The Importance Of Emotion Regulation

Emotion regulation in an individual is the ability to express their desires, emotions, frustrations, anger, fears and the like verbally rather than physically. In a joking manner, many first time parents are warned about the “terrible twos” when children are famed to have temper tantrums to get their needs and wants met. Research has shown that children can be taught to express their needs, wants and displeasure verbally in a socially acceptable manner as long as they are taught from the time they are beginning to learn their social graces and the learning continues throughout their lives as they encounter different situations and cultures.

Infants show several emotions namely disgust, contentment, interest and disgust. These emotions can be visually seen on their faces as they encounter different aspects of their environment as was observed by Carroll Izard and his colleagues. These are considered to be basic emotions which, many theorists have concluded, are biologically programmed. Healthy children add social smiles, anger, fear, sadness, and joy to their bank of emotions as the weeks and months progress. By the end of the second year of life, normal children are able to display embarrassment, shame, guilt, envy and pride which are defined as complex emotions. These complex emotions are also referred to as self-conscious emotions as they involve the cognitive part of the individual where situations as per the environment, situations and people around them are assessed and the child realizes that he or she has some form of control over objects, animals and people. Lewis and his colleagues saw that children who were actively stimulated were able to display feelings of shame (realizing that they had failed at a task or so...

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...ng of new skills to take place. In other words when self-regulation is automatic and does not require thought then the individual can actively participate in activities in their environment where they may be challenged to learn new things which they may be interested in or otherwise. Self-regulation is required throughout one’s life time as the individual matures over time; this reinforces the saying that learning occurs until one dies. An older person will be better able to read into another’s reaction and temperament and know when to back off before offending the other party. If, inadvertently, the recipient is offended then the other person may have a way to resolve the situation. The challenge comes in when the offended party pretends not to be affected yet the body language speaks otherwise. This raises the bar in perfecting the skill of self-regulation