How to Regulate Emotions Without Suppressing Them: The Practice of Emotional Coherence

By Dr. Katelyn Lehman

There's something rather peculiar about our contemporary obsession with emotional regulation.

We've developed an entire vocabulary around the importance of managing our nervous systems. We track our triggers, monitor our stress responses, practice mindfulness, and learn to recognize the subtle signs that we're becoming emotionally activated. We read books about attachment, attend workshops on emotional intelligence, and collect techniques intended to help us remain calm under pressure.

And yet, despite all this knowledge, many of us continue to find ourselves doing precisely what we know we'd rather not do.

We understand why criticism activates us, but still become defensive when someone challenges our perspective. We recognize our tendency to withdraw during conflict, but still disappear emotionally when a conversation becomes difficult. We know that another person's disappointment doesn't necessarily mean we've done something wrong, yet feel compelled to explain ourselves until the discomfort subsides.

We know better.

And sometimes, it makes absolutely no difference.

This is one of the great paradoxes of psychological development: understanding our emotional patterns and being able to respond differently while those patterns are active are not the same thing.

But perhaps there's an even deeper contradiction hiding beneath our cultural preoccupation with regulation.

What if the goal of emotional maturity isn't to become less affected by life?

What if it's to become more capable of remaining present while being affected?

Why Understanding Your Emotions Doesn't Always Change Your Reactions

In my work as a clinical psychologist, I've become increasingly interested in the distance between insight and embodiment.

Insight can be a remarkable thing. You begin to recognize patterns that have shaped your life for years, often without your awareness. You start to understand why certain conversations leave you feeling threatened, why criticism can feel so personal, or why the possibility of disappointing someone you love can send you into a spiral.

And sometimes, this understanding is genuinely liberating. You begin to see yourself differently. You can even look back on situations that once felt unbearable with a surprising amount of compassion.

Then you get into an argument with someone you love.

And there it is again. That familiar surge of defensiveness. The desperate need to be understood. The way your mind starts constructing its case before you've really heard what the other person is saying.

It's almost embarrassing how quickly we can lose access to the very wisdom we've worked so hard to develop.

But I don't think this means our insight has failed us. Understanding something in the relative safety of reflection is quite different from having access to that understanding when we're frightened, hurt, or emotionally exposed.

The distance between those two experiences is where the work of embodiment begins.

This is why I distinguish between knowing and having access.

Under emotional pressure, attention, perception, and behavior can become organized around familiar protective responses. When something feels threatening, the nervous system may prioritize immediate action over reflective consideration. Learned associations can become particularly compelling, and alternative interpretations may be harder to access.

We sometimes describe this by saying that the rational brain has gone offline, but that explanation is misleadingly simple.

We may continue thinking quite intensely while emotionally activated. In fact, we can construct elaborate, internally consistent arguments in defense of interpretations that are shaped by fear, anger, or shame.

The problem is not necessarily an absence of thinking.

It's that our thinking may have become organized around a narrower field of possibility.

This matters because we cannot simply reason our way out of every emotional pattern. Understanding is essential, but the conditions under which understanding becomes available are equally important.

This concept is not novel, many people have explored the relationship between insight and embodiment. One such example is philosopher and cognitive scientist Francisco Varela, who together with Evan Thompson and Eleanor Rosch, explored the relationship between cognition, embodiment, and lived experience in The Embodied Mind (Varela et al., 1991). Their work challenged the assumption that cognition could be adequately understood as abstract information processing detached from the activity of a living organism (Varela et al., 1991).

This offers an important philosophical foundation for understanding emotional change.

Knowing something about experience is different from developing the capacity to participate differently within experience.

The map is not the terrain.

And at some point, we have to learn how to walk.

Emotional Regulation vs. Suppression: What's the Difference?

One of the difficulties with contemporary discussions of emotional regulation is that we've come to associate being regulated with being calm.

We imagine someone who remains composed in a difficult conversation, speaks in a measured tone, and never appears particularly disturbed by circumstances.

This person is often held up as an example of emotional maturity.

But outward composure tells us remarkably little about what is happening internally.

Consider two people receiving criticism from someone important to them.

The first remains perfectly polite. They smile, nod, and agree with what is being said. Internally, however, they're experiencing intense distress. Their attention is consumed by the effort to conceal their reactions, avoid conflict, and maintain the appearance of harmony.

The second person feels their anger rising. They notice tension in their body and recognize an impulse to defend themselves. Rather than immediately acting on that impulse, they remain engaged. They ask a question, acknowledge what they can, and express disagreement where necessary.

Their voice may tremble. Their frustration may be visible.

Which person is more emotionally regulated?

We cannot determine that from appearance alone.

The first may be skillfully choosing when and how to express an emotion. Or they may be suppressing their experience because they fear the consequences of honesty.

The second may be responding with considerable flexibility. Or they may be overlooking the impact of their emotional expression on the other person.

Context matters.

A colleague, psychologist James Gross, has contributed significantly to our scientific understanding of emotion regulation (Gross, 1998). His process model distinguishes among strategies that influence emotional experience at different points, including how we interpret situations and how we modify emotional expression.

In experimental research, Gross found that cognitive reappraisal and expressive suppression could have different consequences. Suppressing visible emotional expression did not necessarily diminish the underlying emotional experience and, under the conditions studied, was associated with increased sympathetic physiological activation (Gross, 1998, 2015).

The point isn't that suppression is always harmful. There are circumstances in which choosing not to express an emotion is appropriate, protective, or socially necessary.

The problem arises when we confuse the concealment of emotion with the development of emotional capacity.

Regulation is not the absence of disturbance. It is the capacity to remain responsive within it.

And responsiveness requires something more sophisticated than simply keeping ourselves under control.

It requires discernment.

Why Trying to Control Your Feelings Can Keep You Stuck

There's an almost comical contradiction in the way mindfulness is sometimes presented within contemporary wellness culture.

We're encouraged to accept our emotions.

So we sit down, close our eyes, take a few deep breaths, and begin attempting to accept our anxiety.

Then we check to see whether the anxiety has gone away.

It hasn't.

We breathe again.

Still anxious.

At some point, we become frustrated that our acceptance isn't working.

We've managed to turn nonjudgmental awareness into another performance evaluation.

This is where I think contemplative psychology has something particularly important to offer.

The modern mindfulness movement has brought valuable practices into healthcare, education, and everyday life. Jon Kabat-Zinn's work, for example, helped establish secular mindfulness-based approaches that have influenced contemporary understandings of stress and psychological wellbeing (Kabat-Zinn, 2003).

But as contemplative practices move into a culture deeply organized around productivity, optimization, and personal achievement, something can become distorted.

The practice of awareness can be repurposed into another means of controlling experience.

We begin using mindfulness to become more efficient at tolerating stress. Meditation becomes a way to quiet inconvenient emotions or truths. Acceptance becomes a strategy for making uncomfortable feelings and experiences disappear.

And the underlying relationship with experience remains unchanged.

We are still attempting to negotiate with reality.

I'll allow this feeling to exist, provided it eventually becomes something else.

Of course, there is nothing inherently wrong with wanting relief from distress. Emotional suffering can be exhausting, and practices that reduce its intensity can be extraordinarily helpful.

But there is a meaningful difference between supporting ourselves through discomfort and organizing our entire relationship with discomfort around its elimination.

Research by Brett Ford and colleagues offers an interesting perspective here. Across laboratory, daily-life, and longitudinal studies, their work found that people who habitually accepted negative thoughts and emotions tended to experience better psychological health. Importantly, the research distinguished accepting internal experiences from accepting the external situations that produced them (Ford et al., 2018).

That distinction deserves our attention.

Accepting anger does not require accepting mistreatment.

Acknowledging fear does not mean ignoring danger.

Allowing sadness does not oblige us to remain in circumstances that continually diminish our wellbeing.

Acceptance is not resignation.

It is a willingness to recognize what is actually occurring before deciding what, if anything, needs to change.

Sometimes we need to change our relationship with an emotion.

Sometimes we need to change the conditions producing it.

Often, both are involved.

How to Feel Emotions Without Being Controlled by Them

Contemplative traditions have spent centuries investigating a question that modern psychology continues to approach from different directions:

What is the relationship between awareness and experience?

When anger arises, we ordinarily say, I am angry.

When fear appears, I am afraid.

These expressions are perfectly natural. But they can also reveal how easily a temporary emotional state becomes fused with our sense of identity.

Anger is no longer simply an experience occurring within a larger field of awareness. For a moment, anger seems to become the entirety of who we are.

Our thoughts align with it. Our memories become selectively available. Our interpretations of other people begin organizing around the emotion's apparent meaning.

The world becomes an angry world.

In Buddhist psychology, emotions and mental formations are understood as arising through conditions rather than existing as permanent, independent features of the self.

This perspective does not require us to deny the intensity or significance of what we feel.

Instead, it invites us to examine the tendency to identify completely with passing experience.

We can recognize that anger is present without assuming that every interpretation arising alongside it is accurate.

We can acknowledge fear without requiring the future to conform to its predictions.

We can experience sadness without transforming it into a permanent statement about who we are.

But I want to be careful here, because even the language of observing our emotions can introduce another subtle division.

It may suggest that somewhere inside us exists a perfectly detached observer, a more enlightened version of ourselves whose job is to supervise the unruly emotional creature below.

And then we're right back where we started.

Another internal hierarchy. Another project of self-control.

A nondual understanding offers something more interesting.

Awareness does not necessarily need to stand apart from experience in order for our relationship with experience to change.

We can recognize an emotion while participating fully in the life through which it arises.

There is no requirement to become emotionally detached.

In fact, the invitation is almost the opposite.

To become sufficiently intimate with our experience that we no longer need to organize ourselves around resisting it.

This is not an argument for indulging every feeling or acting on every impulse. The distinction between feeling and behavior remains essential.

Rather, it is an invitation to recognize that emotion can be fully present without becoming the sole authority governing what happens next.

We can be moved without being entirely carried away.

Why Emotional Resilience Doesn't Mean Feeling Less

One of the more persistent myths about psychological development is that growth should make us increasingly comfortable.

We imagine that as we become more emotionally mature, we'll experience less anxiety, less anger, less grief, and fewer internal contradictions.

Our emotional lives will become smoother.

More predictable.

More agreeable.

But this image of development doesn't reflect the complexity of living systems or the reality of human life.

Sometimes becoming more aware means encountering emotions we've spent years avoiding.

Someone who has organized their relationships around pleasing others, for example, may begin recognizing anger that previously remained inaccessible.

Maybe someone who has endured significant loss through constant activity may discover grief that only becomes apparent when they finally slow down.

Or perhaps someone who has learned to remain composed under all circumstances may begin noticing the extraordinary effort required to maintain that composure.

These experiences can be uncomfortable. They may even feel like setbacks.

And sometimes they are signs that additional support, care, or changed circumstances are needed.

But discomfort itself is not reliable evidence that development has failed. Human growth is not simply a linear movement away from distress. It often involves a reorganization of how we experience ourselves and the world.

This is where the concept of coherence becomes particularly useful.

In The Coherence Method, coherence does not mean perfect internal harmony. It refers to the capacity of a living system to maintain communication and responsiveness across its different processes, even as conditions change.

That includes the capacity to hold experiences that appear contradictory.

You can love someone and remain angry with them.

You can experience gratitude for your life while grieving what it has cost you.

You can feel afraid of an uncertain future while recognizing that something meaningful is calling you toward it.

You can have compassion for another person while refusing to accommodate their behavior.

These experiences do not need to be prematurely resolved into one emotionally consistent position.

In fact, the demand for internal consistency can become its own form of rigidity.

We decide that if we truly love someone, we shouldn't feel anger.

That if we're genuinely grateful, we have no right to feel disappointed.

That if we've healed, we shouldn't still experience fear.

And so we begin editing our emotional lives to conform to an idealized version of psychological maturity.

But living systems require variability.

Our emotional range is not simply noise that needs to be eliminated. It reflects the complexity of our relationships with the world.

Of course, the presence of contradictory feelings does not automatically indicate resilience, just as emotional intensity does not necessarily indicate growth.

The question is whether we can remain sufficiently connected to our experience to recognize what it contains, discern what matters, and respond without requiring every part of ourselves to agree.

Perhaps emotional maturity involves less certainty about what we feel and greater capacity to remain present with the complexity of feeling.

That possibility changes the nature of the work.

We are no longer trying to engineer a perfectly regulated self.

We are developing the capacity to participate more fully in life.

How to Respond Instead of Reacting: Practicing Emotional Coherence

If intellectual understanding is not enough, how does emotional change become possible?

This is where embodiment enters the picture.

Embodiment is sometimes reduced to bodily awareness: noticing sensations, tracking changes in breathing, or identifying where emotions appear to be felt.

These practices can be valuable, but embodiment involves something more.

It is the gradual process through which understanding becomes increasingly available in the actual circumstances of our lives.

When we're disappointed.

When someone challenges us.

When we need to establish a boundary.

When we're frightened, ashamed, angry, or uncertain about what to do next.

The transformation is not simply that we can identify what's happening in our bodies.

It's that awareness begins participating in how we respond.

In The Coherence Method, I approach this process through four interconnected capacities: noticing, orienting, relating, and responding.

These aren't steps to perform perfectly. They are ways of restoring communication when emotional activation begins narrowing our experience.

Notice: What is happening?

Imagine you're in a difficult conversation with someone you love.

They say something that feels unfair, and you immediately experience the urge to defend yourself.

Before you've consciously organized a response, your body has already begun preparing for one.

Perhaps you notice heat in your face, tension in your chest, or the sudden certainty that the other person is blaming you.

Noticing doesn't mean making these sensations disappear.

It means recognizing that something is happening before the familiar response has entirely taken over.

Orient: What is shaping this experience?

Now the inquiry becomes more complex.

What was actually said?

What meaning have you assigned to it?

Is the situation activating an older expectation about criticism or rejection?

Is the other person genuinely behaving unfairly?

Could several of these things be true simultaneously?

Orientation helps us distinguish among the present circumstances, the meanings we're constructing, and the expectations our bodies have learned to anticipate.

Relate: Can I remain with the experience?

This is where we begin practicing a different relationship with emotional activation.

Perhaps the anger remains intense.

Perhaps we still want to interrupt, withdraw, or prove ourselves right.

But rather than immediately obeying those impulses—or attempting to suppress them—we allow ourselves to recognize what is happening.

We remain connected to our own experience while preserving some awareness of the person in front of us.

And if remaining in the conversation is too difficult or unsafe, we may need to pause or leave.

Relationship does not require self-abandonment.

Respond: What does this moment actually require?

Now a different range of possibilities may become available.

Perhaps we need to listen more carefully.

Perhaps we need to disagree.

Perhaps we need to acknowledge the impact of something we said.

Perhaps we need to establish a boundary, ask for time, or recognize that the circumstances themselves need to change.

The response may still involve anger.

It may still involve discomfort.

But the emotion no longer has to dictate the entirety of our participation.

This is what I mean by the movement from insight to embodiment.

Not the disappearance of activation, but the growing availability of awareness, discernment, and choice within it.

And this capacity develops through repetition, reflection, relationship, and practice. Not through the expectation that we should suddenly become perfectly composed.

A brief invitation to experience the difference

Consider a mildly uncomfortable emotional experience from your recent life.

Nothing overwhelming. Just a moment that left you feeling irritated, disappointed, anxious, or unsettled.

As you bring it to mind, notice whether any sensations, thoughts, or impulses become apparent.

Perhaps you feel tension somewhere in your body.

Perhaps a familiar explanation begins forming.

Perhaps you notice the urge to solve the problem, justify your response, or make the discomfort disappear.

Now consider something slightly different.

What happens if, for a moment, you don't make changing the feeling your primary task?

You don't need to intensify it, analyze it perfectly, or remain with it longer than feels appropriate.

Simply recognize what is present.

You might discover that the feeling changes.

You might discover that it doesn't.

Neither outcome represents success or failure.

The inquiry is whether your relationship with the experience can become more flexible, even briefly.

Can the emotion exist without requiring immediate obedience, suppression, or resolution?

Can you recognize that something is happening without assuming that you already know everything it means?

These are small questions.

But they open into an extraordinarily sophisticated practice.

Emotional Maturity Is Not the Absence of Disturbance

We live in a world that repeatedly asks us to remain composed.

To manage ourselves. To regulate our responses. To develop resilience in the face of circumstances that are often uncertain, contradictory, and profoundly difficult to reconcile.

There is value in developing these capacities.

But I wonder what happens when emotional regulation becomes an end in itself.

When we become so invested in the project of managing our inner lives that we lose contact with what those lives are participating in.

Anger may be asking us to recognize an injustice.

Grief may be revealing the depth of a relationship.

Fear may be reminding us that something matters enough to make us vulnerable.

And sometimes these emotions are simply complicated, ambiguous, and difficult to interpret.

They don't always arrive with a clear message.

They don't always resolve when we've understood them.

Nor should we expect them to.

The remarkable thing about being human is not that we can eventually become immune to the disturbances of existence.

It's that we can develop a greater capacity to remain in relationship with ourselves, with other people, and with the world while those disturbances move through us.

That capacity isn't produced by intellectual insight alone.

It emerges through lived experience. Through the repeated practice of noticing what happens when we're frightened, angry, disappointed, or uncertain. Through the difficult work of remaining available to complexity without immediately reducing it to something more manageable.

And importantly, it develops in relationship.

Our emotional capacities are shaped by the people and environments around us. Some relationships make it easier to remain honest, flexible, and present. Others require so much vigilance or self-containment that even our most practiced capacities become difficult to access.

This is why emotional coherence cannot ultimately remain a private project of self-improvement.

The ways we learn to relate to our feelings inevitably influence how we listen, communicate, establish boundaries, exercise power, and care for one another.

Which brings us to a larger question: what kinds of relationships, institutions, and cultures make this depth of emotional life possible?

We'll explore that more fully next week.

For now, I want to leave you with a different image of emotional maturity.

Not a person standing serenely above the disorder of human experience, untouched by disappointment or grief.

But someone willing to remain present to a world that continues to move them.

Emotional maturity is not the absence of disturbance. It is the capacity to remain in relationship with ourselves, and with life, while being moved.

Explore The Coherence Method™

Understanding our emotional patterns is an important beginning. But insight alone doesn't necessarily change how we experience ourselves or respond to the world.

The Coherence Method Online Course invites you to move beyond intellectual understanding into a deeper practice of awareness, embodiment, and connection. An exploration of how our inner lives take shape, how lasting change becomes possible, and what it means to live with greater coherence in an increasingly complex world.

Explore the course and bring understanding into practice.

Frequently Asked Questions About Emotional Regulation

How can I regulate my emotions without suppressing them?

Emotional regulation doesn't require eliminating uncomfortable feelings or pretending they aren't there. It involves developing the capacity to recognize what you're experiencing, understand what may be shaping it, and choose how to respond. Rather than immediately trying to get rid of anger, fear, or sadness, you can practice remaining present with those emotions while considering what the situation actually requires.

What's the difference between emotional regulation and emotional suppression?

Emotional regulation refers to the many ways we influence our emotional experiences and responses. Emotional suppression typically involves inhibiting the outward expression of what we feel. While choosing not to express an emotion can sometimes be appropriate, appearing calm doesn't necessarily mean we're internally regulated. Emotional coherence involves maintaining awareness, flexibility, and discernment, even when uncomfortable feelings remain present.

Why do I understand my emotional triggers but still react the same way?

Understanding a pattern intellectually doesn't guarantee that insight will remain accessible when you're emotionally activated. Under stress, familiar protective responses can become more readily available than the behaviors we'd consciously prefer. Developing new responses requires more than recognizing our patterns. It involves repeated practice, embodied awareness, and learning to remain connected to what we know when difficult emotions arise.

Can trying to control your emotions make them worse?

Sometimes. When emotional control becomes a struggle against the experience itself, we may develop additional frustration, anxiety, or self-judgment about what we're feeling. Research on emotional acceptance suggests that allowing difficult internal experiences without immediately judging them is associated with better psychological health. This doesn't mean abandoning regulation, but developing a more flexible relationship with emotions rather than treating every uncomfortable feeling as something to eliminate.

How can I respond instead of reacting emotionally?

Begin by noticing what's happening before automatically following the impulse it creates. Consider what you're feeling, what meaning you've assigned to the situation, and whether earlier experiences or present circumstances are influencing your response. You might need to pause, ask a question, establish a boundary, or express yourself honestly. The goal isn't to prevent emotional activation but to create greater access to awareness and choice within it.

What is emotional coherence, and how does it relate to emotional resilience?

Within The Coherence Method™, emotional coherence refers to the capacity to remain in communication with our thoughts, emotions, bodily experiences, and environments without becoming entirely governed by any single response. Emotional resilience doesn't necessarily mean feeling less. It can involve developing a greater capacity to experience uncertainty, contradiction, and difficult emotions while remaining responsive to ourselves, other people, and the circumstances of our lives.

References

Ford, B. Q., Lam, P., John, O. P., & Mauss, I. B. (2018). The psychological health benefits of accepting negative emotions and thoughts: Laboratory, diary, and longitudinal evidence. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 115(6), 1075–1092. https://doi.org/10.1037/pspp0000157

Gross, J. J. (1998). Antecedent- and response-focused emotion regulation: Divergent consequences for experience, expression, and physiology. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 74(1), 224–237. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.74.1.224

Gross, J. J. (2015). Emotion regulation: Current status and future prospects. Psychological Inquiry, 26(1), 1–26. https://doi.org/10.1080/1047840X.2014.940781

Kabat-Zinn, J. (2003). Mindfulness-based interventions in context: Past, present, and future. Clinical Psychology: Science and Practice, 10(2), 144–156. https://doi.org/10.1093/clipsy.bpg016

Varela, F. J., Thompson, E., & Rosch, E. (1991). The embodied mind: Cognitive science and human experience. MIT Press.