Before we talk about the basics of emotional control, let’s begin with a story:
Sam is a sixteen-year-old student with autism and ADHD who struggles with homework tasks. Sam likes drawing complex sketches of buildings and wants to be an architect someday. However, her smartphone sometimes gets in the way after school, and she regularly procrastinates with projects and assignments late into the evening. Her parents must ask her repeatedly to get started on her homework, each time more and more insistent. Sam thinks her parents are constantly nagging at her, so she spends as much time in her room as she can.
On a typical Tuesday evening, it’s around 10 pm when Sam finally gets around to doing homework. She’s tired and rushes through the project so she can go to sleep. The next day Sam turns in her assignment. Her teacher can see that Sam didn’t do her best work, so while her friends get time to talk and text at the end of class, Sam has to keep working.
Frustrated and angry, Sam yells at her teacher. “You’re just another person out to get me!” She storms out of the classroom, bumping another student hard into the wall on her way out the door. As Sam heads down the hallway, she knows her teacher is already calling the principal…
The example above showcases a breakdown in emotional control. Sam’s response to her teacher’s feedback – and not getting to relax at the end of class – happens in thousands of homes, classrooms, and workplaces every day. As learners like Sam grow into adulthood, the negative consequences for challenges in emotional control only increase.
As a parent, educator, coach, or supervisor, what we know about emotional control can be a game-changer in promoting success and achievement in people like Sam.
What is Emotional Control?
Sometimes known as emotional regulation, emotional control describes how we manage and respond to emotional experiences in the environment.
We know that children, teens, and adults experience both positive emotions (excitement, joy, happiness, pride, etc.) and negative emotions (disappointment, sadness, guilt, frustration, overwhelm, etc.). Experiencing emotions can include thoughts and different sensations in the body.
Teaching individuals – including children, teens, and adults – to respond to positive and negative emotions is the essence of emotional control.
For a clear look at how these skills typically develop from infancy through adulthood, explore our Executive Functioning Skills by Age Guide.
Examples of Emotional Control
Teens and adults can rely on healthy and unhealthy behaviors to respond to stress and challenging situations. Even though your teen might be controlling emotions outwardly, they may be using unhealthy strategies to cope. Here are some examples of how we regulate our emotions successfully:
- Using conversations or statements to express emotions and actions.
- Using perspective-taking to see another’s point of view.
- Talking or writing about past events and reflecting on how to manage emotions in the future.
- Talking to a trusted friend about challenges and concerns.
- Noticing and asking when it’s necessary to take a break.
Here are some ways teens and adults fail to respond to emotional situations successfully and instead choose behaviors likely to cause additional harm:
- Avoiding work, school, or household activities.
- Excessive social-media use.
- Procrastinating on other responsibilities.
- Physical or verbal aggression.
- Self-injury or self-harm.
- Abusing food, alcohol, or other substances.
Emotional Control and Challenging Behavior
While the behaviors above might happen after a stressful event, individuals with unique learning needs may also have heightened responses in the moment. Ask yourself if any of these challenging behaviors related to emotional control describe the person you support:
- Do they have frequent outbursts?
- Get in trouble at school or work for blurting, hyperactivity, or leaving their seat when excited?
- Over-reactions or violent/aggressive behavior when upset?
- Struggle to bounce back after a setback?
- Engage in high rates of negative thoughts?
All of these may contribute to a need for increased development of emotional control. By improving emotional control skills, your learner can begin to use strategies other than challenging behavior to respond to emotions. While in some ways it is developmentally appropriate for children and teens to rely on adult support for emotional control, developing greater emotional control allows individuals to recognise emotions as physical sensations in the body, rather than being controlled by them or acting on them.
Emotional Control & Executive Functioning Skills
Improving emotional control may ultimately mean targeting other executive functioning skills. For learners like Sam in our introduction, emotional outbursts and challenging behaviors may be related to skill deficits in planning and organization. If we address the root issues related to these other skill areas, challenging behaviors decrease.
For other learners, teaching skills in time management, organization, and task initiation may be more difficult without addressing emotional control first. Learners who don’t have strong skills to respond to frustration and failure may need to work on those strategies first. For these learners, focus first on keeping emotions in check and ultimately learning other executive functioning skills becomes more manageable.
How to Evaluate Emotional Control
Decide from reading the information above that you need to take a closer look at someone’s emotional control skills? Want to know how to take steps forward? Here are three ideas for how you can proceed with learning more about emotional control. Start here and then check back for the other articles in our Executive Functioning 101 series on emotional control.
- Conduct a skills assessment. There are many different tools, checklists, and workbooks (get 20 % off our executive-functioning workbook with coupon code LSA20) available to evaluate and create goals around executive-functioning skills like emotional control. Taking a skills assessment and reviewing the findings can help establish a plan for you and the learner ahead.
- Coordinate with the learner’s existing care team. Because executive-functioning skills like emotional control also impact academic, workplace, and social responses, other people on the learner’s care team may be noticing the same things. Individuals who receive speech, OT, PT, or IEP/504 services may already have goals related to improving emotional control. By reaching out to the care team, you can align strategies and avoid repeating anything already tried and not helpful.
- Contact a professional or life-skills coach. Not every parent, teacher, or manager comes equipped to assess and evaluate emotional control. If you conduct an evaluation, you may not know the best course of action moving forward. Reach out to a trained professional with experience in helping people develop and enhance executive-functioning skills like emotional control to help plan next steps.
Further Reading
- Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University (2016). Building Core Capabilities for Life: The Science Behind the Skills Adults Need to Succeed in Parenting and in the Workplace.
- Cornell Research Program on Self-Injury & Recovery – What is emotion regulation and how do we do it?
- Life Skills Advocate – How Teaching Executive Functioning Skills Can Reduce Challenging Behaviors
- Life Skills Advocate – Virtual Executive-Functioning Coaching