Анна Шиман
Draft translation. This text was translated automatically and has not been proofread yet — if something reads oddly, it does.
Imagine you have a partner you often clash with because of differing opinions and preferences. You like it when everything goes according to your plan, and you feel irritation and disappointment when your expectations are not met. Instead of calmly discussing your feelings and looking for a compromise, you react emotionally and aggressively.
Break-ups and reproaches, resentment and the wish to hurt your partner or yourself, to prove that you are right. All of this drains your strength and energy and pulls you off the line of your development and the growth of your character, your personality, and it harms your quality of life. Instead of moving you forward, your reactions make you lose sight of your real goals and become a hostage to a script, falling into cycles of circumstance and losing time.
Your involuntary reactions to situations like these can raise the tension in a relationship and put up barriers to constructive communication and resolving conflicts. The problem lies in not knowing how to regulate your emotions and adapt to changing situations. Your habitual reactions and the meanings you absorbed earlier set off automatic programmes for perceiving reality, and so, instead of a state of balance and harmony, you unconsciously follow a familiar algorithm that will lead you to the same old result.
Afterwards you will live through the situation in your inner reality, holding exhausting dialogues, justifying yourself or proving that you were right. And once again you will spend your attention and precious strength on something that stopped existing in reality long ago. Then your inner critic, which I wrote about in this article, will come to the rescue and explain why you have to suffer. And now you have sunk into a negative state, lost your good mood and positive outlook, and feel like a child standing alone against the whole world.
Today I will talk about self-regulation, which helps you improve your relationship with yourself and the world and raise your quality of life.
With self-regulation you can overcome these problems and improve your relationships. For example, you can develop the skill of mindfulness so that you recognise your emotions and reactions better during conflicts. You can learn to pause before reacting emotionally and then choose a more constructive approach to communicating with your partner.
Self-regulation can also help you develop empathy and the ability to listen with understanding. This will let you better understand your partner’s point of view and needs and find solutions that work for both of you. Developing self-regulation skills also involves working on tolerance, the ability to set boundaries and stress management.
Through practice and conscious effort, you can improve the quality of your relationships by developing self-regulation skills. This will lead to healthier and more harmonious relationships, fewer conflicts and greater satisfaction from your partnership.
So what is self-regulation?
Self-regulation is the process by which a person controls and regulates their behaviour, emotions and thinking in line with particular goals, standards or rules. It is the ability to consciously manage one’s reactions to external and internal stimuli in order to achieve desired results or adapt to one’s surroundings.
Self-regulation involves a number of different processes and skills.
Managing attention
The ability to focus your attention on a task or goal and to ignore distractions.
Regulating emotions
The ability to recognise, understand and effectively manage your emotional reactions. It also supports more positive, empathetic and supportive interaction with other people. Being able to control your emotions helps build stronger and healthier relationships. This includes being able to cope with stress, control how you express emotions and use emotion-regulation strategies such as breathing exercises or positive thinking.
Planning and goal-setting
The ability to define desired results and draw up action plans to achieve them. This includes clearly formulated goals, analysing resources, assessing obstacles and developing strategies for reaching them.
Controlling and regulating behaviour
The ability to control your behaviour and to set rules or norms for yourself and keep to them. This includes being able to hold back impulsive reactions, make decisions based on long-term goals and resist temptation.
Evaluation and correction
The ability to assess how effective your actions are and to make adjustments when needed. This includes analysing results, tracking progress and making changes to strategies or approaches.
Self-regulation plays an important role in our lives, helping us adapt to a changing environment, reach personal goals and maintain psychological well-being. It is a skill that can be developed and improved through practice and mindful self-observation.
What other skills does self-regulation include?
Self-awareness
This is the ability to be aware of your thoughts, emotions, physical sensations and behaviour in the present moment. Self-awareness allows us to be attentive to our states and reactions, which is the foundation of effective self-regulation.
Self-reflection
This is the skill of consciously and critically evaluating your actions, the decisions you make and their results. Self-reflection helps us learn from past experience, adapt and make changes to our behaviour and approaches.
Managing impulses and holding back reactions
This is the skill of delaying instant impulsive reactions and making considered decisions based on long-term goals and values. It includes the ability to control intuitive or automatic reactions and to choose in line with alternatives you have thought through.
Resilience and stress management
This is the ability to conserve energy and emotional stamina, keep your balance and cope with stress. It includes strategies for looking after your physical and emotional well-being.
These self-regulation skills not only help us function effectively but also contribute to personal growth, better relationships and success in different areas of life.
- Self-regulation allows you to be more open, tolerant and understanding of other people’s points of view. It helps you get past the barriers that prejudice and judgement can create, and opens the way to mutual understanding and mutual respect.
- Self-regulation skills let you manage conflicts in relationships effectively. They help you control your reactions to stressful and conflict situations, and allow you to build constructive approaches to solving problems and making peace with other people.
- Self-regulation improves communication with other people. It allows you to control what you say, express your thoughts and emotions clearly and effectively, and stay attentive to other people’s needs and feelings. This creates deeper understanding and support in relationships.
In my practice we come across difficulties that have to be overcome while learning self-regulation, and the process can take some time. Our psyche is built to help us save energy and avoid unnecessary moves. We are made up of a great many automatic reactions, and they are not always negative. However, there are destructive patterns of reacting and behaving that keep a person from reaching a new level of needs, finding new meanings and motivations, changing their surroundings and realising their potential at a new, higher level. Such patterns keep a person from being an individual and from restoring inner wholeness in order to build inner supports and connect with inner sources of energy for growth and a better quality of life. This is what we work with in our online courses and individual personal development programmes.
What difficulties need to be overcome?
- Becoming aware of your emotions
Understanding and recognising your own emotions can be difficult, especially when they are intense or arise in stressful situations. You need to learn to be attentive to your emotions, tell them apart and explore where they come from.
- Working with negative thinking
Overcoming negative thoughts, doubts and prejudices can be difficult too. You need to develop positive thinking and learn to replace negative thoughts with constructive and positive ones.
- Managing stress
Stressful situations often arise in everyday life and can make self-regulation harder. You need to develop stress-management strategies, such as deep breathing, relaxation and meditation, in order to respond effectively to stressful situations.
- Setting boundaries
Setting and maintaining boundaries in relationships can be a challenge for you. You need to learn to express your needs and preferences and to set boundaries that protect your emotional and physical well-being.
Overcoming these difficulties will take time, self-analysis, training and support from the people around you or from a specialist. Even so, developing self-regulation skills can bring many benefits, improve relationships and raise your quality of life.
Take care of yourself and join our community, so that we can develop and grow together.
Anna Shyman, psychologist at the Psyvision centre
