Psychologists suggest that children learn emotional regulation, or the ability to regulate and control their emotions, from observing and modeling how their parents and family members deal with emotions.How you learn to bond with your parents as a child can also affect how you interact with others as an adult, in what’s known as varying “attachment styles.”Understanding how your family handled emotions when you were a child can help you understand your current emotional habits. While it may be most helpful to explore your background with a mental health professional, there are some questions you can consider on your own:In your childhood, was conflict discussed openly, or was it an “unwritten rule” that you were supposed to avoid talking about unpleasant things?
How did your parents handle emotions? Did they show them or hide them? Did they explode or sulk?
Do you associate a particular emotion with a family member?
Which emotion is the most uncomfortable for you? How did/does your family handle that emotion?
Were there any emotions that were “off limits” in your family?

, Sometimes, you may feel out of control emotionally because you can’t see a way to resolve the situation that’s causing the feeling.This can lead to “ruminating,” a “broken record” thought loop where you obsess about the negative thought or feeling in an unproductive, usually vague, way.Instead, try to focus on any specifics of the situation that you can address.For example, a ruminating thought about trouble at work might look like: “What’s wrong with me? Why do things never seem to work out? Why do I suck at my job?” These vague, general thoughts are unproductive and unhelpful.
Instead, make a list of things that you can address. For example, you might talk with your boss about how to increase your productivity, ask someone more experienced for guidance or instruction, or focus on stress-management techniques that can help you feel more able to handle stress at work.
There will usually be things that your own efforts can’t address. It’s important to accept this. For example, if you have a coworker who is spiteful and nasty to everyone, you cannot change his behavior. You can speak with him about how his behavior affects you, but you have to accept that what he does with that information is up to him. Letting go of the idea that you need to “fix” or “control” every element of a situation can be very liberating., Most of us have heard the expression, "looking at the world through rose-colored glasses." Cognitive distortions are unhelpful ways of thinking that encourage you to look at the world through mud-colored glasses.Cognitive distortions arise from allowing our emotions to convince us that something is true without examining it.Fortunately, these are learned habits, and you can unlearn them with a little practice.
 Inadequacy often comes from low self-esteem, the idea that you aren't good enough to do something or deserve someone. Recognizing these distortions and challenging them when they show up will help train your brain to reject the “automatic” assumption that you aren’t “good enough.”Common distortions include:All-or-nothing thinking. Everything is good or bad, with nothing in between. If you aren't perfect, then you're a failure. You can challenge this thinking by showing yourself compassion and recognizing that everyone in the world faces challenges and makes mistakes at times. For example: “I ate that slice of cake at lunch even though I’m trying to eat healthier. I wish I hadn’t, but this isn’t the end of the world. I can make healthy eating choices for dinner.”
Disqualifying the positive. If somebody says something good about you, it doesn't count. But if somebody says something bad about you, you "knew it all along." Challenge this by looking for evidence of all the things you do right in your life. You will find it if you look.
Personalization. You believe that you were the cause of something bad that happened, when you really didn't have very much to do with it. You may make everything “about you”: for example, “My spouse seemed really irritated when we spoke on the phone earlier. She’s probably mad at me.” Challenge this by thinking about the many other possible causes for the event or experience that don’t revolve around you: “My spouse seemed really irritated. Maybe she’s having a hard day. Maybe she isn’t feeling well. I’ll ask her how she’s doing when we see each other later.”
Mind reading. You believe that you know what others are thinking or feeling (and it's usually negative) without asking them. In particular, you believe that you understand how people feel toward you and how it affects their actions.For example: You think somebody is disrespecting you and don't bother to check it out. You just assume that they are. You do this because you feel like you don't deserve respect, and so are overly sensitive to people whom you think might not respect you. Challenge this by directly asking the person about what s/he’s thinking and feeling without pre-judging.
 Humans can be afraid of a lot of things; we let fear take over our rational brains because we're convinced something bad is going to happen, even when we don't have evidence that it will. Once you understand that fear is the basis of these distortions, you can tackle them by stopping the spiral in its tracks and looking for logical solutions.Over-generalization. A single negative event turns into a never-ending pattern of defeat. "I didn't get a phone call. I'll never hear from anybody again," or "She broke up with me; why would anyone want to date me?" You generalize not because of a pattern, but because you fear the pattern. Challenge this by reminding yourself that this is a single event. Examine the actual evidence for a pattern. Have you gone a couple of days without a phone call before? Did it mean that nobody wanted to talk to you again, or simply that people had a busy stretch?
Labeling and mislabeling. This is an extreme form of over-generalization. When you make a mistake, you give yourself a label, such as, "I'm a loser." When someone else's behavior rubs you the wrong way, you attach a negative label to him, "He's a louse." Mislabeling involves describing an event with language that is highly colored and emotionally loaded. This is a problem because it totalizes you. Challenge this by separating your action or feeling from your “core self”: “I’m feeling bad because I failed that test. This does not make me a ‘failure.’ I am good at many other things.”
Jumping to conclusions. You make a negative interpretation even though there are no definite facts that convincingly support your conclusion. You think that preparing for the worst is better than hoping for the best, because you're afraid, not hopeful. For example, you might assume that you shouldn't even bother bringing up an idea in a work meeting because "it will just get shot down." Challenge this way of thinking by stopping yourself at each step and examining the evidence for your conclusions.
 These types of distortions can cause you a lot of emotional pain and guilt. When you find yourself thinking in these ways, stop for a moment. Require yourself to provide logical evidence for each assumption.Magnification (catastrophizing) or minimization. Imagine that you're looking at yourself or somebody else through a pair of binoculars. You might think that a mistake you made or somebody else's achievement are more important than they really are. Now imagine that you've turned the binoculars around and you're looking through them backwards. Something you've done might look less important than it really is, and somebody else's faults might look less important than they really are. This is how magnification and minimization work. Challenge this by speaking to yourself with compassion and examining the evidence for your assumption. For example, a grad student might feel like getting her paper published is “no big deal” because “everyone’s supposed to do it.” She could challenge this minimization by reminding herself that most people don’t publish papers at all, and that it’s something she can feel proud of herself for.
Emotional reasoning. You assume that your negative emotions necessarily reflect the way things really are: "I feel it, therefore it must be true." You want the world to be the way it feels to you because it will help you feel less powerless. Challenge this by looking for the logic behind this assumption. You can also remind yourself that your emotions aren’t facts.
Should statements. You beat up on yourself as a way of getting motivated to do something. You "should" do this, you "must" do this, you "ought" to do this, and so on. This doesn't make you want to do it, it only makes you feel guilty. When you direct should statements toward others, you feel anger, frustration, and resentment. Challenge these by replacing “should” with less loaded language: for example, “I should have gone running today” becomes “It would have been a healthy choice to go running today.”
Consider how your family handles emotions.
Consider what you can do to resolve the situation.
Learn to recognize and challenge cognitive distortions.
Recognize and challenge negative ideas that come from feeling inadequate.
Recognize and challenge negative ideas that come from fear.
Recognize and challenge negative ideas that come from other complex emotions.
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