Emotional Regulation
entry by Julie M. Marx, Global Family Expert at Expat Valley
The capacity to recognize, understand, and manage one’s emotional responses in ways that support effective functioning across situations. In internationally mobile contexts, emotional regulation is a critical competency for navigating the repeated uncertainty, loss, and adjustment demands of the relocation cycle, and is associated with more positive acculturation outcomes and greater resilience.
Comparable terms
Affect regulation (clinical, research — technical equivalent) · Emotional intelligence [EQ — popular psychology; broader construct including social and empathic dimensions] · Emotion management (coaching — functional descriptor) · Self-regulation (psychology — broader; encompasses behavioral and cognitive as well as emotional dimensions)
Why this matters
Emotional regulation is a core skill for handling repeated change, loss, and stress. For children, it predicts how they cope with moves, school changes, and goodbyes. Supporting this skill set often matters as much as any logistical planning.
Cross-references
Resilience (Wellbeing & Mental Health); Cultural Agility (Cultural Adaptation); EQ (Cultural Adaptation); Wellbeing (Wellbeing & Mental Health); Flourishing (Wellbeing & Mental Health); EAP (Wellbeing & Mental Health); Cultural Stress (Cultural Adaptation). EQ is the broader construct of which emotional regulation is a primary component; wellbeing and flourishing describe the outcomes that effective emotional regulation most directly supports in internationally mobile contexts. EAP is the organizational support mechanism most relevant when emotional regulation capacity has been overwhelmed; culture stress describes one of the primary environmental demands in cross-cultural contexts that requires sustained emotional regulation to manage.
Sources
Gross, J.J. (1998). The emerging field of emotion regulation: An integrative review. Review of General Psychology, 2(3), 271–299. The foundational empirical paper establishing the process model of emotion regulation, which distinguishes antecedent-focused strategies — such as situation selection and cognitive reappraisal — from response-focused strategies.
The specific application of emotional regulation to cross-cultural adjustment and internationally mobile populations is documented in: Ward, C., Bochner, S. & Furnham, A. (2001). The Psychology of Culture Shock (2nd ed.). Routledge.
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