How to Better Regulate Your Emotions | Dr. Marc Brackett

Brackett defines emotion regulation not as eliminating a feeling, but as using emotion wisely in service of life goals. His shorthand makes the process relational: regulation involves goals and strategies, shaped by the emotion itself, the person experiencing it, and the immediate context. The same response will not suit every feeling, temperament, or situation.

The PRIME mnemonic describes different aims: prevent unwanted emotions, reduce difficult ones, initiate a useful emotion, maintain a helpful state, or enhance it. Strategy selection comes afterward. Brackett stresses that anxiety, anger, and worry call for different approaches; a strategy that fits one person or setting may be unsuitable in another. His running example is practical: taking a run might help him when he is anxious, but asking to leave a live conversation to run would not fit that context.

This framework also sets a limit on self-monitoring. Emotions usually remain in the background; repeatedly checking and regulating them throughout the day can become counterproductive. Brackett and Huberman instead point to moments when the environment or a relationship changes, or when a feeling may help or interfere with what someone is doing. Self-awareness is useful when it supports engagement with the situation, not when it becomes a running internal commentary that pulls someone out of it.

Their discussion of anxiety shows why the mindset around a feeling matters. Huberman describes entering a crowded place as initially overwhelming before he acclimates; Brackett redirects him from describing the situation to naming his relationship with anxiety, which he says he hates. Brackett recalls that his own anxiety often concerned things important to him, and reframes it as a response to perceived uncertainty about the future. Treating anxiety as automatically bad, he argues, can make regulation harder; the feeling itself does not determine whether it will help or hinder a person.

The discussion shows how emotional habits can be learned through family and social experience. Brackett recalls being bullied when he was happy and later feeling uncomfortable when people applauded him: in childhood, visible happiness had become a cue that someone might bring him down. Huberman describes a different family rule, where women could express emotion while men were expected not to lose their temper. These are personal histories rather than universal rules, but they help explain why people can carry different assumptions into adulthood.

Brackett argues that happiness, like anger, has no inherently good or bad status. Timing and context matter, and constant pursuit of happiness can backfire; he contrasts that pursuit with contentment, which in the research he cites is associated with greater well-being. He also distinguishes feeling an emotion from expressing it in every setting. The practical question is not whether the feeling is allowed to exist, but whether its expression fits the situation and whether the person believes they can manage it.

The speakers connect these ideas to norms about boys and vulnerability. Brackett says boys may be more inhibited about sadness, disappointment, and shame than about outward anger, in part because vulnerability is often treated as weakness or femininity. Huberman notes that public approval of a man's emotional expression can depend on an established reputation for competence. Brackett argues that these expectations are socially learned, and that boys who receive explicit emotional-skills education can develop different norms for crying and talking through conflict.