Emotion Regulation & Coping Skills

Article #2 - Coping Skills

Updated April 16,2025

Welcome back!  Thank you for taking the time to invest in your mental health.  You’re making the world a better place by prioritizing your personal growth.

Just as I discussed in the last article, having ways to help bodies move toward regulation gives us a much better chance of making decisions that align with our values and saying things in hard conversations that build the relationship rather than tear it down. This is all because coping skills help to bring our body out of fight-or-flight mode, which allows the prefrontal cortex to come back online. This is the part of the brain that allows us to engage in healthy decision making, reasoning, and emotion regulation, which is why it's so important to be able to access it in challenging moments.

In this second article, I go over a list of coping skills that can be used both to calm down the nervous system and the mind.  I recommend trying them all out and determining which ones your brain and body prefer.

Take Some Steps to Regulate Your Emotions

1. Notice where the emotion is manifesting physically.  Are your shoulders tense?  Is there a pit in your stomach?  Is your breathing shallow?

2. Name your emotion(s).  The free app How We Feel is a great resource for helping us identify and define our emotions.  Naming how we feel allows us to bring some sense of order and awareness when things feel chaotic inside.  If you are looking for a great resource on gaining more insight on emotions and understanding the importance of emotional granularity, Brené Brown’s book Atlas of the Heart is the most comprehensive guide I’ve found.

3. Now that you’ve named your experience, accept it.  For many people, this is the hardest piece of emotion regulation, especially if we are working with more uncomfortable emotions, such as grief or anger.  It’s common for our brains to protest to consciously making the choice to accept an emotion, and it often attempts to get us to believe the fallacy that if we accept an emotion, it will be with us forever.  This is not true.  All emotions are fleeting.  As described in the 90 Second Pause section below, research has established that the biochemical manifestations of emotions last for about 90 seconds.  Even if we are going through a challenging situation where these harder emotions are more frequently appearing, no emotion stays forever.  Many people find that just by accepting an emotion, the intensity of that emotion goes down significantly.  Until we accept the emotion we are in, we are at war against it, and this causes more emotional distress.  I like to use the analogy that this is similar to spending time with a toddler.  They tug on your shirt, get louder, and eventually have a meltdown if you continue to ignore them.  The same is true for our emotions.  They continue to get bigger and more intense the longer we ignore them, the whole time just wanting us to turn toward them and acknowledge them.  This is what acceptance is: a turning toward and accepting the reality that this emotion is present right now.

   
   

   Only do steps 4 & 5 if you are noticing a consistent emotional pattern.  These are not necessary for every emotion.

   
   

4. Get curious about the purpose of this emotion.  It’s important to remember that the dialogue behind each emotion is not always truthful or reflective of reality, which is why letting our emotions drive our choices leads to poor outcomes.  But if we notice there are emotional patterns in certain situations or relationships, this is a great opportunity to reflect and explore what this emotion is trying to communicate.  Are your needs being honored in this relationship, or do you often feel resentful?  Do you feel exhausted every time you spend time with a certain person?  Are you refreshed often when you engage in a certain hobby?  Listen to that.

5. Determine what you’re going to do with your emotion.  If there is a high level of intensity to the emotion, it’s best to take some time to use a coping skill before proceeding.  When we feel flooded like that, it’s typical for you to lose access to your prefrontal cortex, which is the part of your brain that allows you to logically reason, practice self control, and focus on productive problem solving.  Once you have regulated your nervous system, think critically about how to honor your needs.  Maybe using the coping skill was enough, or maybe you might need to take a look at your patterns of resentment to inform some boundaries that need to be set.

The rest of this article is divided into two groups: in-the-moment and long-term coping skills.  The instantaneous ones are skills you can do in a moment of high emotional intensity, and the long-term skills are things that might take some preparation that will boost your mental state over time.

In-the-Moment Coping Skills

54321 Grounding Skill

Just as a refresher, the last article included the 54321 Grounding Skill (list 5 things you can see, 4 things you can feel, 3 things you can hear, 2 things you can smell, and one thing you can taste) and creating a safe space in your mind to which you can anchor all of your senses and give yourself cues of safety.

This might require rubbing your sweater between your fingers, popping a mint in your mouth, or inhaling the scent of a tea bag.  By tuning into cues of safety using the senses, we can slowly move back into regulation.  This is only an activity to do when your physical surroundings are safe.

Develop Your Mental Peaceful Place

If your surroundings are the source of your stress, create a safe place in your head.  There are a few parameters on this:

• No other people allowed; it’s just you there.

• It can be a real or imagined place.  It doesn’t have to be realistic.

• It can only have cues of safety (no grizzly bears unless they want to snuggle with you).

• It must include multiple aspects for each of the five senses.

One of my clients’ safe place includes a small cabin in the middle of the woods.  It’s sunny and breezy, and you can hear the breeze blow through the trees.  The smell of coffee wafts in from the kitchen.  She is in her favorite set of soft lightweight pajamas. Her cat is asleep, snuggled up next to her.  She’s eating a cinnamon roll.  And there is classical music playing.

Co-Regulate

Connecting with others is another great way to bring yourself back into regulation.  Call or text a friend to check in with them.  Ask them to tell you the latest story about that cute thing their pet did or something funny their toddler said.  Having moments of lighthearted connection is one of the best ways to regulate your nervous system.

Practice the 90 Second Pause

A highly valuable practice for regulating the nervous system is taking a 90 second pause.  This is one of the best ways to regulate any emotion.  Harvard trained and published neuroscientist Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor discovered in her research that when we sit with the physical manifestations of our emotions (e.g. shallow breaths, racing heart, shaky hands, tightness in the back) that we can actually allow the chemicals of the emotion to move through our biology in about 90 seconds. 

Her famous quote on this reads “When a person has a reaction to something in their environment, there’s a 90-second chemical process that happens; any remaining emotional response is just the person choosing to stay in that emotional loop.” 

If you would like to read the original research article published by Dr. Bolte Taylor, you can find it here. She also has a book detailing more of her career findings, titled Stroke of Insight.

I really appreciate this method of emotion regulation because it requires that we drop out of cognition and into our bodies.  We all have personally felt how emotions are not just cognitive; they cause our hearts to race, our stomachs to drop, our hands to shake, and so on.  This is why we can’t tell ourselves to “Calm down” and then experience a decrease in our visceral symptoms; as I mentioned last week, we can’t tell our bodies we’re okay - we need to show our bodies we are okay.  This 90 Second Pause is a great way to do this.

I recommend practicing this in a quiet environment, such as in a room alone with the door closed and no access to electronics.  Sit or stand, and just observe the physical sensations in your body.  You might notice shakiness in your legs or numbness in your hands.  Shortness of breath or an elevated heart rate are common physical symptoms of anxiety or anger.  Also notice the neutrality.  Maybe your big toe feels neutral or your bicep feels the pleasant sensation of your cotton shirt against it.  Notice all of the sensations without judgment.

During this time, do not think.  Don’t ruminate on previous conversations or the to-do list you have for this week.  Just focus on the body’s sensations.  When you notice yourself ruminating, pull yourself back into your body and out of your head. That's it. That's the whole exercise. I recommend doing this for at least a couple of minutes.

The reason “processing” our emotions by purely recalling the activating event is detrimental is because this reactivates the emotional loop, sending out a new wave of chemicals that keep us in a perpetual loop of the emotion we are so desperately trying to avoid.  By stopping our thinking and rumination, we allow the chemicals accompanying the emotion to fully metabolize out of our system.  And, 90 seconds later, we’re in a much better state to make a decision on how we will respond.

Practice Nothingness

Emotions researcher Brené Brown discovered that “the only cure for overwhelm is nothingness." In her own words,

“Language doesn’t just communicate emotion, it shapes emotion. It triggers all kinds of reactions in our body. So when we say we’re overwhelmed, it’s really telling our body, ‘Things are happening too fast, we can’t handle them. Shut down. Shut down.’

One of the things that the literature was really clear about is that the only cure for overwhelm is really nothingness.  Since doing the research, if I am overwhelmed, I walk out of my office and I go straight to the parking lot.  And I just walk circles in the parking lot for 10 or 15 minutes and then I can come back and try to reset.”

Practicing nothingness is best done away from screens and involves dropping into our bodies and out of our heads.

Do a Body Scan

The body scan is a practice that can help us feel grounded and embodied.  In this practice, you start by bringing your attention to your toes and work your way up your whole body, focusing all of your attention on the different body parts and their sensations as you slowly move up.  You can imagine a spotlight is slowly moving up your body, and you want to bring all of your attention to the part of the body the spotlight is on.  You may notice tension, neutrality, the fabric of your clothing - anything, really. 

The point of this exercise is to take a moment to tune into each part of your body and observe what it’s feeling.  You can find guided body scans on YouTube (just search “Body Scan” or “Body Scan Meditation") or written body scan scripts by searching on Google “Body Scan Script”

Here is a great guided body scan.

Here is a body scan script.

Change the Temperature

Another great skill for helping our bodies come out of a frustrating emotional loop is simply by changing the temperature.  This can look like going for a walk when it’s brisk outside, putting your face in a bowl of ice water, taking a hot or cold shower, putting a cold washcloth on your forehead or neck, holding an ice cube, or drinking ice water.  These exercises stimulate the vagus nerve, which is an essential player in the process of regulating our bodies.  This peer-reviewed research article demonstrates specifically how ice water consumption has been proven to lower heart rate and calm down a dysregulated nervous system.

Boost Your Heart Rate

Pausing for a moment to allow yourself to exert some energy can be really helpful in regulating emotions.  Research has demonstrated that exercise decreases our "physiologic reactivity to stress and decreases" and "improves mental health by reducing anxiety, depression, and negative mood and by improving self-esteem and cognitive function."

Some exercises you can do are:

• Yoga

• Doing push ups

• Doing squats

• Jogging

• Walking

• Weight lifting

• Vacuuming

• Walking a few sets of stairs

• Bike riding

• Swimming

• Hiking

• Kayaking

• Paddleboarding

• Playing basketball, pickleball, soccer, or another sport

Spend 20 Minutes Outside

Going outside for just 10-20 minutes has been proven to lower the levels of stress hormones in our bodies, such as cortisol. One research study demonstrated that even just looking at plants promoted:

• "greater stabilization of prefrontal cortex activity" (this is where problem-solving and emotion regulation happens in our brains)

• "improved concentration"

• "induced physiological relaxation"

• decreased blood pressure and heart rate

This doesn't mean you need to have access to a park right next door to your home or work place. You can even walk around a city block and take note of the rays of sunshine on your skin, the leaves moving in the breeze, the various shades of green in different plants, the bark on the trees, and the sound of birds chirping. Simply shifting your focus to these will actively decrease the stress response in your nervous system.

Utilize a Breathing Exercise

Harvard Medical School instructor Dr. Alok Kanojia, MD MPH spent seven years as a monk before pursuing medical school.  In that time, he was trained in mindfulness techniques which have informed his highly successful practice today working as a psychiatrist.  His voice is one of many emphasizing breath work as one of the most powerful ways for us to regulate our emotions. Dr. Alok Kanojia even talks about how each emotion has a different breathing pattern in this podcast interview. I recommend giving it a listen if you would like to learn more.

• Box Breathing: Imagine a box. Inhale along one side of the box for 5 seconds. Hold the air for another 5 seconds, drawing the second side of the box. Exhale for 5 seconds drawing the third side of the box.  Pause before inhaling again for another 5 seconds, completing the fourth side of the box.
  

• Finger Breathing: Trace your finger on one hand using your pointer finger on the other hand.  As you start on the pinky, inhale.  As you begin the downward motion tracing the pinky, exhale.  Repeat on each finger.
  

• 4-7-8 Breathing: Breathe in for 4 seconds.  Hold the inhale for 7 seconds.  Breathe out for 8 seconds.  Research has demonstrated that having a longer exhale than inhale specifically works very well at regulating the nervous system.  The American Heart Association has an article on this very topic that can be found here.

• Sighing: Take a few deep breaths, and let out a big audible sigh with every exhale.  This also stimulates the vagus nerve, which is an essential part in regulating our bodies.

• Physiological Sigh: Take a deep breath in and then follow it with another in breath (when it feels like you can’t take any more air in).  Then exhale through your mouth as if you were blowing out the air through a small straw.  Research has demonstrated that this provides a resent for our respiratory and nervous systems, which are both impacted and function differently when we are in a stress state. For more information on the physiological sigh, here is a clip from the Huberman Lab.

• Rainbow Breathing: Draw a picture of a rainbow and trace each color with your finger twice.  The first time, inhale.  With the second swipe of your finger, exhale.  Repeat for every color.

Bonus: there are also breathing exercises that can increase energy or alertness, such as alternate nostril breathing and 5-3-3 breathing, to name a few.

Practice the Emotional Intensity Rating

This is a skill from Dialectic Behavior Therapy (DBT), which has you check in with the intensity of your emotion and rate it on a scale of 1-10 (1 being the lowest intensity level, 10 being the highest).  If you find yourself at a 5 or higher, it’s best to ask yourself:

Does the intensity of my emotion fit the facts of the situation?

If the answer is no, then it’s best to use a coping skill to calm down before proceeding.  The only time it’s appropriate to move forward immediately when we are this activated is if we are in an emergent situation and someone’s physical safety is on the line.

Watch Something

• Funny movie

• Comfort TV show

• Sad movie to cry

• Funny video compilation on YouTube

Listen to Music

Music can be incredibly regulating to the nervous system.  Research has indicated that engaging in something that has a rhythmic pace brings a stability and consistency that cues you into safety.  Our nervous system associates any rhythm between roughly 60-80 beats per minute as especially regulating, because this has been a consistency for us since the moment of conception, when we were inches below our mother’s heartbeat.

Some people find it especially helpful to make playlists for different moods, finding “happy” or upbeat playlists particularly helpful on emotionally hard days.

Write Something

• Craft a poem

• Love letter to the self

• Wins for the day

• Gratitude reflections

• A letter to someone else

• Look up "self exploration writing prompts” for more inspiration

• Things you’re looking forward to this week, month, year, lifetime

Meditate

People who meditate on a regular basis have different brains than those who don’t meditate.  Research has shown that consistent meditation improves the parts of the brain that are associated with attention control, emotion regulation, and self awareness.  These areas have a higher density of gray matter in the brains of people who meditate regularly.  Meditation also sharpens the working memory capacity.  Most importantly, however, when it comes to using meditation as a coping skill, research has overwhelmingly indicated that meditating regularly changes how your brain processes and responds to stress. 

To get started with meditating, you can find free guided meditations on YouTube (like this excellent beginner meditation) or you can use free apps like Oak or Balance.

Use the SCOPE Practice

Slowly

Move slowly.  Walking at a slow pace - especially barefoot - sends your nervous system the signal that you’re safe.  The primal brain recognizes that you only have the luxury of moving slowly if you are physically safe.

Contain

Bring your nervous system a sense of safe containment through hugging yourself, laying under a weighted blanket, or finding another safe form of physical self-containment.

Orient

Simply moving your head around to take in your surroundings brings regulating energy to your nervous system, as it is allowing you to take in cues of safety.  This is similar to the 54321 exercise.  Move your neck and orient to your surroundings.

Pendulate

Bring your attention inward and focus on a certain body part that is experiencing some discomfort, such as tension in your back.  Then shift your awareness to another body part experiencing pleasantness or neutrality, such as the soft fabric of your sweater on your arm or the feel of soft socks on your toes.  Then pendulate back and forth between these two sensations.  Studies have demonstrated that this can lead to a decrease in the discomfort.

Engage

Turn your attention outward and engage with others.  The purpose of this piece is to co-regulate with others.  Exchange a smile, make eye contact with someone who makes you feel safe.  If you aren’t with others, you can give your pup a hug too or call a friend.

Explore Somatic Releases for Your Emotions

Many studies have demonstrated the efficacy of using somatic exercises to help bring us back to a state of regulation.  This can look like screaming into a pillow, throwing rocks outside, going for a run, boxing with a punching bag, or any other safe forms of release. When we utilize an outlet for our sympathetic fight or flight energy, we are able to bring our nervous systems back into regulation much faster.

Long Term Coping Skills

Get Out of the House

Social withdrawal is often a byproduct of experiencing depression, anxiety, and other mental illnesses.  Unfortunately, in an attempt to maintain a sense of comfort, staying at home for multiple days at a time can actually exacerbate mental illness symptoms.  Changing our environment can have a surprisingly large impact on our mental wellness.  Here are some places you can go to have a change in scenery:

• Library

• Yoga class

• Sporting event

• Concert

• Coffee shop

• Museum

• Movie theater

• Bookstore

• Community event, like a parade or convention

Take up a New Skill

Learning new skills boosts brain health, thickens the prefrontal cortex, and can lead to an increased sense of confidence.  Here are some skills you can explore learning:

• Speaking a new language

• Playing an instrument

• Learning how to cook a certain recipe

• Crocheting, sewing, or embroidering

• Gardening

• Beekeeping

• Painting

• Photography

• Origami

• Taking Jiu Jitsu or self defense classes

• Acting

• Coding

• Pottery

Capture and Reflect on Safety

Another way I regulate when I am feeling stressed in my environment is by looking at a folder I have in my photos app that I created specifically to help with regulation.  This includes photos and videos of happy, carefree, fun times I’ve shared with people, places and pets I love.  By tuning back into those moments of safety, it helps the nervous system calm down.  Another coping skill to go along with this is to take photos of things that bring you joy to add to the folder, such as pictures of flowers, your pets, or your loved ones.

Make a Plan

Is there something you’ve been wanting to do?  A goal you want to reach?  Making steps toward our goals bolsters a sense of hope and excitement about the future, which can be especially helpful if you are in a depressive episode.  It also reminds us that there is a lot within our locus of control that we can take accountability for and utilize to improve our mental state.  This might look like booking a massage or scheduling a cooking class.

Get Connected

Being in connection with others is critical for wellness in all areas of life, especially for mental health.  Research has shown that social connection increases happiness, improves physical health, and even is correlated with a longer lifespan.

Here are some ways you can get connected with others:

• Chess club

• Choir group

• Business professionals group

• Religious community group

• Facebook group for local stay at home parents

• Dungeons and Dragons group or other interest groups

• Local volunteering opportunities, such as the animal shelter or a thrift store

Thanks for Reading!

I appreciate you taking the time to read these coping skills. I also want to mention here that coping skills are not a long-term solution or substitution for deeper healing that needs to take place.  We will continue to become activated every time our sensitivities are touched until we do the deeper healing work to resolve them.  These skills are for managing the symptoms of these sensitivities, not for resolving and healing them.

I would love to hear in the comments section what coping skills you use to help you be your best self.  See you soon for the next article!