DBT Skills for Emotion Regulation: What They Are and How They Work
Emotion regulation is one of the four core modules in DBT. It's the set of skills focused on understanding your emotions, reducing vulnerability to emotional reactivity, and changing emotions when they're not serving you.
This sounds straightforward in theory. In practice, using these skills during actual emotional moments is harder than learning about them in session. The emotion is already happening, and the skill you're supposed to use feels distant or effortful.
That gap is normal. Emotion regulation skills aren't about eliminating difficult feelings—they're about building the capacity to respond to them differently over time.
What Emotion Regulation Actually Means
Emotion regulation isn't about suppressing emotions or forcing yourself to feel differently. It's about:
- Understanding what you're feeling and why
- Reducing factors that make you more vulnerable to intense emotions
- Increasing positive emotional experiences
- Decreasing the intensity of unwanted emotions when appropriate
- Acting opposite to emotional urges when those urges would make things worse
The goal is flexibility—being able to experience the full range of emotions without being controlled by them.
Core Emotion Regulation Skills
Understanding Your Emotions
Before you can regulate emotions, you need to recognize what you're feeling. This involves:
- Naming the emotion specifically (frustrated, anxious, disappointed, rather than just "bad")
- Identifying what triggered it
- Noticing the urges that come with it
- Understanding the function—what the emotion is signaling
A diary card helps with this by prompting you to track emotions and their context regularly.
Reducing Vulnerability (ABC PLEASE)
Some factors make you more likely to react intensely to emotional triggers. The ABC PLEASE skills address this:
- Accumulate positive experiences
- Build mastery through activities that create competence
- Cope ahead by planning for difficult situations
- PLease your body through physical care:
- Physical illness treatment
- Balanced eating
- Avoiding mood-altering substances
- Balanced sleep
- Exercise
When these basics are neglected, emotional reactivity increases. Taking care of them doesn't prevent emotions, but it can reduce their intensity.
Opposite Action
When an emotion prompts you toward an action that would make things worse, opposite action involves doing the opposite of what the emotion urges:
- Sadness urges withdrawal → approach and engage
- Fear urges avoidance → approach what you're afraid of (when fear is unjustified)
- Anger urges attack → gently avoid or be kind
- Shame urges hiding → share and be visible (when shame is unjustified)
This only applies when the emotion doesn't fit the facts or when acting on it wouldn't be effective. Opposite action isn't about always doing the opposite—it's about having the option when the emotional urge isn't helpful.
Check the Facts
Intense emotions often involve interpretations that may not be accurate. Check the facts involves:
- What triggered the emotion?
- What are you interpreting about the situation?
- Are there other possible interpretations?
- What's the actual threat or consequence?
- Does the intensity of your emotion fit the facts?
Sometimes this process reveals that the emotional response fits the situation and is useful information. Other times it reveals that the interpretation is driving the intensity more than the actual facts.
Problem Solving
When an emotion is accurately signaling a problem, the response is to solve the problem rather than change the emotion. This involves:
- Clearly defining the problem
- Generating possible solutions
- Evaluating options
- Choosing and implementing a solution
- Evaluating the outcome
If the emotion fits the facts and is pointing to something that can be changed, problem solving is the appropriate response.
Why These Skills Take Practice
Knowing about emotion regulation skills doesn't mean you'll be able to use them automatically when emotions are high. The skills require:
- Recognizing what you're feeling while you're feeling it
- Remembering that skills exist as an option
- Having enough bandwidth to try something different
- Practicing enough that the skill becomes accessible
This is why consistent practice matters—not just reading about skills, but using them repeatedly so they become more automatic over time.
How DBT Pal Supports Emotion Regulation
DBT Pal helps by keeping these skills accessible and providing a way to track your practice:
- Log emotions and their intensity when they happen
- Access emotion regulation skills when you need to choose one
- Track which skills you used and what triggered the emotion
- Review patterns over time to understand your emotional landscape
What This Looks Like in Practice
- Noticing you're feeling intense frustration and logging it
- Checking the facts about what's actually happening
- Deciding whether opposite action might help
- Recording what you tried and what happened
When Emotion Regulation Skills Help Most
These skills tend to help most when you're already working with a therapist who can help you apply them to your specific patterns. The skills are tools—your therapist helps you figure out when and how to use them.
If you're experiencing overwhelming emotions regularly, working with a trained DBT therapist provides the structure and guidance that makes these skills more effective.
Getting Started
If you want to practice emotion regulation skills between sessions, DBT Pal offers a way to track your practice and access skills when you need them.
For more on DBT skills: