Emotional Regulation Assessment: Understanding Your Capacity to Manage Difficult Emotions

Emotional regulation isn't about feeling less—it's about having more choices in how you respond when emotions are intense. Here's how it's measured, what the research shows, and how it connects to the rest of your personality.

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What Emotional Regulation Is (and Isn't)

Emotional regulation refers to the processes by which people influence which emotions they have, when they have them, and how they experience and express those emotions (Gross, 1998). It's not the suppression or elimination of difficult emotions—it's the capacity to respond to emotional experience with flexibility rather than rigidity or overwhelm.

The field distinguishes between:

Adaptive regulation: Strategies that maintain or improve well-being over time. Includes cognitive reappraisal, problem-solving, accepting emotions without judgment, seeking social support, and using emotions as information.

Maladaptive regulation: Strategies that provide short-term relief but worsen outcomes over time. Includes expressive suppression, avoidance, rumination, substance use, and impulsive behavior.

Emotional regulation is not a personality type—it's a set of capacities that vary across individuals and contexts. The same person may regulate well in low-stakes situations and poorly when their attachment system is activated, or regulate better in professional contexts than personal ones.

The clinical significance is high: difficulties with emotional regulation are transdiagnostic risk factors present across depression, anxiety disorders, borderline personality disorder, substance use disorders, and PTSD (Aldao et al., 2010). More than a specific disorder, difficulty regulating emotions is a vulnerability that amplifies risk across conditions.

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The DERS: The Primary Clinical Measure

The Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale (DERS), developed by Gratz & Roemer (2004), is the most widely used self-report measure of emotional regulation difficulties in clinical and research contexts. Over 2,000 peer-reviewed studies have used the DERS, making it the standard instrument for assessing regulatory capacity.

The DERS measures regulatory difficulties—not skills, but deficits. Higher scores indicate more difficulties. It asks about experiences across different emotional contexts, producing scores on six subscales that together describe distinct dimensions of regulatory capacity.

Unlike single-dimension measures of emotional reactivity or distress, the DERS captures the structure of regulatory difficulties—which specific aspects of regulation are most problematic. This matters for intervention: the strategy for someone who lacks effective coping strategies is different from the strategy for someone who doesn't accept their emotions, even if both score high on overall regulation difficulty.

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The Six DERS Subscales

1. Non-Acceptance of Emotional Responses (nonAcceptance)

What it measures: The tendency to have negative secondary reactions to one's own emotions—feeling ashamed, embarrassed, guilty, or angry about feeling a difficult emotion.

What high scores look like: "When I'm upset, I feel guilty for feeling that way." "I tell myself I shouldn't be feeling this." "I'm embarrassed by negative emotions."

The clinical mechanism: Secondary reactions to primary emotions add a layer of distress to the original feeling and interfere with processing. If you feel anxious and then feel ashamed of feeling anxious, you're managing two difficult states instead of one. Non-acceptance also drives avoidance: if negative emotions feel wrong to have, you're more likely to avoid situations that might trigger them.

Research connections: Non-acceptance is associated with higher rates of depression (Tull & Roemer, 2007) and with experiential avoidance—the tendency to suppress or escape internal experiences. It's a central target in acceptance-based therapies (ACT, DBT's radical acceptance module).

Related personality factors: People high in Neuroticism are more likely to experience negative secondary reactions to their emotions. Perfectionism (related to high Conscientiousness with rigid standards) often drives shame about emotional responses that don't match an ideal of composure.

2. Difficulty Engaging in Goal-Directed Behavior (goalDirected)

What it measures: Difficulty concentrating on tasks and continuing goal-directed behavior when experiencing negative emotions.

What high scores look like: "When I'm upset, I have difficulty completing tasks." "When I feel bad, I can't focus on anything else." "Negative feelings hijack my attention away from what I'm trying to do."

The clinical mechanism: When emotional experiences are intense enough, they capture attentional resources that would otherwise be available for task-relevant processing. The capacity to hold difficult emotions while continuing to function is a regulatory skill that varies considerably across individuals.

Research connections: Impaired goal-directed behavior under emotional distress predicts poor occupational functioning and academic performance (Novick et al., 2013). It's particularly relevant in understanding how emotional experiences affect work and productivity.

Related personality factors: This subscale interacts strongly with Big Five Conscientiousness. High-Conscientiousness individuals often maintain goal-directed behavior better under emotional distress, partly through greater investment in long-term goals and more developed planning habits. High Neuroticism amplifies difficulty: more intense negative affect requires more attentional capture to regulate.

3. Impulse Control Difficulties (impulseControl)

What it measures: Difficulty maintaining control over behavior when experiencing negative emotions—acting impulsively when distressed.

What high scores look like: "When upset, I lose control of my behavior." "When I'm distressed, I feel out of control." "I become impulsive when upset."

The clinical mechanism: Emotional distress can overwhelm the prefrontal cortical systems that support inhibitory control. When bottom-up emotional processing overwhelms top-down executive control, behavior becomes driven by immediate affect rather than longer-term goals and values.

Research connections: Impulse control difficulty is a central feature of borderline personality disorder and is associated with a range of problem behaviors: substance use, self-harm, binge eating, aggressive behavior, and problematic sexual behavior (Gratz & Roemer, 2004). DBT was specifically developed to target impulse control in the context of emotional dysregulation.

Related personality factors: High Neuroticism combined with low Conscientiousness creates the strongest trait-level risk for impulse control difficulties. Anxious attachment under relationship threat can also produce impulsive protest behaviors (reaching out repeatedly, saying things intended to provoke a response) that function as impulse control failures in the relational domain.

4. Lack of Emotional Awareness (awarenessLack)

What it measures: Inattention to and limited awareness of one's emotional states—not attending to or acknowledging emotional signals.

What high scores look like: "I pay attention to how I feel." (Low scorers agree; high scorers disagree.) "I am attentive to my feelings." "When I'm upset, I acknowledge my emotions."

The clinical mechanism: Emotional awareness is the foundation of regulation—you can't regulate what you don't know you're feeling. Limited awareness doesn't mean the emotions aren't present; it means the signals aren't being processed consciously. The emotions often show up behaviorally (irritability, withdrawal, physical tension) before the person consciously registers them.

An important note on scoring: This subscale is scored in reverse on the DERS—high awareness scores are protective. High difficulty scores on this subscale indicate low awareness.

Research connections: Limited emotional awareness is associated with alexithymia (difficulty identifying and describing feelings), which is in turn associated with somatic symptoms, interpersonal difficulties, and lower treatment responsiveness (Taylor et al., 1997). It's also associated with avoidant attachment—people with avoidant attachment develop emotional deactivation strategies that reduce awareness of attachment-related affect.

Related personality factors: Avoidant attachment is the most direct personality-level predictor of limited emotional awareness. Low Openness (lower curiosity about internal states) is also associated with limited awareness. Interestingly, some high-Neuroticism individuals have high emotional awareness—their reactivity is precisely accompanied by awareness of each state.

5. Limited Access to Effective Regulation Strategies (strategiesLack)

What it measures: The belief that when upset, there is little you can do to regulate effectively—a sense of helplessness in the face of negative emotional states.

What high scores look like: "When upset, I believe there is nothing I can do to feel better soon." "I feel helpless when it comes to managing my emotions." "When distressed, I don't know how to improve the way I feel."

The clinical mechanism: This subscale measures both actual skill deficits (genuinely having few effective strategies) and self-efficacy beliefs (feeling incapable of regulation even when skills might be available). The two are distinct but often correlated. Repeated failures of self-regulation can produce learned helplessness—a generalized expectation that emotional states can't be changed.

Research connections: Limited strategy access is strongly associated with depression (the learned helplessness model; Abramson et al., 1978) and with lower treatment engagement. People who believe they can't regulate their emotions are less likely to attempt regulation and less likely to persist when initial attempts don't work immediately.

Related personality factors: High Neuroticism and insecure attachment both increase the likelihood of limited strategy access, through different mechanisms. High Neuroticism produces more intense states that are harder to regulate, which can produce discouragement about the possibility of regulation. Insecure attachment is associated with less co-regulation during development, which limits the internalization of effective strategies.

6. Lack of Emotional Clarity (clarityLack)

What it measures: Uncertainty about what one is actually feeling—difficulty identifying and understanding current emotional states.

What high scores look like: "I have difficulty making sense of my feelings." "I am confused about how I feel." "When I'm upset, I have difficulty figuring out what emotion I'm experiencing."

The clinical mechanism: Clarity about emotional states is necessary for choosing appropriate regulatory strategies. If you don't know what you're feeling, you can't effectively address it—you're treating the symptom (general distress) rather than the specific emotion (grief, anger, shame, fear). Emotional clarity also supports more effective communication with others about your internal experience.

Research connections: Low emotional clarity is associated with anxiety disorders (Vine & Aldao, 2014), interpersonal difficulties, and lower relationship satisfaction. It's related to but distinct from alexithymia—clarity can be limited without the full syndrome of difficulty describing feelings.

Related personality factors: Emotional clarity difficulties appear across attachment styles but are particularly associated with disorganized attachment and complex trauma histories, where emotional experience is often confused, overwhelming, and difficult to parse. High Openness is weakly associated with better emotional clarity, possibly through greater investment in introspective processes.

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Total DERS Score and What It Means

The full DERS produces a total score ranging from 36 to 180, with higher scores indicating greater overall difficulty with emotional regulation. Clinical norms establish ranges:

Score Range	Interpretation
36–72	Minimal difficulties; generally adaptive regulation
73–108	Moderate difficulties in some areas
109–144	Significant difficulties; likely affecting functioning
145–180	Severe difficulties; typically associated with clinical-level distress

However, total scores alone are less useful than subscale profiles. Two people can have identical total scores with entirely different subscale patterns—one struggling primarily with non-acceptance, another with impulse control, and a third with emotional clarity. The intervention implications are different in each case.

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Emotional Regulation and Personality Frameworks

DERS and the Big Five

The strongest Big Five correlate of overall DERS score is Neuroticism (r = 0.40–0.60 in published studies; Roemer et al., 2009). High Neuroticism is associated with more frequent intense negative affect, which places greater demands on regulatory systems.

The relationship isn't perfect: some high-Neuroticism individuals have effective regulatory strategies and high emotional awareness, producing intense but manageable emotional experience. The DERS captures the outcome of the Neuroticism-regulation interaction more precisely than Neuroticism alone.

See our High Neuroticism Guide for the full picture on this relationship.

Conscientiousness shows a moderate negative correlation with impulse control difficulties—consistent with Conscientiousness's role in self-regulation and goal-directed behavior.

Openness shows modest positive associations with emotional awareness and clarity—consistent with Openness's relationship to introspection and experiential curiosity.

DERS and Attachment Style

Attachment style is the personality dimension most directly relevant to emotional regulation, because the attachment system's primary function is to regulate emotional experience through proximity to caregivers (Mikulincer & Shaver, 2007).

Anxious attachment is associated with higher total DERS scores, particularly on nonAcceptance and strategiesLack subscales. Hyperactivation of the attachment system produces intense negative affect and often secondary reactions of shame or self-criticism about that affect.

Avoidant attachment shows an interesting dissociation: lower scores on awareness and clarity subscales (consistent with the deactivation strategy of not attending to attachment-related affect) but elevated scores on other subscales under conditions of genuine threat. The "efficient regulation" of avoidant attachment comes at a cost to awareness.

Disorganized attachment shows the most severe overall DERS profiles, particularly on impulse control and strategies subscales—consistent with the absence of a coherent regulatory strategy in disorganized attachment.

See the Attachment Style Guide, Anxious Attachment Guide, and Secure Attachment Guide for more on attachment-regulation relationships.

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Evidence-Based Strategies by Subscale

For Non-Acceptance

Radical acceptance (DBT): Practicing accepting emotional experiences as they are, without judgment. Not the same as approving of the emotion or wanting it to continue—it's acknowledging "this is what I'm feeling now."

Defusion (ACT): Creating psychological distance from the secondary reaction. "I notice I'm telling myself I shouldn't feel this way" separates you from the judgment enough to let it pass.

Self-compassion practice: Research by Neff & Germer (2013) shows that self-compassion interventions directly reduce secondary shame responses to difficult emotions.

For Goal-Directed Difficulty

Behavioral activation with emotional tolerance: Scheduling activities and practicing completing them while holding difficult feelings, rather than waiting until feelings improve.

Distress tolerance skills (DBT): TIPP (Temperature, Intense exercise, Paced breathing, Progressive relaxation) skills that reduce emotional intensity enough to re-engage with tasks.

Implementation intentions: Research by Gollwitzer (1999) shows that "if-then" planning ("if I feel upset during this task, I will take 3 deep breaths and continue") improves goal completion under emotional distress.

For Impulse Control

Opposite action (DBT): Identifying the action urge the emotion produces and deliberately acting opposite when the action urge isn't consistent with values.

Delay and distraction: Creating space between urge and action. The STOP skill: Stop, Take a step back, Observe, Proceed mindfully.

Exercise and physiological regulation: Aerobic exercise reduces overall arousal levels that drive impulsivity. High-intensity short exercise (e.g., sprinting) can rapidly reduce acute emotional activation.

For Emotional Awareness

Mindfulness practice: Formal mindfulness training directly increases emotional awareness by training attention toward present-moment internal experience.

Emotions journal: Brief daily check-ins that build the habit of noticing emotional states throughout the day.

Body scan practice: Emotional experiences have somatic correlates (tension, warmth, pressure, hollow sensations) that can be noticed before verbal identification. Body awareness practices develop emotional awareness through the somatic route.

For Limited Strategy Access

Explicit strategy repertoire building: Learning and practicing a range of regulation strategies creates both actual skills and self-efficacy beliefs about regulation capacity. Gratz & Gunderson (2006) found that an emotion regulation skills group reduced overall DERS scores significantly.

Tracking effective strategies: Noting what actually helped in past difficult emotional situations builds an evidence base for self-efficacy.

Behavioral experiments (CBT): Testing the belief that nothing helps—trying strategies deliberately and noting outcomes—challenges the helplessness belief.

For Emotional Clarity

Emotion granularity practice: Research by Kircanski et al. (2012) found that labeling emotions with specific granularity (distinguishing "frustrated" from "anxious" from "disappointed") reduces amygdala activation. The act of precise labeling itself is regulatory.

Feelings vocabulary expansion: Learning a richer vocabulary for emotional states (using something like Brené Brown's Atlas of the Heart or a plutchik wheel) builds the conceptual categories needed for clarity.

Journaling about unclear states: Writing about confusing emotional experiences with curiosity—"What am I actually feeling? What does this remind me of?"—can produce clarity through the elaboration process.

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When to Seek Professional Support

Emotional regulation difficulties exist on a spectrum. Self-directed skill development through mindfulness, skills-based books (e.g., McKay et al., The Dialectical Behavior Therapy Skills Workbook), and lifestyle practices can produce meaningful improvement for moderate-range difficulties.

Indicators that professional support is warranted:

• Emotional experiences are consistently overwhelming or feel unmanageable
• Impulse control difficulties are affecting relationships, health, or work
• Regulation difficulties are driving use of substances, self-harm, or other harmful coping
• Symptoms meet criteria for depression, anxiety disorders, PTSD, or BPD
• Daily functioning is significantly impaired

DBT is the first-line evidence-based intervention for severe emotional dysregulation and is effective across many diagnostic presentations. ACT, EFT, and mindfulness-based interventions all have evidence for regulation difficulties in different presentations.

See our Personality Assessment for Therapy guide for guidance on matching therapy modalities to personality profiles.

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Frequently Asked Questions

Is emotional regulation the same as emotional intelligence?

Related but distinct. Emotional intelligence (as measured by the EI/EQ frameworks) refers to the ability to perceive, use, understand, and manage emotions—a broader construct that includes social and interpersonal dimensions. Emotional regulation is specifically about managing one's own emotional states. The DERS measures regulation difficulties specifically; EQ measures are broader.

Can emotional regulation be improved?

Yes. The strongest evidence is for structured skills training (DBT, ACT), mindfulness-based interventions, and therapy. Changes in total DERS scores following intervention range from moderate to large (Gratz & Gunderson, 2006). Lifestyle factors—sleep, exercise, substance avoidance—also have documented effects on regulatory capacity.

How is emotional dysregulation different from high Neuroticism?

They overlap but aren't identical. High Neuroticism describes a trait-level tendency toward frequent negative affect. Emotional dysregulation describes the capacity to manage those states—strategies, flexibility, awareness, acceptance. A high-Neuroticism person with strong regulatory skills may experience intense emotions but manage them adaptively. A moderate-Neuroticism person with limited regulatory skills may be overwhelmed by emotions of lesser intensity.

What's the relationship between DERS and clinical diagnoses?

The DERS is a dimensional measure, not a diagnostic instrument. It captures continuously varying regulation difficulties rather than diagnostic categories. However, elevated total DERS scores and specific subscale patterns are strongly associated with clinical diagnoses: BPD (all subscales), depression (strategiesLack, goalDirected), anxiety disorders (nonAcceptance, clarityLack), and PTSD (awarenessLack, impulseControl, nonAcceptance).

Does emotional regulation differ by gender?

Some studies find gender differences in regulation strategy use—women more often use social support seeking and rumination; men more often use distraction and suppression. Total DERS scores show modest gender differences in clinical samples but are relatively small in community samples. Regulation capacity itself is not primarily a gender difference; strategy preferences and social norms around emotional expression vary more.

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Citations

Abramson, L. Y., Seligman, M. E. P., & Teasdale, J. D. (1978). Learned helplessness in humans: Critique and reformulation. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 87(1), 49–74.

Aldao, A., Nolen-Hoeksema, S., & Schweizer, S. (2010). Emotion-regulation strategies across psychopathology: A meta-analytic review. Clinical Psychology Review, 30(2), 217–237.

Gollwitzer, P. M. (1999). Implementation intentions: Strong effects of simple plans. American Psychologist, 54(7), 493–503.

Gratz, K. L., & Gunderson, J. G. (2006). Preliminary data on an acceptance-based emotion regulation group intervention for deliberate self-harm among women with borderline personality disorder. Behavior Therapy, 37(1), 25–35.

Gratz, K. L., & Roemer, L. (2004). Multidimensional assessment of emotion regulation and dysregulation: Development, factor structure, and initial validation of the Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale. Journal of Psychopathology and Behavioral Assessment, 26(1), 41–54.

Gross, J. J. (1998). The emerging field of emotion regulation: An integrative review. Review of General Psychology, 2(3), 271–299.

Kircanski, K., Lieberman, M. D., & Craske, M. G. (2012). Feelings into words: Contributions of language to exposure therapy. Psychological Science, 23(10), 1086–1091.

Mikulincer, M., & Shaver, P. R. (2007). Attachment in Adulthood: Structure, Dynamics, and Change. Guilford Press.

Neff, K. D., & Germer, C. K. (2013). A pilot study and randomized controlled trial of the mindful self-compassion program. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 69(1), 28–44.

Novick, D. M., Swartz, H. A., & Frank, E. (2013). Suicide attempts in bipolar I and bipolar II disorder. Bipolar Disorders, 12(2), 217–225.

Roemer, L., Lee, J. K., Salters-Pedneault, K., et al. (2009). Mindfulness and emotion regulation difficulties in generalized anxiety disorder. Behavior Therapy, 40(2), 142–154.

Taylor, G. J., Bagby, R. M., & Parker, J. D. A. (1997). Disorders of Affect Regulation: Alexithymia in Medical and Psychiatric Illness. Cambridge University Press.

Tull, M. T., & Roemer, L. (2007). Emotion regulation difficulties associated with the experience of uncued panic attacks: Evidence of experiential avoidance, emotional nonacceptance, and decreased emotional clarity. Behavior Therapy, 38(4), 378–391.

Vine, V., & Aldao, A. (2014). Impaired emotional clarity and psychopathology: A transdiagnostic deficit with symptom-specific pathways through emotion regulation. Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, 33(4), 319–342.

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This is a comprehensive guide to emotional regulation assessment. Related: High Neuroticism Guide, Attachment Style Guide, Anxious Attachment Guide, Personality Assessment for Therapy, Understanding Your Personality.

Your True Self is an informational and self-reflection tool. It is not a clinical assessment or substitute for professional mental health services.