The Role of Emotional Regulation in Therapy
Virginia Woronoff, M.S., CCC-SLP
Bilingual Speech Pathologist at Communicate with Kate Speech Therapy
Have you ever had to complete an assignment during an emotionally heavy moment in your life? Maybe you weren’t able to complete it. Maybe you did, but it wasn’t your best work. As adults, we are able to give ourselves the accommodations we need. Children are still developing the parts of the brain that help them identify a problem and execute a solution. For this reason, emotional regulation is a key factor to successful speech therapy.
What is emotional regulation?
From a therapeutic perspective, regulation is defined as being in a good relationship with the world around you. You are able to adjust when situations change. Dysregulation is defined as being stuck in a big emotion, be it related to chaos or rigidity. Finally, co-regulation refers to the act of supporting a child through big emotions. On days that students are deregulated when they come in for their session, that is exactly where we start.
What role does it play in communication?
Speech Pathologists support children with a variety of diagnoses to strengthen their communication skills. Two pillars of strengthening communication are learning the power of your words and increasing your motivation to use them. We aim to support students to be intrinsically motivated to meet their therapy goals. A huge part of communication is feeling understood. If a student, young or old, comes into the clinic deregulated and we don’t address it, they are not only less likely to have a productive session, but they are also at a risk of internalizing negative feelings related to being misunderstood/ignored in a moment of distress.
Is this backed up by neuroscience?
In most intro to psychology courses you learn the general roles of the left and right brain hemispheres (i.e. the left houses language and logic and the right is more intuitive and emotional). The newest research tells us that the key to emotional regulation is connecting the left and right hemispheres vertically and horizontally. The ability to feel deep emotions that evoke gut reactions and logically consider your actions is the trademark of emotional regulation. This ability is not innate. It requires adult support and guidance throughout childhood and adolescents.
Children up to age three are right brain dominant, meaning they live entirely in the present. This is why they need adult support to process big emotions and act as a language model to layer in language to their daily routines and experiences. The strongest indicator that your child’s left brain logic + language is starting to develop is when you notice them start to ask you “why? why? Why?”.
How can I help my child emotionally regulate at home or school?
The details of how to support your child through emotional regulation vary depending on the situation and their stage of development. Your speech pathologist can help you with these details. Regardless of age, the general step by step guidelines are as follows:
Identify the problem - connection is a great first step to help your child feel understood (i.e. I saw you fall. I know that really hurts.)
Reduce your language - when we are in distress our “right brains” are more dominant than our left brains. This means that language isn’t processed as well and may result in overwhelm instead of comfort.
Model self regulation - Take deep breaths. This works similarly to yawning. Your child is likely to start to imitate your deep breaths as they calm down.
Increase non verbal cues - understanding facial expressions, hugs, soothing sounds
Avoid labeling emotions - This is a big one. People respond to things in different ways (i.e. some people cry when they’re sad or hurt and others cry when they’re angry).
Describe actions - To avoid mislabeling our child’s emotions we can describe what we see them doing (i.e. “I see you’re holding your knee” ) and then give space for them to respond.
It is best to first connect in the problem. Connect with their active right brain by using nonverbal cues and modeling to help them calm down. Once they are calm, then it’s a good time to layer back in language to talk through what happened and any consequences needed.
What resources do you recommend for learning more about emotional regulation?
The good news is that there are multiple great resources out there. But we know that too many choices can be overwhelming. Our favorite two are outlined below.
Level Up: This is an online platform created by two neurodiverse affirming practitioners with courses and free resources. It has a focus on supporting the autistic community, but their emotional regulation resources are beneficial to students whether or not they have an autism diagnosis.
Whole Brain Child: This book changed the way I practice. I highly recommend it to parents and teachers. It covers foundational information of neuroanatomy, as it pertains to emotional regulation, in a novel/short story format. Don’t worry, it is not written like a textbook!
Written by Virginia Woronoff, M.S., CCC-SLP
Virginia (Gigi) is a bilingual ENG/SPA Speech Pathologist who is passionate about supporting educators, parents and other health professionals working with bi/multilingual children. Gigi is orginally from the USA.