This month’s executive function skill of focus is emotion regulation. As a reminder, executive function skills are brain-based skills that help individuals get things done. For many neurodivergent individuals, some executive function skills are great strengths while others are more challenging. Emotion regulation is a complex executive function skill that plays a key role in helping us make progress, achieve goals, and engage in thoughtful decision-making (Dawson & Guare, 2016).

The Challenges of Emotion Regulation for Neurodivergent Folks

For many of us, emotion regulation doesn’t always come naturally. If you’re neurodivergent, whether through ADHD, autism, or any other form of neurodivergence, you may face additional challenges. For example, according to Ari Tuckman (2012), many with ADHD often struggle with:

• Interrupting others or saying yes to too many things impulsively
• Losing sight of the big picture or someone else’s perspective
• Saying things we later regret, which can damage relationships
• Quitting jobs and commitments or abandoning projects on a whim
• Behaving in unexpected ways when overwhelmed by strong emotions

If any of these sound familiar, you’re not alone. I’ve personally struggled with many of these same issues—impulsivity, regret, and impulsively quitting things when overwhelmed by emotions. My unique experiences with ADHD, autism, and rejection-sensitive dysphoria (RSD) shape my personal experiences. I also experience anxiety, ruminating thoughts, and co-occurring depression, which complicate my ability to regulate my emotions and maintain motivation. These struggles are not uncommon among people with ADHD or autism.

The Misconception: Controlling vs. Managing Emotions

One of the common misconceptions about emotion regulation is that it’s all about controlling or suppressing your feelings. When many of us grew up, people may have encouraged us to “keep it together” and only share positive or neutral emotions. However, this kind of emotional suppression isn’t regulation. Pushing our emotions aside is a form of masking, which may make us fit in better in the short term but can take a serious toll on our mental and emotional health if practiced too much in the long term.

In truth, emotional regulation isn’t about suppressing emotions; it’s about understanding them, acknowledging them, and working with them. For me, this shift in perspective has been revolutionary. While taught to control my emotions, I’ve learned that managing them means learning to feel them fully, reflect on them, and use them as a guide for better decision-making. It can be arduous, especially for those given few strategies to process or articulate their feelings. Rather than suppressing or avoiding feelings, learning to feel your emotions is essential for emotional regulation. Doing so can increase Self-awareness, improve our relationships, and help us make better decisions.

Developing emotional regulation skills takes time, especially if you’ve never had a solid foundation of Coping strategies. But, as many of us are discovering, building these skills over time is possible. We can become more adept at recognizing and understanding our emotions through therapy, reading, and practice. One helpful tool is an emotion wheel, which gives us emotional options to pinpoint what we feel when we are overwhelmed. Such a simple tool can also help us identify multiple emotions we might be experiencing simultaneously—a concept I learned from Daniel Tiger (yes, the children’s show!). For example, you might feel both happy and nervous at the same time, and that’s completely normal.

It’s okay to take your time and go at your own pace while learning to understand your emotions fully over time.

Practical Strategies for Managing Stress and Emotions

Now, if you feel like you’re not quite ready to dive into deep emotional exploration, that’s completely understandable. Emotional regulation is a skill that can take time, and you might be looking for more immediate tools to help manage your emotions day-to-day. If that’s the case, here are some strategies Ari Tuckman recommends in his 2012 book Understand Your Brain, Get More Done.

1. Manage Your Stress

Tuckman recommends working to stabilize your emotions through stress management strategies such as getting enough sleep, exercising, scheduling time for self-care, avoiding over-commitment, and treating co-occurring anxiety or depression.

2. The Less Strongly You Feel An Emotion, The Easier It Is To Control It

To make it easier to control emotions, try to keep them in a manageable zone by taking breaks, understanding your triggers, and managing circumstances you may find overwhelming in large doses.

3. Own Up to Your Reactions

If you struggle with reacting impulsively, practice explaining your feelings afterward and improve your skills at providing genuine apologies. A preventative strategy is to teach people not to read too much into your first reaction, if you have trouble reacting how you want to when caught off guard.

Conclusion

If you struggle with emotion regulation, you are not alone. Many neurodivergent folks struggle with emotion management. If you want to work on this skill, you can go at your own pace and choose your approach. Suppose you prefer to explore and dig deeper emotionally. In that case, you might start working with an emotion wheel, journaling, or reflecting on the specific emotions in your experience. Alternatively, you might work on emotional regulation by developing coping skills such as stress management, keeping your feelings in a manageable state, and practicing owning up to your reactions ahead of time or after the fact.