Emotional Regulation
Six Super Skills for Executive Functioning:
Emotional Regulation Skills
By Dr. Lara Honos-Webb
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Emotional Regulation Skills
from Dr. Lara Honos-Webb
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Six Super Skills For Building Executive Functioning
- Finding gifts will increase emotional regulation, flexible thinking, and planning.
- Setting goals will increase planning, emotional regulation, and help manage impulsiveness.
- Chunking (breaking big goals down into small, manageable chunks) will increase attention, planning, and flexible thinking.
- Boosting motivation will increase flexible thinking, impulse control, and emotional regulation.
- Managing mood will increase emotional regulation, attention, and planning.
- Finding focus will increase attention, planning, and impulse management.
Emotional Regulation Skills
Emotional Regulation = Flexible Thinking
- Taking a broader perspective
- Making Meaning, Finding Purpose
- Self-Talk -Asking is it true? Asking is it helpful? Compassionate vs. critical voice
- Finding Positives – “Changing the Channel” Remembering past successes, past happy memories, times you were appreciated
Take a Broader Perspective
- What would you say to yourself a week from now, month from now, a year from now?
- What would you tell your best friend?
Make Meaning
- Think of yourself as a character in a movie who has to overcome challenges and imagine the hard things in life as a plot twist to add to the thrill of goal attainment.
Self Talk
🧠 What you say to yourself matters. It creates different real world outcomes. You will keep going if you have an encouraging inner coach rather than a critical voice that creates constant self-doubt.
“Think how good you will feel when you get your homework done”
🎁 Opposite action means being willing to move forward even when you are feeling fear, being willing to enjoy a healthy pleasure when you are sad, or being willing to pause and detach when you are angry.
”I can get started even when I don’t want to do it and when I don’t want to do it now”
🧒 To overcome the negativity bias of scanning for threats ask yourself: “What went right?”
- “All this emotion is like a thunder storm, I can observe it from a distance”
- “What is my purpose in this moment?”
- Take a break to get some rest. You need a breather.
“You can’t wait until life isn’t hard anymore before you decide to be happy” singer-songwriter Jane Marczewski said on America’s Got Talent
- “Can I challenge this fear and take action?”
- “What are the benefits of facing this fear sooner rather than later?”
- “Can I do hard things?”
In most situations like this, two questions can help instantly change your emotional response. Ask yourself: “Is it true?” and “Is it helpful?”
Finding Positives
Try measuring your joy on a scale of 1 to 10 using Subjective Units of Happiness. This way, you’re not trying to escape emotional pain. Instead, you’re working towards expanding your happiness.
You can use this strategy on many different time frames. Ask yourself:
- What are my happiest moments in the last year?
- What are my happiest moments in the last month?
- What are my happiest moments in the last week?
- And what are my happiest moments today?
Now Ask these questions about these positive feelings. When were the times that you felt these feelings in the last week? Give yourself permission to stay with these feelings
- Proud
- Excited
- Grateful
- Secure
- Brave
Other Resources from Dr. Honos-Webb
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Three (3) online programs for parents, adults with ADHD and professionals
A Strength Based Treatment for ADHD: The Six Super Skills
Online course for therapists to learn how to treat ADHD and executive functioning using the Six Super Skills: Find Gifts, Set Goals, Chunking, Boost Motivation, Emotional Regulation and Attention Management.
The Six Super Skills For Executive Functioning: A Parent's Guide to Mind Building
- for parents of young children or adolescents who struggle with focus and planning and problem solving
Find Your ADHD Gifts: Command Your Future
In this six week coaching program you will find a warm, supportive voice encouraging you to find your gifts, talents and interests and giving you dozens of tools to help you focus and overcome resistance.
Lara Honos-Webb, PhD is a clinical psychologist licensed in California. She is author of Six Super Skills for Executive Functioning: Tools to Help Teens Improve Focus, Stay Organized, and Reach Their Goals (2020), Brain Hacks, The Gift of ADHD, The Gift of ADHD Activity Book, The Gift of Adult ADD, The ADHD Workbook for Teens, Listening to Depression. Her work has been featured in USA Today, Newsweek, The Wall Street Journal, U.S. News & World Report, The Chicago Tribune, and more. Honos-Webb completed a two-year postdoctoral research fellowship at University of California, San Francisco, and has been an assistant professor for graduate students. She has published 26 scholarly articles. Her website is www.addisagift.com
