Building on our previous discussion of emotion and attachment in relationships from this post, I’d like to dig into the practical question of emotional regulation—the ability to manage, soothe, and even control our emotions. This applies both to our independent emotional functioning, and our approachp to the interactive emotional process in relationships. To illustrate some of the central dynamics of this task and topic, I’ll be using the central working metaphor of parenting.
In this context, I’m using the analogy of parent-child relationships to refer to the relationship between the inner child of emotion and intuition (Haidt’s elephant, Kahneman’s system 1, Tina Payne-Bryson’s downstairs brain) and the inner parent of conscious, intentional, “cognition” thought (Haidt’s rider, Kaneman’s System 2, Payne-Bryson’s upstairs brain). Within a relationship, this metaphor expands to a conceptual “family of four” composed of two inner parents and two inner children.
Though familiar to all of us to some degree, the topic of “parenting” i.e. supporting the development of a child from birth through relational interaction and practical caretaking is a vastly complex one from a conceptual standpoint, with which psychology has been wrestling since its inception. Within that vast topic, I’ll just be focusing on a few core “parenting issues” which particularly illustrate the analogous core concerns and potential “leverage points” in the parenting relationship between your cognitive mind and your (and your partners’) emotional self.
Also relevant: a fascinating (if slightly fuzzy) idea from therapy world, that there’s this broadly observed tendency for adults to treat themselves in similar ways to the ways that their literal parents or caregivers treated them in childhood. This relates to what psychoanalytic theory refers to as “internalizing” a parental figure, or alternatively of “simulating” or “modeling” a caregiver’s mind as discussed in this post. This makes sense from the functional lens in that it is a child’s parents’ behavior that represents the “environment” which shapes that child’s mind and to which the mind’s shape is an adaptation. The important implication is that the simulated parents of each partner in a relationship are (figuratively, but by default) present in adult relationships, adding simulated “grandparents” to the aforementioned “family of four.”
Paying Attention
Especially if you happen to actually be a parent yourself, you’re probably aware one of the primary characteristics of human children is their monumental demands on caregiver’s attention. Similarly, the task of productively relating to one’s or one’s partner’s “emotional self” starts with paying attention to it, or in other words, “emotional awareness.” Mindfulness has become the common label for the act of intentionally focusing one’s attention on some feature of one’s own sensory experience or mental process, a skill many of us learn in childhood whether or not it’s called by that name. That skill of noticing and naming the emotion you’re feeling serves as the foundation for self-parenting in the same way that paying attention to a child is a precondition for effective response to their behavior and needs. It’s also worth noting that emotions are often first perceptible as sensations in the body, such that focusing conscious attention on the body may be a useful part of developing this awareness. This overall process could then be summarized as a habit of asking yourself questions like:
- What am I feeling right now?
- What emotion might be motivating my actions?
- What am I feeling in my body?
- What is my body telling me?
Considering emotional awareness within a relationship brings up the more complicated question of paying attention to and potentially managing a partner’s emotional experience. Humans are genetically equipped with extraordinary technology in this area, resulting in surprisingly common situations where – while interacting, and especially if you know me well – you may be more aware of my emotional state than I am. This presents us with both the opportunity—and the risk—of sharing or using this information in support of our relationship. One part of the complication is the fact that—even if it might be good information for you to have—it often feels a little condescending (or in other words, parental) to be told what you’re feeling, especially by someone you’re not feeling particularly warmly towards at the moment.
This dynamic often leads to interactions between partners where one says something like “There’s no reason to be getting angry right now” and (often angrily) the other replies: “I’m not getting angry!” One way to handle this is simply to avoid this kind of commentary while in conflict with your partner, but many couples seem to find benefit in developing some agreed-upon procedure for sharing such information, in that explicitly inviting you to respectfully offer observations about my emotional state may help reduce the sting of being “caught” having feelings. In other words, my ability to make productive use of your observations about my emotions, depends both on my willingness to see myself as having them, and on my willingness to be seen having them, which in turn depends on my overall attitude about those feelings in general.
Relatedly, I may also be able to leverage my observations about your emotional state as information about my own emotional state, effectively using your feelings as a “mirror” for my own. Even if I don’t say anything about it to you, simply noticing that you seem to be getting frustrated might be a good cue for me to ask myself if I might be feeling similarly. Alternatively, I might use my observation about your emotional state as a moment to ask myself what feeling of mine that your feeling might be a logical response to.
Verbal Strategies
As in literal parenting, much of the job of effective self-parenting involves “talking,” and “listening,” despite the bad reputation that “talking to yourself” has gotten (so maybe do it privately). First, to boil down a lot of research and theory on “affect regulation” (a.k.a. “Emotion management”) the process of explicitly verbally/cognitively “making sense” of emotional experience is perhaps the single most powerful and flexible tool we have available for directly soothing emotional distress. This is discussed extensively in Tina Payne-Bryson’s best selling parenting manual The Whole-Brain-Child under the label “telling stories about feelings,” resonating with a body of research on the “brain-soothing” effects of explicitly “verbalizing” (whether aloud or privately in one’s own mind) the “name” for the emotion one is feeling and/or some cognitive explanation of why one is feeling it. This is importantly not about verbalizing a judgement about whether the feeling is the “right” or “wrong” or “proportional” or “reasonable” thing to be feeling, but instead simply “linking” stimuli or events from the physical or mental environment to the feeling, in order to make sense of it.
I have the sense that this is generally pretty close to what people are talking about when they talk about “self-compassion,” reflecting an intentional stance of “curiosity” rather than “judgement,” in approaching the “behavior” of our inner children. This means starting from the assumption that their behavior (our feelings) make sense somehow and then proceeding from that assumption with the “detective” task of figuring out how it makes sense, and (generally privately) verbalizing that “explanation.” Of course, this relies on our being aware of our emotions in the first place, so the aforementioned “paying attention” part is a necessary prerequisite.
Similar to going through this verbally-making-sense-of-feelings process with actual people, sometimes “telling the explanatory story” is all that’s necessary to soothe our inner children’s, but to quickly review more culturally-ubiquitous strategies: Providing reassurance (explaining why it’s going to be okay) is sometimes necessary in addition to – or in place of – the sense-making—the point being that it may be helpful to consider actually doing this verbally for yourself if you haven’t tried it. From there, the Serenity Prayer from the Twelve Step/Alcoholics Anonymous tradition is relevant—in that much emotional distress results from “problems” in one’s environment (some of which can be changed, others which cannot). This distress, then, may be “soothed” by either accepting that the problem is not in one’s power to solve, or by simply solving the problem.
More generally, among “verbal” self-parenting strategies, would be what Cognitive Behavior Therapy calls “cognitive reframing” or in more intuitive terms, telling a different story about the same thing or even more simply, looking at it differently. The idea is that – to some degree at least – our emotional responses to situations are mediated by the way we think (i.e. talk to ourselves) about those situations, such that intentionally thinking about them differently can reshape our emotional reactions. This is particularly instrumental in the context of a relationship, in that so much emotional conflict in particular is based on – or at least exacerbated by – things like our perceptions of our partner’s intentions. For example, there will likely be a vast difference between my emotional reaction to discovering you did not buy the butter I expected on your grocery run depending on whether I tell myself the story: “you forgot the butter because you are charmingly absentminded” versus telling myself: “you intentionally chose not to buy butter because you hate me and actively enjoy my suffering.”
In other words, the particular story we tell ourselves about our partner’s behavior (or really any event in our environment) typically functions to promote a particular emotional response, such that if I want to have a particular emotional response to my partner’s behavior (for example not getting so pissed off about it) it may be necessary to tell myself a different story about it. An idea I find particularly useful, (borrowing from a mentor of mine who maintains a blog here) is that our partner’s qualities and behavior that we find most annoying are – as a rule – connected to the qualities we find most loveable about them. A partner who I love for being carefree and spontaneous, for example, is likely to annoy me for also being forgetful and inconsiderate; both the “positive” and “negative” qualities are really part of the same personality-characteristic thing. Intentionally looking for these connections to my partner’s loveable qualities, and reminding myself of them when annoyed by their “bad behavior” may be a powerful way to help me soothe my own annoyance, assuming that’s something I want to soothe.
Care and Discipline
Tying together the general processes of “emotional awareness” and “emotional management,” there’s a useful conceptual dichotomy splitting the task of parenting into the domains of “care” and “discipline.” I find these concepts especially convenient given their connection to the existing labels of “self-care” and “self-discipline,” already common in mental-health vernacular. The particulars of what falls in each category aren’t important here, so let’s say care is the side of parenting that’s generally meeting needs, pursuing enjoyment, and providing nurturance; while discipline is about limits, structure, delaying gratification, tolerating distress, and generally doing the things that are uncomfortable but also healthy. There’s a sense in which the “care” side is about following emotion, while the “discipline” side is about acting in spite of emotion.
This parallels the research on “parenting styles,” which has identified an analogous breakdown of two “axes” of responsiveness and demand, yielding the commonly-discussed four categorical “styles” of authoritarian, (high demand, low responsiveness) permissive, (high responsiveness, low demand) uninvolved, (low responsiveness, low demand) and authoritative (high demand, high responsiveness). In that research, “authoritative” has generally been found to lead to the best outcomes for children, while demanding the most effort and patience from caregivers. The core (pretty much “common sense”) foundational insight is that it’s probably good for us to practice levels of both “self-care,” and “self-discipline.”
From there, though, I think there’s a more interesting question about how these two sides of the self-parenting coin interact with one another. At first, they might appear opposed—with “care” equating to indulgence and saying yes; and“discipline” representing denial and saying no. On a deeper level, though, they are often more mutually supportive than opposing. On the one side, the guardrails of discipline represent the necessary structure to make care’s indulgence and closeness “safe. ” In other words, it’s only “safe” to get close to you if I trust my ability to protect myself if you turn on me, and it’s only safe to indulge in some streaming entertainment if I trust myself to get off the couch at some point. On the other hand, the motivation and support of care provide the necessary substrate for discipline to be effective. Athletes can only perform if they are also supplying their bodies with necessary nutrition and rest, and it’s only possible to do uncomfortable, difficult things in life if there is sufficient nurturance beforehand, and something comfortable and pleasurable to look forward to as a result. Without discipline to modulate it, care can mutate into addiction; and without care to support it, discipline tends toward self-destruction.
This interactive dichotomy is captured in the concept of “delayed gratification” well described in Frank Herbert’s Dune as the ability to self-impose a “delay between desire for a thing and the act of reaching out to grasp that thing.” In a relationship, there are various forms that this gratification can take, from the impulse to say something thoughtlessly mean when a partner does something frustrating, to the desire to ignore a pressing and relevant conflict in order to “not ruin a nice evening.” As mentioned here, there is a general tendency for “conflict avoidance” to increase conflict over time such that we are often faced with a choice between the immediate gratification of avoiding a hard discussion right now and the delayed gratification of having a more secure relationship in the long term.
There’s an aphorism from sex therapy circles that you don’t have a ‘yes’ until you have a ‘no.’ The idea is that it’s hard enthusiastically consent to – or in other words, to really enjoy – an activity unless you feel safe (emotionally and practically) not consenting to it. This can be an important insight for relationships generally in offering a good reason to do the uncomfortable work of effectively managing our own disappointment or frustration about partners who don’t give us what we want. If you respond to my no with warmth and acceptance, in other words, I may be more likely to enjoy giving you what you want in the future.
On the other side of things, to return to the concept of “parenting styles” we were discussing before, there’s an important difference between literal and self parenting in terms of access to coercive force and the “authoritarian” (high discipline, low care) style in particular. What I mean is that literal parents tend to possess unique and unilateral leverage to force compliance from their children if they so choose, and get apparently “good” behavior out of their children as a result. A common observation among therapists, though, is that when the children of such approaches reach chronological adulthood and practical independence, they often find that their “inner” children have more ability to stage effective rebellion against inner authority than the individual in question had in their literal childhood. In other words, as adults, we don’t have very much effective power to “force” or “bully” our emotional selves into compliance, though that certainly doesn’t stop us from trying. Adults often find their authoritarian approach to parenting their selves less effective than it is with their own actual children. In other words, it’s often a huge advantage to be able to say no to myself when I need to, but my ability to listen to my inner parent when that parent tells me what to do may depend on – or at least relate to – a background of affectionate care.
Before moving on, (and at the risk of suddenly finding ourselves in “social media psychology” territory) I wanted to touch on a couple general “cognitive tools” related to the care/discipline dichotomy. On the care side, you may have some ability to intentionally focus your attention on particular parts of your experience which function to increase your enjoyment or satisfaction from that experience… commonly referred to as choosing joy, practicing gratitude, or taking pleasure seriously. On the discipline side, there are a range of ways – from “mindfulness” to “focused breathing” to “counting down from ten and then just doing/saying it”) that may function to enable actions in spite of emotional experiences of fear, anxiety, or distress.
Co-Regulation and Emotional Step-Parenting
Much like the role of step-parents, the question of how much responsibility and authority we have (or should have) in “parenting” our partner’s “inner-children” is a lot murkier and more fraught than with our own. Also much like real step-parents, we often find ourselves frequently confronted with the question of whether – and how – to step into a “parent” role with them. On one end of the spectrum, we might elect to effectively say “not my kid, not my problem,” or on the other “I’m just as much of a parent as you are, we’re a couple, this is my kid too.” This is an especially complex question because our partners’ emotional state(s) and resultant behavior have such a profound effect on us, and because there are so many circumstances in which we may be more aware of – and in a better position to influence/regulate – their emotional experience than they are.
Technically, the concept of “co-regulation” refers to the ability of partners in a relationship to regulate one another’s emotional experience either simultaneously or sequentially in ongoing interaction. This capacity is typically central in the task of resolving (especially high-stakes) conflicts, in that the cognitive capacities necessary for the complex problem-solving involved in successful conflict resolution are often impaired by states of high autonomic arousal (i.e. emotional distress). The particular methods that couples use to coregulate are as varied and unique as couples themselves, but can involve anything from eye-contact (or eye-contact-avoidance), and physical touch, to verbal reassurance, or even a direct commands to one another to “pull your shit together.”
To touch on a particular principle for co-regulating in conflict particularly, echoing another one of Payne-Bryson’s “twelve revolutionary strategies” as well as a core focus of Tatkin’s In Each Other’s Care, (among various other sources) is the idea of approaching the verbal negotiation of conflict from an intentionally and explicitly “we-centered” rather than “me-centered” frame of mind. In other words, especially when confronting feelings of anger or disappointment, many of us have a tendency to become more focused on – and vocal about – our own needs, unmet expectations, perspectives, and sense of injustice, than our partners’ or the relationship’s as a whole. A common phenomenon is for each partner’s verbalized assertions of their own perspective, needs, or wrongs done to them to ironically encourage their partner to focus more on their own needs, and further escalate the conflict and both partners’ distress. The alternative of intentionally focusing on we, or in other words, choosing to put the interests of the collective relationship ahead of either partner’s individual interests, may function to mitigate the emotional distress caused by the conflict as the conflict progresses. This has to do with both the private way we think about the relationship and ourselves and our partner(s) in it, as well as choices about how we express our point of view within those conflicts including things like word-choice, topic, and focus.
From the Family Systems school of psychology and therapy, there is a useful concept known as “differentiation” (in some sense the conceptual opposite of co-dependence, as discussed in this post) of relating to the balance in any relationship between autonomy and connection, and specifically referring to one’s capacity to “hold onto oneself” while in emotional proximity to others. As discussed elsewhere, there is a universal tendency to – in some way – suppress, accommodate, or sacrifice one’s own wellbeing or “authentic self-expression” in service of connection with others, as there is a universal tendency to – at certain times – reject available connection when it conflicts with that same wellbeing.
Tying in the ideas of punishment and avoidance from this post, (and putting it imprecisely) I may learn to hide or suppress parts of myself or ways of being when you react badly to them, or when I simply fear that you might think less of me if you saw them. I may be incentivized to “pretend to feel” differently than I actually do, even to the point of “lying to myself” about how I feel in order to maintain our connection, keep you at a safe distance, or just generally “avoid punishment.” In other words, it’s potentially easy and comfortable to stay in connection with you if I simply mold myself into whatever shape is most convenient for you. It’s also potentially easy and comfortable to “be myself” if I simply keep to myself. Both of these extremes represent alternative “avoidance strategies” which also avoid intimacy (defined as connection alongside authentic self-expression”)
The differentiation concept, then, refers technically to the “threshold” at which potentially-punishing partner-reactions actually start prompting avoidance. Less technically, it’s something like one’s ability to not avoid authentic self-expression even at the risk of aversive consequences; to risk being myself even when my partner doesn’t like it, and without either withdrawing from them or “hitting back;” or simply to act relationally in accordance with the observation: pain is inevitable, suffering is optional. So differentiation is the ability to tolerate aversive partner-reactions without being punished by them and resorting to avoidance in the future.
Contrasting with a “co-dependent” relationship (one in which I have to control or manage you behavior or emotional experience within tight parameters in order to “feel okay” myself) a differentiated relationship might be one in which I tell you the truth, (even when I don’t like the consequences), I “put the work in” necessary for staying connected, and I confront your behavior effectively when it damages me, rather than avoiding it in the future. I mention all of that to serve as context for the idea that “emotional-step-parenting” might be striking an effective balance between care – in the form of emotional availability, empathy, attention to needs, and enthusiastic pursuit of mutual enjoyment) and discipline (the telling of hard truths, and the holding of agreements and boundaries).
To begin with, each participant’s approach to self-parenting necessarily interacts with the other’s. For example, if one partner generally takes a “permissive” approach to their emotions… (which might look like assuming their feelings deserve to have their way without question) while the other takes an “authoritarian” one (assuming their emotions should be ignored, silenced, and otherwise forced into line) the “permissive” self-parent’s feelings might end up running the whole show of the relationship do the degree that their partner “gets on board” with accommodating to the feelings that are visible. Alternatively, the permissive partner may end up with negligible decision-making authority if they end up getting on board with the idea that their out-of-control-irrational feelings render their perspective invalid.
This also relates to a common source of conflict in relationships about how much “weight” to give emotions in shared decision-making. On one extreme, the (often implicit) policy that emotions are irrational and childish and therefore should be left out of “rational decision-making” tends to lead to varying levels of misery because we are unavoidably emotional animals as well as cognitive ones. On the other end, emotions can become an oppressive and tyrannical force in relationship when treated as unquestionable authority. As is often the case, it tends to be most effective to find a middle ground where emotions “get a voice” but are not assumed to be uniquely sacred sources of revealed Truth. This parallels the common wisdom that in families, things tend to go best when children’s perspectives and desires are considered and listened to, but not treated as law.
To boil that down to a core insight, if you want to be able to “expect a lot” from yourself or your partner, (and don’t we all?) you’re going to have to do a good job attending to – and meeting – the relevant needs. Or said differently: high performance tends to require strong, responsive support—a reality that many of us miss in our understandable wish to be able to deliver without being too “needy.” Applying this insight to our emotional selves in particular, if we want to feel things that help us accomplish our goals, (which might be close to the definition of “emotional discipline”) we may have to first take good care of ourselves. A related thing to note is that having unrealistically high expectations (tempting to justify with “shoot for the moon and at least you’ll end up in the stars” logic) often ends up backfiring as both real and inner children get discouraged and refuse to even try when “success” (by the relevant parents’ perceived definition) feels unattainable. Put differently, in self-parenting as elsewhere in life, developing the ability to enjoy “good enough” often gets better results than sticking to rigid perfectionism.
Sources
Tina Payne Bryson & Daniel Siegel (2011) The Whole Brain Child: 12 revolutionary strategies to nurture your child’s developing mind
Tina Payne Bryson & Daniel Siegel (2016) No Drama Discipline: the whole-brain way to calm the chaos and nurture your child’s developing mind
John Gottman (2011) The Science of Trust: emotional attunement for couples
Jonathan Haidt (2006) The Happiness Hypothesis
Michael Karson (2006) Using Early Memories in Psychotherapy
Margaret Mahler (1975) The Psychological Birth of the Human Infant: symbiosis and individuation
Salvador Minuchin (1974) Families and Family Therapy
Carol Garhart Mooney (2000) Theories of Childhood: an introduction to Dewey, Montessori, Erikson, Piaget & Vygotsky
David Schnarch (1991) Constructing the Sexual Crucible
Stan Tatkin (2023) In Each Other’s Care: a guide to the most common relationship conflicts and how to work through them
