Emotional regulation refers to the ability to manage and respond to your emotions in a healthy way. It involves recognizing and understanding your emotional reactions to various situations, which will then allow you to respond in a balanced and proportionate manner.

For example, if you're feeling frustrated during a stressful situation, emotional regulation would help you pause, take a deep breath, and express your feelings calmly, instead of reacting impulsively or letting your frustration take over. It’s a skill that can be developed over time through a practice of awareness.

However, we all experience moments of dysregulation from time to time. This can happen, for example, when we face a series of challenging events in a short period. When external pressures build up faster than we can manage, it can leave us feeling overwhelmed, as if we don't have enough emotional resources to cope.

In these moments, emotional regulation is not only about preventing ourselves from becoming overwhelmed in the first place but also about our ability to return to a balanced, regulated state once the crisis has passed. It's about recalibrating our emotions, finding our grounding again, and regaining control so that we can navigate future challenges more effectively. The ability to bounce back from emotional turmoil is a key aspect of emotional regulation, ensuring that we don’t stay stuck in negative emotional states which are often described as ‘spiralling’.