Self-Regulation: A Primer

What is self-regulation? How do you know if you have it? How can you get more of it if you don't?

Self-regulation is a cornerstone of executive function. It describes how aware you are of yourself and your behavior—particularly your ability to monitor if your behavior is helping you reach your goals and to adjust accordingly if it isn’t. Importantly, self-regulation has been found to be hugely predictive of one’s success in life—and not just academic success, either. How self-regulated one is predicts all kinds of outcomes, from whether a person is likely to get into a four-year college, whether they’ll persist until graduation once they’re there, and even how likely they are to get divorced!

Emotional regulation is a special subset of self-regulation. Whereas self-regulation encompasses cognitive and behavioral self-awareness and monitoring, emotional regulation is all about being able to identify what you feel and processing those feelings in a healthy way. As you might imagine, being able to regulate your emotions is also hugely predictive of one’s success, life satisfaction, and overall happiness.

People with ADHD and other executive function disorders tend to struggle with self-regulation and emotional regulation. On the self-regulation side, it can be a real struggle to plan out a multi-step course of action, to know which aspects of an assignment are most important and prioritize those, or to get started on a long-delayed task. Moreover, because of differences in the brains of individuals with ADHD, they may experience emotions more intensely. People with ADHD may also be more likely to experience low frustration tolerance, that is, they feel intense emotional distress when a task isn’t going as planned, and thus they may be more likely to give up on tasks earlier, or to avoid starting tasks that they anticipate will be unpleasant.

If—after reading that—you, like me, are now cataloguing all of the ways in which you fall oh-so-woefully-short in being able to regulate yourself optimally—fear not! The good news is that these skills can be learned, practiced, and reinforced. You are not stuck with the levels of self-regulation you have today! With a little bit of knowledge and practice, you can improve your ability to focus on the things that matter to you, act in ways that help you reach your goals, and feel confident and regulated as you go throughout your day.

There are many, many ways to improve your self-regulation. This is a good thing—as it means you have a veritable menu of options to choose from. It may be a process of trial and error, where you try out different things, see how they work for you, and adjust accordingly. I’m going to return to this topic in future posts but, for today, I’ll suggest two basic practices: taking care of your body/physical needs and expressive writing. It turns out, drinking enough water, not overloading on caffeine, keeping yourself well-fed, moving your body in ways that feel good to you, getting enough sleep for your body’s needs, etc., etc., have a HUGE impact on your feelings of well-being, your confidence, your self-efficacy (which is more or less your belief in yourself as an effective agent of change in your own life), and more. So, it very much pays off to pay attention to these very basic things. Doing so will give you a solid foundation from which everything else in your life will feel eminently more doable.

Second, expressive writing cures all kinds of ills! Check out James Pennebaker’s work, if you’re interested in reading more about this. I like Julia Cameron’s version of making this a daily practice and calling it “Morning Pages,” but, really, any amount of writing that you do, in any form (for any length of time, etc.), will help you process your emotions and become a more self-regulated person. Writing things down also has the added bonus of helping you prioritize and plan—somehow the act of writing it all out (everything that’s on your mind, or everything you have to do), even if the writing itself is just a jumbled mess in your notebook, leads to a less-jumbled mess in your head, and a feeling of clarity over what matters most and what needs to get done first.

So, start with basic self-care practices and add on expressive writing every day that you can. And I’ll be back soon with another blog on self- and emotional regulation!

Image by Arek Adeoye via Unsplash

Alt text: A woman's be-sneakered feet walk along an asphalt path that cuts through grass. I think I have owned these exact sneakers.