Emotional Development and Self Control includes:
- Ability to control the influence of emotional arousal on thoughts/actions/interactions
- Ability to recover from emotional distress
- Ability to cease preferred activities or to begin/complete non preferred activities
- Ability to follow directions from others
How Emotional Development and Self Control can support self regulation:
Emotional development allows us to manage the degree or ‘depth’ of an emotional response. It lets us feel annoyed, frustrated and irritated without becoming angry or furious. It allows us to feel sad or hurt without becoming extremely upset. When we do feel the more extreme emotions (anger, elation, terror, devastation), we are able to control our behavioural response. Of course there are times where we will completely let go of any self control during these extreme emotions, however we are still able to elicit a behavioural response that is socially and legally acceptable, even if we feel the compulsion to do otherwise. For example, a couple of years ago I had my car window smashed, and less than a week later a car ran up the back of me and destroyed my rear bumper. I felt like lying down in the middle of the road and having a massive tantrum at the unfairness of it all! But I didn’t, because my self control kicked in and I realised the futility of such actions. My emotional development allowed me to choose a different behavioural response, which helped me to calm down and assess the situation logically. This block also allows us to stop doing things even if we don’t want to (like going back to work when your lunch break is over!) or do things we don’t necessarily want to (such as clean the toilet or scrub the shower).
How issues with Emotional Development and Self Control may impact self regulation:
Difficulties with emotional development may present as the person that becomes furious over small inconveniences. They may throw or break things as a reaction to a problem, and appear to go from 0-100 in seconds. They may be described as “flying off the handle” and you might only see them as calm, terribly upset, furiously angry or elatedly happy. Their reactions may be inappropriate or ‘over the top’. People with poor emotional development may take a long time to calm down from a distressing event. They might have a lot of difficulty finishing an activity, and it might be a battle to get them to do something they don’t want to.
A specific example of Emotional Development and Self Control difficulties:
I was working with an adolescent student who would react to small problems (such as losing a game on his DS, or forgetting a desired item at home) as if it was the end of the world. He would become so angry at the injustice and unfairness of it all, that he put himself and others in danger from his behaviour. He was not able to see the problem for the size it was, and was unable to modulate his anger to frustration or annoyance. His reactions were loud, over the top and socially inappropriate. His educational support team worked at supporting him to develop his emotional maturity and self control by teaching him to lose during social games and role modelling appropriate behaviour, as well as demonstrating how ridiculous his inappropriate reactions were by overreacting to silly things themselves. I supported the class using a modified version of the Zones of Regulation program, and the lesson on “size of the problem” was particularly useful. By breaking down what constitutes a big problem, and helping him to identify that the problems he was reacting to were actually small problems, he was able to begin to regulate his emotions and behaviours. This allowed the team to help him learn different ways to respond to problems, such as writing letters, using comic strips to debrief or understand situations, and moving to a safe, quiet space to calm down.