Five ways to regulate your emotions
“We are not necessarily thinking machines. We are feeling machines that think”.
Antonio Damasio, neuroscientist
Understanding and Managing Your Emotions: A Neuroscience-Based Approach
Have you ever wished you had better control over your emotions—whether it's a strong feeling clouding your judgment, emotional reasoning like catastrophising, or an unexpected outburst that catches you off guard? These moments can leave us feeling embarrassed, withdrawing from others, and adding layers of stress through self-criticism. Instead of letting emotions overwhelm us, we can use neuroscience to understand them and respond in a more constructive way.
What Purpose Do Emotions Serve?
Emotions act as data points, signalling whether our current behaviour is beneficial or whether we need to adjust in response to a new challenge or opportunity. By paying attention to our emotional responses and how they evolve over time, we gain valuable insights that can help guide our actions, improve interactions, and even support our psychological needs—such as autonomy, competence, and connection with others. Learning to manage emotions is a crucial aspect of building resilience to stress.
The Neuroscience Behind Emotional Processing
The nature of the system in the brain for emotional processing means that when emotion is detected it can be responded to at two levels:
The Amygdala and Ventral Striatum – These two areas register raw emotional reactions to a given situation: the amygdala detects threat, while the ventral striatum identifies reward. In The Chimp Paradox(Peters, 2012), they are metaphorically described as the "Chimp," representing the impulsive, emotionally driven aspect of our thinking. The Chimp interprets information with feelings and impressions.
The Ventro-Medial Prefrontal Cortex (VMPFC) – This part of the brain modulates emotional responses based on context and current goals—metaphorically described as the "Human" in The Chimp Paradox. The Human uses logical thinking and will interpret information by looking for the facts of a given situation, enabling us to change our response to it. When the VMPFC is more active, it inhibits the response of the amygdala and reduces our initial emotional responses to threatening situations. By contrast, when the VMPFC is inactive our amygdala is uninhibited and responds fully to threat.
The interplay between these brain areas determines our reactivity to stressful situations; notwithstanding that some brains are more reactive than others depending on our childhood and life experiences and that we can also set up emotional habits within these brain areas in response to specific situations. When we experience stress, the amygdala activates the release of hormones like adrenaline and cortisol. While this response is helpful in the short term, prolonged activation can have negative health effects, making emotional regulation essential. The key lies in knowing that we can change our emotional response to a situation and shift control from the Chimp to the Human.
Practical Strategies to Manage Emotions and Emotional Thinking
Recognizing when your Chimp is leading the way is crucial—it often manifests as heightened emotions or uneasy feelings. All common "thinking errors", such as “black and white” thinking, catastrophising, personalisation, mind-reading, fortune-telling and “should” statements, stem from this emotional system and can be completely irrational. In addition, the Chimp reacts far faster than the Human, meaning it easily overpowers us. So how do we take more control?
Express and Analyse Your Emotions – Talking through your emotions with a trusted colleague or writing them down ("exercising the Chimp") helps reduce their intensity. Once expressed, analysing them rationally ("boxing the Chimp") lowers amygdala activity and activates the VMPFC, promoting more thoughtful responses.
Label Your Emotional State – Simply identifying and naming your emotions can help reduce their intensity. Stopping for a moment to use non-judgmental language like “That’s interesting, I feel X”activates the VMPFC, making it easier to respond appropriately rather than react impulsively.
Expand Your Emotional Vocabulary – The more nuanced our emotional vocabulary, the better we can differentiate between emotional states. This helps regulate exaggerated responses—for example, rather than thinking “I hate this person,” recognising “I feel irritated when they do X.” Brene Brown’s Atlas of the Heart is insightful for exploring in depth the language of emotion.
Challenge Emotional Thinking Using the 3Cs – Jimenez (2021) advocates the 3C approach to address these thoughts, which has the effect of giving the “Human” an opportunity to intervene empathetically:
Curiosity – Ask yourself, “Is what my brain telling me true?” and “What’s another way to interpret this situation?”
Compassion – Choose a self-compassionate approach over harsh self-criticism. This is often difficult for us so ask yourself “What would my best friend advise me to think”?
Calibration – Determine how you’ll respond consciously rather than reactively based on this new information you have.
Gain Perspective Through Psychological Distance – Stepping outside of the present emotional state helps regulate reactions. Ask yourself, “How will I view this situation five years from now?” or “What would my future self say about this?”
In summary, neuroscience brings us a better understanding of how our emotions are shaped and, although by no means exhaustive, these neuroscience-based techniques provide a first step to better manage our emotional responses, reduce stress, and approach challenges with greater clarity and resilience.
Abigail Gregory
May 2025
Sources:
Brown, B. (2021) Atlas of the Heart. New York: Random House.
Jimenez, J.M. (2021) The Burnout Fix. New York: McGraw Hill.
Peters, S. (2012) The Chimp Paradox. London: Vermillion.
Acknowledgement:
Thanks go to Professor Patricia Riddell, whose Applied Neuroscience Programme (International Teaching Seminars) informed the scientific background and practical experience on which this short piece is based.
About the author: Professor Abigail Gregory MBE is a Higher Education Consultant and an accredited Executive Coach and Mentor. She is an empathetic, solutions-focussed coach focusing on leadership and the workplace, including work issues, transitions, work-life balance and career development. She is a practitioner in Brain and Behavioural Change. Abigail has had a long career in Higher Education, including in senior university and faculty leadership roles. She has a specialist interest in internationalization and gender equality and was awarded an MBE for services to exports in 2019. Her research has focused particularly on cross-national comparisons of work-life balance, fatherhood and gender equality.