Emotion regulation 101 — what’s really going on in your brain

In honor of Mental Health Awareness Month, I want to talk about one of the most important and overlooked skills that shapes how we live, parent, lead, and relate to others: emotion regulation. In this post, I’m breaking down what’s happening in the brain when we react emotionally — and why it’s not as simple as “just calm down.”

We begin learning to regulate very early in life and continue with a varied degree of success throughout our lifetime. Unlike young children, adults are expected to deal with their feelings in socially acceptable ways, and that isn’t always as simple as it sounds.

The messages we hear about emotions are mixed. For example, how emotions can be good or bad, or what we’ve been taught about whether or not we should show or discuss our feelings. Parenting — and what we are ‘supposed to’ teach our kids about how to display emotions in public — is another beast entirely. But thankfully, there is science and research that can help us figure this out.

The brain behind the feelings: Amygdala vs Cortex

Emotions developed as a survival mechanism. Anxiety didn’t show up out of the blue — it developed as an alarm that signals us about a context we subconsciously recognize as potentially dangerous. All the emotions that are considered “bad” are just elements of our brain’s sign language, designed to let us know that the circumstances are unfavorable and potentially harmful. So the amygdala sounds the alarm.

Then it’s the cortex’s job to analyze the situation and decide whether the alarm was false or not — and what an appropriate response might be.

Unfortunately, the amygdala is pretty damn loud when it turns on the siren, so it’s not just our conscious brain that hears it — all the other systems of the body do too. And before our smart but slow cortex figures out a socially acceptable way to deal with what’s happening, hormones have already started flooding the body. Heart rate increases, breathing gets fast and shallow, we may begin sweating. And body language changes too — our facial expression and posture adjust to match the action plan our amygdala thinks is most appropriate.

The question is whether the cortex is able to jump in on time, and how deep into the fight-or-flight response Team Amygdala manages to get you first. This dynamic shapes your behavioral response. And while the initial emotions we experience really can’t be labeled as “good” or “bad” — they’re just indicators of how our brain interprets the context — the behavior that follows can be, emm… suboptimal.

The chain reaction: from feeling to behavior

And here is where the whole topic of emotion regulation really begins. A lot depends on how we manage this chain of events:

something happens → we have feelings about it → we have thoughts about it → our body reacts to it → we do something about it.

The intensity of the physiological reaction can determine how much influence your cortex will have, because let’s be honest — when you’re in full fight-or-flight mode, rational thinking is off the table. And what we do in those moments affects our relationships, reputation, and career. But even when our outward behavior is “acceptable,” the thoughts we have can still alter our perception of life — and with that, our mental state, sense of self, and purpose.

Anxiety on its own is a healthy reaction to a context that seems familiar and undesirable. But when our thoughts add fuel to the fire, it can grow disproportionately and turn into something that holds way too much power over our lives.

Next week, we’ll look at how to intervene in this emotional chain — not by pretending emotions don’t exist, but by shifting how they unfold. Because while we can’t always control what we feel, we do have a say in what happens next.