talking about a theme that runs across days or weeks, rather than what’s happening right now. Emotions and feelings can shift several times over the course of a single day; moods tend to be more persistent.

For this series, I’m going to focus primarily on feelings.

That’s because feelings are where we can most easily build awareness and skill. They’re accessible in the moment, they can be put into words, and they give us a practical entry point for understanding what’s going on inside us and what we might want to do next.

I apologise ahead of time if other terms get mixed in there along the way.

Working with feelings: Part 1 – naming them

My original intention was to cram all of the information into a single post, but as I started to write it, it got out of hand quickly.

Instead, let’s digest this topic, piece by piece.

Today’s focus?

Identifying and labelling feelings.
In plain language: getting better at putting words to what you feel.

Why bother naming your feelings?

You might think, “I already know how I feel. I feel… fine. Or stressed. Or meh.”

But often our emotional life is more like a blur: a mix of body sensations, thoughts, urges, and mood that we haven’t really put into words.

And if I am honest, despite my training, I find it actually pretty hard to name how I am feeling. I’m sure plenty of people who know me will attest to asking me ‘Gareth, how you feeling?’ and seeing me freeze (it’s an amusing way to break my brain if you ever want to do it)

But naming a feeling (or a complex of feelings) is an important first step before deciding how to work with them.

For example, say I am feeling ‘bad’. That could mean anything from indifferent to overwhelmed. If I can’t be more specific in naming it, how do I choose wisely how to manage it? Indifference might require leaning into a situation more. Overwhelmed might mean pulling back. Two very different responses.

Naming or describing how we feel is therefore the important first step before attempting to work with those feelings.

Two ways to go about describing your feelings

When people are learning to name their feelings, it helps to know there isn’t just one “correct” way to do it.

Below are two complementary approaches to the same basic task. You can use either one or move between them depending on what’s available and what works for you in the moment.

Option 1: Describe the Dimensions of the Feeling

This approach is useful when:

you don’t have a feelings wheel nearby
your emotional vocabulary feels limited
the experience is vague or hard to name

Instead of searching for the “right” word, you describe the shape of the experience.

When you pause for a brief check-in, notice these core dimensions:

Valence – does this feel pleasant, unpleasant, or mixed?
Intensity – is it low, medium, or high?
Activation – does my body feel low energy, settled, or highly activated?
Urge – do I feel pulled to approach, avoid, or shut down?

You might end up with something like:

“Unpleasant, moderate intensity, fairly activated, urge to avoid.” (has an Anxious kinda vibe to it)
“Pleasant, low intensity, settled, no strong urge.” (has a Content kinda vibe to it)

That’s already a meaningful description of your emotional state — even without a single emotion label.

Optional: Add a Little More Texture

If you have the space or curiosity, you can also notice one or two optional dimensions:

Duration – fleeting or lingering?
Clarity – clear and recognisable, or vague and fuzzy?
Sense of control – manageable, or the feeling is running the show?

They’re just extra detail you can add when it feels helpful.

Option 2: Use a Feelings Wheel

This approach is useful when:

you want to expand your emotional vocabulary
you like visual or structured tools
you’re curious about more nuanced labels

Instead of describing the feeling in dimensions, you use a guide to help you find the right words.

A feelings wheel lets you:

start with a broad emotion in the centre
move outward toward more specific descriptions

A simple, easy-to-use option which I just found today writing this is:👉 https://feelingswheel.app/

As mentioned above, you generally start in the centre, with one of the broader feelings and then work your way out to the edge to refine it.

Keep in mind that you may well have a few feelings present at the same time, so you don’t have to narrow it down to one. For example, there are times when I’ve felt a bit anxious and a bit excited at the same time. It is common to have mixed feelings.

Just like the dimensional approach, this doesn’t need to be exact. You can:

try a word and discard it
settle on two words
decide that none quite fit

Optional: Add a Little More Context

If it helps, you can also briefly note:

how strong the feeling is
how activated your body feels
what the feeling seems to want you to do

In other words, you can mix in some of the dimensions from Option 1 — just starting from words instead of structure.

Two Routes, Same Skill

Both options are doing the same underlying work which is helping you attend to your inner experience and put some structure around it.

Option 1 works well when language feels limited or unavailable – and as we will see in future posts, this dimensional description can be a little easier to attach regulation strategies to.
Option 2 works well when you want help finding or refining words – the benefit over time being that you increase your ‘feelings vocabulary’

At this stage, either approach, used regularly (and imperfectly) is enough to build the skill.

Use an app to prompt you to do this randomly

If you are anything like me, one of the main barriers to practising a new skill like this is remembering to do it.

So here is a suggestion for setting up a practice period.

First, decide on a time period that you’ll try this for. It might be a week if you just want a taster. It might be a month if you want to develop some real skill with it.

Then work out if you are going to do it at a set time each day or randomly.

For something like describing feelings, I like a random approach, because you don’t know ahead of time when you’ll be asked to describe how you are feeling.

You can do this by using a random reminder app (this is the one I installed on my phone) to prompt you, randomly, a couple of times per day (or however many times you’d like)

When you get the prompt, as soon as it is safe to do so, pause for 30–60 seconds and do a brief feelings check-in, using either option.

You can write it down if you like or simply make a mental note. Writing will allow for better reflection at a later date.

Final words

There you have it. That kicks off our series on emotion regulation!

Over the next few posts, we’ll build on this foundation — moving from naming feelings, to tracking them, to understanding what makes them easier or harder to manage.

First step, learn to better describe how you are feeling and get into the habit of doing the occasional feelings check-in

In the next post we’ll look at journalling your feelings, an extension practice of naming them.

Take care everyone and see you soon🙂

Better U

How to manage big feelings (and perhaps the little ones as well)