Emotion Regulation for Trauma: Overview

United States Department of Homeland Security

The main goals of emotion regulation are to identify and label specific emotions, understand the purpose of emotions, and provide the right conditions for emotions to stabilize.
The purpose of emotion regulation is to increase awareness of emotions, increase acceptance of emotions, and effectively manage our emotions. Increasing awareness and acceptance of emotions is already a major component of managing them.
The main goal of emotional regulation from a trauma-focused DBT perspective is to see and treat our emotions the same way you would treat a garden of flowers.
Trauma-focused DBT has six specific interventions to nurture a garden of emotions. Each of these strategies is a metaphor for specific ways you would cultivate a real garden.