Controlling your temper may be more important than you know

Regulating your emotions is often seen as a sign of health and maturity. You may wonder how much the ability to control your emotions is under your conscious control. It turns out that emotion regulation is quite complex. People are born with a certain temperament and their ability to control their emotions is strongly shaped by their environment. Our minds have the ability to implicitly and explicitly process emotions. Research shows that the development of the brain differs depending on the type of emotional environment that one is raised within. Supportive parents and a household in which emotional expression is encouraged can help to wire the brain for easier emotional regulation as one grows into adulthood.

We all know people who are quick to anger and easily fly off the handle. Their lives appear to be filled with drama. When emotional regulation is difficult then it can negatively impact all areas of a person's life. Adults who have difficulty controlling their emotions were often raised in environments in which emotions were repressed and support was lacking. As a child is growing the brain is setting up associations and connections between different brain areas. If  emotional support is lacking in the environment then crucial connections between brain areas necessary to support emotional processing never develop. So though research shows that we all do have the areas in our brains that can be used for conscious control of our emotions, the real question is how easily can one access that area of their brain? If one is raised in an emotionally supportive environment then they have connections set up in their brain to allow them easier access to control, process and reflect upon their emotional experience. 

People with high emotional intelligence are often more successful in all areas of their lives than people with low emotional intelligence even if they have an overall lower IQ than other people. Poor emotional regulation is also associated with a host of psychiatric disorders including depression and anxiety. It has been observed that improvement in emotional regulation also tends to lessen symptoms of psychiatric disorders. In some instances a person's depression may even completely go away. So is the ability to be able to control your temper important? You bet. Several evidence based practices can help including CBT, ACT, and DBT. 

References

1. Develop Psychol 2020 March; 56(3): 516-527 Patricia Z Tan, Camline W Oppenheimer, Cecile D. Lador, Rosalind D. Butterfield, Jennifer S. Silk A Review of Associations between parental emotion socialization behaviors and the neural substrates of emotional reactivity and regulation in youth 

2. Frontiers Flexible regulation of emotional expression with psychopathological symptoms. Gabriel Garalic- Escamilla, Denise Darfield, Miriam Becke, Jania Tretz, George a Bonnero, Sergui Grapphe

3. Gibson, Lindsay, PsyD 2015 Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents, Oakland, CA New Harbinger publishing Inc.