This past year, I have been thinking a lot about “emotional self-regulation.” I started thinking about it because I got into a fruitless debate with someone – a conversation we have had for years that never ends well, and that triggers emotions in both of us that have everything to do with past wounds and nothing to do with present realities. After that icky conversation, I thought, “I don’t want to do this anymore. How do I stop doing this?”
My answer to myself was to find a way to stay emotionally regulated – to not take the bait, or default to old patterns – to stay calm and present. The “how” part of doing this, spurred me to do a little research to improve my understanding, and to see if I could find connections to Creative Problem Solving (CPS). I did that, and here is what I found.
Emotional self-regulation is about noticing, naming, and managing your feelings so that they don’t hijack your thinking. When you regulate your emotional state, you create the internal conditions necessary for creativity (and calm) to flourish. This is where it gets neuroscience-y – when we react with fight, flight, freeze, or fawn, we are responding from our amygdala. This is the oldest part of your brain, your “‘gater brain.” The part that makes you react to danger.
To stay regulated, you must move your thinking and consciousness from your amygdala to your pre-frontal cortex. That is where reason, creativity, and problem solving live in your brain. When we are angry, or terrified, or triggered, how do we shift from one part of our brain to another?
When you put your feelings into words, you change your brain activity. Research by Lieberman et al. (2007) shows that labeling an emotion reduces activity in the amygdala—the brain’s threat detector—and increases activity in the prefrontal cortex, which supports reflection, decision-making, and flexible thinking – essential for creative problem solving.
Suppressing emotions drains mental resources. Trying to “push down” feelings doesn’t make them go away—it just buries them under stress. Gross and Levenson (1993) found that suppressing emotions leads to physiological strain, including increased heart rate, blood pressure, and cortisol. When your body is in stress mode, it’s harder to access curiosity, imagination, and big-picture thinking—core components of a creative mindset.
Processing emotions opens space for innovation. When emotions are acknowledged and moved through (instead of avoided), your brain regains access to cognitive flexibility and insight. Research by Zhu, Bauman, and Young (2023) shows that people who engage with their emotions—rather than repress or avoid them—are more likely to exhibit creative thinking. Emotional processing actually enhances divergent thinking, perspective-taking, and the ability to generate novel ideas.
This does not mean that we should stop having emotions. Having and processing emotions is essential to our psychological well being. But if your emotions do not match the moment, get in the way of being understood, or if you have gotten used to using your emotions to manage or avoid personal relationships, you may want to use this handy graph to check yourself:
| Emotional Regulation | Emotional Dysregulation |
|---|---|
| 😌 You feel your emotions and know what they mean. | 😰 You feel overwhelmed and unsure why. |
| 😌 You stay present and respond wisely. | 😵💫😑 You react impulsively or shut down. |
| 😌 You can name and express your feelings. | 🫣 You suppress, deny, or avoid you feelings. |
| 😌 You use healthy coping tools to regulate. | 😶🌫️ You rely on coping that avoids or numbs. |
| 😌 You grow self-awareness and resilience. | 🫨 You repeat unhelpful patterns. |
As is generally the case, CPS is a way of thinking and engaging with others that helps with a lot of different aspects of personal and professional development. In short, CPS can help you regulate:
- Clarify – when you clarify, you name what is true. This shuts down emotive spirals that flourish in your amygdala.
- Ideate – when you ideate, you invite hope with possibility thinking facilitated by invitational stems, which happens in the pre-frontal cortex.
- Develop – when you develop, you calm the nervous system by replacing ambiguity with a thoughtful plan.
- Implementation – when you implement, you take decisive action, which transforms mental stress into purposeful movement.
Emotional self-regulation isn’t a “soft skill”—it’s a Power Skill (1), and a creativity enabler. By calming reactivity, reducing internal stress, and restoring cognitive flexibility, self-regulation creates the mental space where creativity can take root and thrive.
I encourage you all to think about times when you feel dysregulated. You probably know what you are at-risk for those moments and situations. You can be ready for those moments when they come: feel your emotions and name them; breathe and stay calm; and ignite your CPS skills to help you back into regulation.
(1) Power skills are the essential human-centered capabilities—such as adaptability, communication, collaboration, emotional intelligence, and creative problem solving—that enable people to thrive in complex, changing environments. Unlike “soft skills,” which implies secondary importance, power skills are recognized as critical drivers of individual and organizational success.
Links in article
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1467-9280.2007.01916.x?utm_source=chatgpt.com
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/8326473
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/11/221122111419.htm