Emotional Regulation Quotes

“When you have a persistent sense of heartbreak and gutwrench, the physical sensations become intolerable and we will do anything to make those feelings disappear. And that is really the origin of what happens in human pathology. People take drugs to make it disappear, and they cut themselves to make it disappear, and they starve themselves to make it disappear, and they have sex with anyone who comes along to make it disappear and once you have these horrible sensations in your body, you’ll do anything to make it go away.”
― Bessel A. van der Kolk

“If you have control over yourself, you have no desire to control others.”
― Miya Yamanouchi , Embrace Your Sexual Self: A Practical Guide for Women

“Unspeakable feelings need to find expression in words. However... verbalization of very intense feelings may be a difficult task.”
― James A. Chu, Rebuilding Shattered Lives: Treating Complex PTSD and Dissociative Disorders

“In between every action and reaction, there is a space. Usually the space is extremely small because we react so quickly, but take notice of that space and expand it. Be aware in that space that you have a choice to make. You can choose how to respond, and choose wisely, because the next step you take will teach your child how to handle anger and could either strengthen or damage your relationship.”
― Rebecca Eanes, The Newbie's Guide to Positive Parenting

“Emotional abuse is the sustained, reptitive, inappropriate, emotional responses to the child's felt emotions and their accompanying expressive behaviour. Emotional abuse impedes emotional development. In babies, it also impedes the onset of speech development. It retards the process through which a child acquires the ability to feel and express different emotions appropriately, and eventually, to regulate and control them. It impacts adversely on (a) the child's eductional, social, and cultural development; (b) psychological development; (c) relationships in adulthood; and (d) career prospects.”
― Kieran O'Hagan, Identifying Emotional And Psychological Abuse: A Guide For Childcare Professionals: A Guide for Childcare Professionals

“Even when emotions seem to overtake life, such as when we are depressed or anxious or angry, it is important to remember that those emotions still give us important information. Rather than judging our emotions, practice acceptance of them and open your mind to their messages. Rejecting emotions or trying to push them away usually intensifies them. If the message is not heard, it needs to get louder. As an example, invalidation by others tends to intensify emotions, and self-invalidation has the same effect.”
― Lane Pederson, DBT Skills Training for Integrated Dual Disorder Treatment Settings

“emotional regulation flows naturally from being in the presence of someone we trust”
― Bonnie Badenoch, The Heart of Trauma: Healing the Embodied Brain in the Context of Relationships

“Happiness" alone does not guarantee mental health and well-being. A tempering dose of disappointment- an occasional taste of frustration and learning that you do recover from it- goes a long way toward producing long-term contentment. Indeed the ability to ride out the bad times without feeling doomed is essential to survival. When happiness is not taken for granted, and when one is acquainted with its opposite it is more easily savored and has more lasting effects.”
― Victoria Secunda, Women and Their Fathers: The Sexual and Romantic Impact of the First Man in Your Life

“It is worth pointing out that feeling things (which usually means feeling them painfully) is at some level linked to the acquisition of knowledge.”
― Alain de Botton

“The good news: We can start practicing new skills in life anytime we want. Here are some examples of things I'm always practicing:
1. How to say what I mean, as simply as possible, and not make people guess (even if I think they should).
2. How to reach out when I want to shut down.
3. How to just let myself feel sad, lonely, confused, a mess, when I would rather do this thing I always do and check out.
4. How to not be impatient or careless with the feelings of people I love.
5. How to listen and not try to solve someone else's problems.
6. How to take a break when I'm overwhelmed, and promise to return to the conversation a little later.”
― Allyson Dinneen, Notes From Your Therapist

“Children who are accustomed to being treated well internalize that treatment and have a permanent sense of well-being. But children whose every need is instantly gratified and who are constantly praised to the skies do not have the same sense of well-being; rather they may feel despair or rage when that gratification is withheld, or when everyone doesn't glorify them in the same way.”
― Victoria Secunda, Women and Their Fathers: The Sexual and Romantic Impact of the First Man in Your Life

“People who are used to constant attention and flattery become inured to the merely pleasant and become "peak seekers." They expect the highs, and when their unrealistic goals or expectations are not met, they are not simply disappointed, they are devastated.”
― Victoria Secunda, Women and Their Fathers: The Sexual and Romantic Impact of the First Man in Your Life

“integration of right-centric relatedness and left-centric understanding comes and goes for all of us, but it does seem to gain strength and reliability over time.”
― Bonnie Badenoch, The Heart of Trauma: Healing the Embodied Brain in the Context of Relationships

“Emotions don’t vanish just because we ignore them; they accumulate. And what’s buried alive eventually comes back louder.”
― Ronen Dancziger, The Therapist's Handbook for Healing Your Simpsons Syndrome: Unhook from Your Inner Chaos Characters with CBT, ACT, and a Little Humor

“We may find that the words we are naturally drawn toward when we speak to others or ourselves have a great deal to say about our ability to be present with one another.”
― Bonnie Badenoch, The Heart of Trauma: Healing the Embodied Brain in the Context of Relationships

“Stuck with a pile of tumultuous feelings about her friend, your daughter handed those feelings off to you. Now she can go out and play happily, while you are the one with the overload of feelings. In his book Playful Parenting, Larry Cohen calls this the game of emotional hot potato. We are sitting ducks for this game because we are hardwired to empathize with our child. We have to make sure we don’t overreact because we were the last ones left with the potato.”
― Michael G. Thompson, Best Friends, Worst Enemies: Understanding the Social Lives of Children

“Absence of emotion is not maturity," she said, "though it's easy to mistake. Part of maturity is learning to deprioritize emotion, prevent it from taking the reins. But a large part is perspective, long-term decision making.”
― Mishell Baker, Phantom Pains

“Not all of your thoughts are equally significant to who you are.”
― Agnes Callard, Open Socrates: The Case for a Philosophical Life

“An inability to deal with emotions in healthy ways is what toxic masculinity is all about. And, in most cases, what this really stems from is fear. They're afraid of the world changing, because then they might have to actually work a bit harder to be seen as important within it. So they shit on women and people of colour and anyone else fighting for political equality alongside them and screech about 'SJWs' and feminism being 'cancer' and think this is enough to mask the stench of fear that rolls off them in waves. But as any true Star Wars fan can tell you, fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.”
― Clementine Ford, Boys Will Be Boys: Power, Patriarchy and the Toxic Bonds of Mateship

“Sharing your emotions isn't a sign of weakness--it's a sign of strength.”
― Clementine Ford, Boys Will Be Boys: Power, Patriarchy and the Toxic Bonds of Mateship

“All of us are on edge as we try to navigate this rapid collapse of democracy and the US’s slide into a totalitarian regime. I don’t recall a time, even during the early years of the pandemic, when there was this much constant and relentless stress and fear. The resulting anxiety, anger, and other negative emotions get misdirected to ourselves and the people closest to us, often without our being conscious of it. This is a tactic and goal of fascism, as a populace that is constantly on edge and emotionally dysregulated is easier to control.”
― Vu Le

“Try to be strategically detached: I don’t like to use the words “don’t take things personally,” because really, it’s impossible to not take things personally at some level. So I’m calling it “strategic detachment.” When I get stood up, yelled at, called a sheep in the comment section, or whatever, I try to remind myself that people are fighting battles I might not be aware of, eat some dark chocolate, and try not to let it affect me too much.”
― Vu Le

“Anyone who can control your emotions becomes your master. Simple.”
― Kierra C.T. Banks

“Trauma doesn't live in the memory. It lives in the nervous system — quietly shaping every reaction, every relationship, every choice that follows.”
― Sowmiya Sree, DBT Skills Through Breathwork