Emotion Regulation Skills Cheat Sheet
Six skills for the moments a feeling takes the wheel: name it, size it, and steer it without shoving it down. One printable A4 page for your fridge, journal, or desk.
Free download · PDF & PNG
Prints on one page - A4 and US Letter versions included
These cheat sheets are free for personal use, and therapists, counselors, and teachers are welcome to print and hand them out. Please keep the footer with the source on. If you share online, a link back to this page helps other people find the free version.
What's on this cheat sheet
Name It Precisely
Trade vague words like 'bad' for the exact feeling, rate it 0 to 10, and let a precise label turn the volume down.
Check the Facts
Separate what a camera would have recorded from the story you added, then ask whether the size of the feeling matches the size of the facts.
Opposite Action
When an emotion's urge would make things worse, act against it fully: approach what fear avoids, soften what anger sharpens, reach out when sadness says disappear.
Ride the Wave
A single surge of emotion crests and fades in roughly 20 to 90 seconds if you don't refuel it with replays and rehearsed comebacks. Track it in your body and let it pass.
Protect the Basics (PLEASE)
The DBT PLEASE skill: treat physical illness, eat regularly, avoid mood-altering quick fixes, sleep first, and move most days, because a strained body has a shorter fuse.
Build Positives on Purpose
Schedule small good moments like appointments and stay present for them. Emotions run on supplies, not willpower.
How to use it
- 1
Print it and put it where feelings tend to run high: the fridge, your desk, inside a journal.
- 2
When a feeling spikes, start at skill one and name it precisely before you try to fix anything.
- 3
Scan the 'best when' labels to pick the skill that matches this moment.
- 4
Practice one skill per week while you're calm, so it's within reach when you're not.
Frequently asked questions
What are emotion regulation skills?
Emotion regulation skills are practical strategies for influencing which emotions you feel, how intensely you feel them, and how you express them. Most come from cognitive behavioral therapy and dialectical behavior therapy (DBT), and they range from in-the-moment moves like precise labeling and riding out a surge to longer-game habits like protecting sleep and scheduling positive activities. The goal is not to feel less; it is to make feelings informative instead of overwhelming. This cheat sheet collects six of the most useful ones on a single page.
How long do emotions last?
The physical surge of an emotion, the rush of chemicals that tightens your chest or heats your face, generally crests and fades within seconds to a couple of minutes; a widely cited estimate is around 90 seconds per wave. What keeps an emotion going for hours is usually the thinking wrapped around it: replaying the scene, rehearsing arguments, building a case. Longer states like grief or a low mood naturally last more than a moment, and that is not a failure. The practical takeaway is that a single wave will pass on its own if you can ride it without feeding it a story.
What is the difference between emotion regulation and suppression?
Suppression is pretending the feeling is not there: pushing it down, forcing a neutral face, changing the subject. Research consistently finds this backfires; the feeling tends to rebound and the body stays under strain. Emotion regulation starts by acknowledging and naming the emotion, then influences its size and expression with skills like checking the facts or opposite action. You work with the feeling instead of against it, which is why regulation gets easier with practice while suppression gets more exhausting.
Do emotion regulation skills work for adults?
Yes. Emotion regulation is often taught to children these days, but the core skills were developed in adult therapy in the first place, and most adults were simply never shown them. Opposite action, checking the facts, and the PLEASE basics come straight from DBT and CBT programs built for adults, and they are learnable at any age. The key is practicing while you are calm, so a skill is familiar enough to reach for when a feeling is running high.
