Emotional Regulation
Learning to work with intense emotions — rather than being ruled by them or suppressing them — is a skill that can be built like any other. Here you'll find tools for understanding what you're feeling and responding to it skillfully.
Articles
View all →Feeling Bad About Feeling Bad: How to Break the Cycle of Secondary Emotions
Getting angry at yourself for being anxious adds a second layer of suffering on top of the first. How to recognize secondary emotions and interrupt the stack.
6 min read
How to Set a Boundary Without Feeling Like a Bad Person
Saying no often comes with guilt that makes people avoid boundaries altogether. Where that guilt comes from, and a DBT-based script for setting limits anyway.
6 min read
Why Does a Small Trigger Cause Such a Big Reaction? Understanding Trauma Triggers
A slightly raised voice or a certain smell can trigger fear that feels wildly disproportionate to the moment. Here's why, and what actually helps when it happens.
5 min read
Books
View all →Calming the Emotional Storm
Sheri Van Dijk, MSW
A more approachable, self-help-oriented adaptation of Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) than clinical workbooks, this book is specifically aimed at readers who experience emotions as sudden, intense "storms" that feel difficult to see coming or manage once they start. It bridges clinical rigor and everyday readability especially well.
Who it's for
Readers whose emotional intensity feels sudden and overwhelming — like a storm arriving with little warning — who want DBT-based skills without a dense clinical workbook format.
The Language of Emotions
Karla McLaren, MEd
This book treats every emotion — including the ones we typically label "negative," like anger, jealousy, and shame — as carrying specific, useful information, rather than being problems to eliminate. For readers who've been taught that certain emotions are simply bad and should be suppressed, this offers a genuinely different, more workable relationship to the full range of what you feel.
Who it's for
Readers who've internalized the idea that certain emotions (anger, jealousy, shame) are simply bad, and want to understand the useful information each emotion is actually signaling.
Emotional Agility
Susan David, PhD
Psychologist Susan David challenges both the "suppress your emotions" and "always express your emotions" camps, arguing for something more nuanced: the ability to hold difficult emotions with curiosity rather than either fighting them or being ruled by them. It's a research-backed, practically actionable middle path for readers tired of extremes.
Who it's for
Readers who've noticed that both suppressing emotions and venting them fully tend to backfire, and want a more nuanced, workable middle approach.
The Dialectical Behavior Therapy Skills Workbook
Matthew McKay, Jeffrey C. Wood & Jeffrey Brantley
Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) was originally developed for intense emotional dysregulation and remains one of the most effective, research-backed approaches available for it. This workbook adapts the full clinical DBT skill set — distress tolerance, emotion regulation, mindfulness, and interpersonal effectiveness — for self-guided use.
Who it's for
Readers experiencing intense, hard-to-manage emotions or frequent emotional overwhelm, who want the full clinical DBT skill set in a self-guided workbook format.
Permission to Feel
Marc Brackett, PhD
Founder of the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence, Marc Brackett argues that most of us were never actually taught how to identify or work with our emotions — we were taught to suppress or perform them instead. This book gives you the vocabulary and framework (RULER) that's now used in schools worldwide, adapted for adult readers who never got that education.
Who it's for
Readers who struggle to identify or articulate what they're actually feeling, and want a structured framework for building genuine emotional literacy.
Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving
Pete Walker
Written specifically for the effects of prolonged, repeated trauma (like childhood emotional neglect or abuse) rather than a single traumatic event, this book gives a name and framework to a set of experiences — like the "emotional flashback" — that often go unrecognized and unaddressed by more general trauma resources.
Who it's for
Readers whose trauma stems from prolonged or repeated experiences, particularly childhood emotional neglect or abuse, rather than a single traumatic incident — best read alongside professional support.
The Body Keeps the Score
Bessel van der Kolk, MD
One of the most influential books on trauma ever published, this book makes the case — now widely supported by neuroscience — that trauma isn't just a psychological memory, it's stored in the body itself, which is why talk therapy alone sometimes isn't enough. It's essential reading for understanding why trauma affects sleep, relationships, and physical health, not just mood.
Who it's for
Readers who've experienced trauma and want to understand why it affects the body and nervous system so directly, not just thoughts and memories — best read alongside professional support.
When the Body Says No
Dr. Gabor Maté
Physician Gabor Maté makes a compelling, well-documented case that chronic stress — particularly the kind that comes from suppressing emotions to keep the peace — has measurable links to physical illness. It's a thought-provoking read for anyone who senses a connection between their stress and their physical health but hasn't seen it laid out with this much clinical grounding.
Who it's for
Readers who suspect a connection between chronic stress or suppressed emotion and their physical health, and want that link explored with real clinical and research depth.
Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle
Emily Nagoski, PhD & Amelia Nagoski, DMA
This book makes a crucial distinction most stress advice misses: dealing with the *stressor* (the problem itself) is different from completing the *stress cycle* in your body, and you can solve the first without ever doing the second — leaving you stressed even after the problem is gone. If you've fixed the problem but still feel wired and exhausted, this book explains why.
Who it's for
Readers — especially those juggling caregiving, high-pressure work, or constant demands — who feel chronically depleted even when things are, on paper, going fine.
Nonviolent Communication
Marshall B. Rosenberg, PhD
This book gives you an actual language structure for difficult conversations — separating observations from judgments, and needs from demands — that dramatically reduces the defensiveness most disagreements trigger. It's used far beyond romantic relationships, in workplaces and conflict mediation, because the core skill genuinely transfers anywhere communication breaks down.
Who it's for
Readers whose difficult conversations tend to escalate into defensiveness or conflict, who want a concrete communication framework rather than general advice to "communicate better."