Regulate Your Emotions: How to Pause Before You React and Save Your Relationships

Hi there, this is Jillian on Love, and I am on a mission to teach people how to transform their romantic relationships. by first transforming the relationship they have with themselves. So whether you're in a relationship, you're single or heartbroken, I've got you covered. I'm Jillian Terecki, certified relationship coach and teacher with over 20 years experience helping people transform their relationship with themselves through their bodies, breaths, and minds.

I have now coached and taught thousands of people to become better versions of themselves and change the way they show up for and within their love lives. Today's episode, I am... addressing something that has been requested of me for a very long time, which is this concept of how to pause before reacting. This is very important because one of the most underrated relationship skills is the ability to sit with our discomfort.

without reacting with anger, without reacting by withdrawing, without reacting by controlling. It's really about... How do we mitigate our reactivity in life and in a relationship? Something that's not talked about enough, which is not the easiest thing to hear, is that... The quality of a relationship is really quite largely determined by how well both people can actually...

manage their emotions. You may have heard this referred to as regulate their emotions. And just to be clear, this isn't about not experiencing a full range of emotion. As human beings, we get upset, we get angry, we get anxious. We have a whole range of emotions. And emotions are part of also what makes us... passionate beings i mean if we just erred on the side of just being stoic then we there's no passion and passion is part of what makes us creative and it's part of what

contributes to all types of chemistry between two people. So emotions are important. But when emotions get the best of us consistently, Because sometimes the emotions will get the best of us. But when we are consistently feeling like we have no control over our emotions, then we are... Coming to a relationship and operating in a relationship and operating in life, not having much control of ourselves. On one side of the spectrum, we just become difficult to be in a relationship with.

On the very extreme end of the spectrum, we become dangerous to be in a relationship with, right? So that's like someone who's abusive because they don't know how to manage their rage.

So being able to regulate our emotions is incredibly important. And it's also incredibly important for me to state that we will fail at this, but... really there's two keys one is to be able to regulate our emotions manage our emotional states better and more consistently and then the second key is that when we do let our emotions get the most of us. And then we, as a result, become very reactive and say things that we wish we hadn't said or do things that we later regret.

We just take ownership of it right away. The faster that we can be responsible, the faster that we can take ownership, make a wrong right with our accountability and apology and change behavior, the more emotionally fit we are. And the more emotionally fit we are in a relationship. the more conscious we are in a relationship. And the more that we bring self-awareness and consciousness, mindfulness to a relationship, the better the relationship will be.

And I understand that this can be a hard pill to swallow. I mean, for sure, I have been in relationships, not even just romantic relationships, but for sure. And this happens a lot in family relationships where I would say that probably. In general, people are the least emotionally fit and the least able to regulate their emotions when it comes to family. But I've said before that relationships rarely...

end because of a lack of love, the end because of a lack of connection. One of the things that can directly lead to a lack of connection is when one or both people are consistently reactive. Sometimes that reactivity... is not just in the anger or the name-calling. Sometimes that reactivity is the withdrawing, the getting stuck in our heads, and then the resentment.

So when we are reacting, we're usually, it's coming from a place of resistance. And so that reaction may not just be the knee-jerk reaction. It might be a long reaction. Such as, you know, I'm upset with my partner, I don't communicate, and therefore I'm resentful. And so that's what this episode is about. It's really about the nuance of emotional regulation. what it really means, and how we can learn how to be less reactive so therefore our relationships can be healthier.

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unhealthy relationships and that's a very large spectrum there's the unhealthy relationships of just two people who love each other who are just really not getting along and starting to bring out the worst in each other There's the unhealthy relationship of where one person is extremely dysfunctional and oppressing in some way the other person. But either way, all unhealthy relationships involve... at least one person who is unable to regulate their emotions and oftentimes you know one person

is reacting, then the other person is reacting to the other person's reaction, and then it just becomes a snowball. And that snowball can spiral out of control very, very quickly. So being able... to regulate our emotions, aka pause, find the pause before reacting, is in my opinion, both professionally and personally, One of the most, if not probably the most, important life skill that we can ever develop and practice. Because relationships aside...

I don't know about you, but I've certainly experienced reacting to life, right? And whenever we are in reaction to life, life begins to suck, basically. And... We think everything is happening to us. When we're in that state of reactivity, whether it's to another person, whether it's to life, then what's happening is we get into very stressful states. I mean, that really is the definition of stress. It's a reaction to life. Now, look, sometimes life throws us some pretty serious curveballs.

It would be almost impossible unless you have like a 50 year spiritual meditation practice. And even then it would be very difficult to not react to that. But I think that if we are going to grow. and try to be better people and happier people and have healthier relationships, it begins with being radically honest with ourselves. And we have to be honest with ourselves about...

how easy we are reacting to life. Like, how reactive are you? And you would know, you can measure that by how consistently you are in a stressed state. And I understand that there might be nuance to this, like trauma and things that have happened. But a lot of times, which we don't like to admit, it's that it's just learned behavior.

Saw one of our parents doing that. Or we've gotten into a habit, perhaps this is a conditioned habit, but a habit of seeing the glass half empty, a habit of getting... consumed by the drama of life and so everything becomes a drama and then when everything becomes a drama we become very reactive and stressful When that happens, we are then projecting an energy out into the world and into the people. The people closest to us are feeling this. And what they're feeling is tension.

And that's what drains a relationship. So this is not just a relationship skill, but it is a life skill. Everyone... regardless of attachment style, will struggle with emotional regulation in various points and at various points in their relationships. And like I said, when we do, it can be extremely overwhelming.

And we then have a kind of go-to habit, you know, we'll feel maybe compelled to control or withdraw or to yell, all in an effort to sort of maintain or to regain, I should say, some sort of... emotional security because oftentimes when people are very reactive when we're being very reactive in a relationship or otherwise what we are reacting to is some level of uncertainty

Something starts to or someone starts to feel out of our control. And the more reactive you are, the more you have to investigate your relationship with control. And so it is extraordinarily common. We will all do this. And, you know, this is why we have to practice sitting. With the discomfort, and I will definitely, at the end of this episode, give you some very practical tools that you can start to use right away. So we have to actually sit with this discomfort and...

You know, this idea of sitting with our discomfort, taking a pause, is foundational to all spiritual teachings. It's to resist the impulse to... like I said, control our environment or control another person in order to orchestrate a particular outcome or in order to orchestrate a particular conversation. And we don't want to do that. So it can be for some people to sit with the discomfort, a huge, huge undertaking, but yet it's necessary.

It's a huge undertaking to resist withdrawing from the problem or from the relationship entirely. Long-term relationships, even the best ones, will go through cycles of unsteadiness. They will have cycles of hardship. And this is part of the deal, which means that we have no choice but to learn how to sit with the discomfort when we don't have a solution. when we feel out of control, overwhelmed, and perhaps insecure. This is literally what it means to self-regulate.

And sitting with the discomfort, that's more of a metaphor. You don't necessarily literally have to sit with it, but you have to do something with your body specifically. so that you can create the pause. Like the pause is always in a deeper breath. And that pause is really the space between triggers or the thing that triggers that reaction and reaction. So we get triggered by something and then we go into reaction. The pause is designed or intended to create more space.

between the initial trigger and our reaction. And like I said, this pause has been studied and taught for centuries by yogic masters, Buddhist monks. and psychologists. The pause is where we learn to use our breath to regulate our nervous system, right? So we take a deeper breath because when we're in reaction, Typically, all the energy is going up. And a lot of people, we get stuck in the chest, throat area. So we take a deeper breath inward, downward. The breath goes in through our nose.

and down into, ideally, into the lower belly or even further into the pelvic floor. And then the exhale is when things slowly start to rise up, and that is when we start to calm our nervous systems.

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So when we are able to take that pause, just like, oh my God, okay, I'm feeling triggered. I'm going to take a deep breath. I'm going to either literally sit or metaphorically sit with just like this discomfort for a moment. And in that moment, that is when we have a choice. We have a choice. We can choose with greater intention our response to something.

rather than be controlled by our initial emotional reactions. Viktor Frankl, who wrote the classic book Man's Search for Meaning, if you have not read it, you must read it. It is probably one of the most important books that has ever been written. And as Viktor Frankl says, quote, between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space.

is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom. And within the larger context of the book, What he says is that even if a person is stripped of their freedom, and he was because he was in a concentration camp, even if we are stripped of all our freedom. The one freedom that no one can take from us is how we decide to respond to something in life that is always in our control.

Always a choice that we have that no one can take away from us. And when we practice that space, that is where our greatest growth lies. And I believe, without a shadow of a doubt, that it is true our greatest growth lies in our ability to stretch out that space. between trigger and stimulus, and to learn to sit with that discomfort without immediately reacting with a story, an emotion, a word.

Or a few words. And when we can get better at that, that's when we feel more freedom in our lives. Because it is a terrible thing to feel like we are... at the whim of our emotions. And this is why mental illness is so incredibly devastating and why it's important for some people to explore maybe medication.

This is not a commentary on whether or not one should be on medication or not. I think for some people, it is really not helpful. And for some people, it's very helpful. So it's really dependent on the person.

The quality of our lives, forget our relationships, is really dependent on how well we are able to regulate our emotions. And that's why when we go through something very difficult, like something by any one standard, very difficult. You know, it feels like a trauma. It feels like our ability to regulate has been sort of hijacked. And yet it's always about coming back to that reality that we can.

make that choice of how we're going to react. But that takes a lot of practice, which again, I will get into. And here's the thing. Relationships, particularly romantic relationships, can be very freaking triggering. Dating can be very triggering. You know, relationships, regardless of where it is in its life cycle, from...

When you first start seeing someone to 20 years in or the end of a marriage, it can be incredibly triggering because that is when we feel most vulnerable. That's when we feel... most vulnerable to not feeling good enough. And that is why being in a relationship means we must practice being less reactive. Because it's the pause that has the power to save any relationship from our reactivity. So before you send that text...

Before you pick up the phone or send that email, you want to take a deep breath. You want to maybe go for a walk. You want to maybe call a friend. You want to maybe sit down and count to 100 and then decide how you want to respond. It is not easy. Trust me, I know I'm a very passionate person. And although it takes a lot to really like get me angry or passionate about something, you know, not in a good way, but an angry way. Once I'm there, it's very hard for me to slow down.

So this is something that I've been practicing for years, and I know how important it is in relationships. So another way that we react...

Because like I said, reactivity is not just an angry response. Everyone reacts differently. And sometimes the reaction is living in our heads.

So if I had a dime for every time I or anyone I know or who I've worked with who has been... quote-unquote triggered by something that was done or not done by the person that they're seeing or in a relationship with and then instead of actually talking about it they got in their heads and then created a whole story about it, and then withdrew or got resentful or just like spiraled, I mean, the amount of dimes I would have, I could feed the world.

Let's just say that. This is sort of what we do. In any kind of unhealthy dynamic, couples make up narratives constantly. narratives that are filled with disempowering assumptions and conclusions. So when they are hurt, angry or frustrated, these couples will get stuck in the blame game instead of actually having a conversation.

And they'll get stuck in the blame game inside their heads. Like they may not even accuse each other of anything. Like this is what's going on in their heads until they're not sleeping at night. They'll convince themselves that the other person... doesn't love them or doesn't care or had a specific motive. And they'll get lost in a long-winded script of how things went down, what the other person was thinking, feeling, and what it all means.

And so we get on our heads about something that someone did or didn't do, and then we create a meaning about it. And the meaning can be very disempowering. And then we start to spiral. We start to ruminate on that meaning. And then, lo and behold, we're just in reaction. We're actually... no longer in relationship with this person. We're in reaction with them. And instead of applying some sort of positive intent, which is like...

oh, I don't like what they did, but I know they love me. I know they didn't want to hurt me. I know they were just being mindless. We will apply some sort of negative intent, which is the assumption that this person, like I said, meant to do it on purpose or, you know. Doesn't love us. And I'm not talking about abusive situations here, by the way. None of us are exempt from getting stuck in our heads and storytelling. But when it's consistent, when it's indulged, when it becomes a pattern.

And when this pattern becomes the story of our relationship, it is indicative that issues around respect and trust and safety need our attention. To be clear, this is an unhealthy pattern, but not one that cannot be overcome with the willingness of both people to overcome it. And as corny as it might sound,

The antidote to living in our heads is to connect to our bodies, namely our hearts. So the moment you find yourself in story mode and getting again in your head, the reactivity is getting stronger and stronger. regardless of if it's in your relationship or about someone else or about something going on in your day that is not in your control. You have to immediately interrupt that story and connect to, like I said, I will keep saying it, a deeper, fuller breath.

And that is when you bring some awareness in, such as you say to yourself, oh, yeah, here I am again. I'm stuck in my head here. I'm stuck in a story. I need to stop and instead have a conversation. I need to stop and instead maybe look at the circumstance a little bit differently. I need to stop, maybe go work out. I need to stop, maybe call a friend.

get a different perspective. Because honestly, if you were to hold your partner in a positive light, or you were to hold your friend in a positive light, or if you were to hold the person who you just started seeing in a positive life, and then you were to respond to some sort of trigger from your heart rather than reacting from your head, that would have a huge impact on your relationship in a positive way.

And I understand this is easier said than done. So very, very important. So again, this concept of are you reacting from your head or you're responding from your heart? And this is just more like you're in a relationship, you actually love the person, but you have a history of being very, very reactive and maybe just being unfair to the person who you care about.

That's part of the reactivity is that we can get, some of us can get very harsh when we're thinking about this person and again, not be very fair.

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Emotional fitness, aka emotional regulation, aka practicing the pause so that you can create. a wider gap, a wider space between trigger and reaction, trigger and response, is the most important relationship skill. It really is. I mean... It's up there with communication and all of that. It really is so important because we can't even communicate effectively without being able to regulate our emotions.

Part of what makes hard conversations productive is the willingness and the capacity of both people to sit with their discomfort and regulate their emotions. And sometimes that looks like... this. If you notice that you or the other person is very dysregulated, that is when not to have the hard conversation.

And people make this mistake because they're like, no, I want to have the conversation now. This has to happen now. This can't wait. And so they force a conversation where one or both people are completely dysregulated. haven't had a moment to calm themselves down. And then it escalates into a huge argument. And then people start to say things that they regret and do things that they regret. And then what follows is a lot of shame.

And eventually the relationship falls apart. So very, very important that if in practicing this, and let's say it is a heated moment. What you want to say when you find yourself dysregulated, you just want to say, you know what? I want to have this conversation, but right now I am so worked up and I need to take a moment to like... to chill out so that we can have a productive conversation.

And you have to, when you notice your partner, to notice the person being really, really heated, like the bigger person, for lack of a better way to describe it, in a relationship, regardless of what the nature of the relationship is. The bigger person is the person who can say, you know what? We need to calm down before we have this conversation. Or, you know, this is not a good time to have the conversation for either one of us. Why don't we take a moment and come back to this?

Like anyone who can do that, like that's an amazing communicator. That's a skilled communicator because communication is not just about what you say. It is about what you convey as well through your body. And it's also how you regulate your emotions. And this is key. For those of you who are listening who are feeling terrible because maybe you sabotaged a relationship because you didn't know how to regulate your emotions.

You know, welcome to the club. I understand that might be really hard to hear, but here's the truth. I have not met anyone who has not... impacted a relationship of theirs negatively because they were unable to practice the pause and regulate their emotions. I haven't met that person yet. And I've worked and met a lot of people.

Just welcome to the club. And if it's something that you consistently do, I know that's hard, but you know, we cannot improve the quality of our relationships. We cannot transform. the relationship we have with ourselves, without being super honest about where we are, and then really having the foresight to think about where we want to go.

So how do we do this? How do we practice this? In the moment, like I said, and I've said it many times throughout this episode, it's about taking moments to take a deep breath. It can be difficult to access your breathing when you're in a trigger if you have not practiced breathing with intention when you're not triggered.

Now, what do I mean by breathing with intention? So breathing with intention can look like many different things. It could be practicing yoga because yoga is physical movements synced with... very specific breath. You may not understand your breath if you don't really work out or exercise, because when we exercise, we have to deepen our breath. Understanding how to work with our breath can also be sitting quietly in a meditative space and just focusing on a long, slow inhale.

You don't want to take the breath in too fast or too high because then it becomes a hyperventilation. You don't want to do that. And maybe a slower, longer, deep exhalation. Some people practice it by actually doing breath work. So I...

Cannot recommend more that if you are not familiar with or in touch with how to connect to your breathing when you're not triggered, that's what you want to start to do so that when you... are in a situation that is intense for you you can go you can use that resource that's your body and deepen your breath and that is very important it is

always available to you and it has been used for centuries as a way to create transcendent states to completely change our nervous system to get through hard times so it's very important Also, what I would say is some form of meditation. Now, meditation comes in many different forms.

One is sitting quietly, being with your thoughts. People think, oh, you know, I'm not supposed to have any thoughts. No, meditation is very difficult because what you're trying to do is sit there and notice your thoughts.

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So meditation is not about becoming thoughtless, although the more skilled we become in meditation, the easier we are able to enter moments in time and during that time where we become essentially thoughtless. That's really not what it's all about. What it's really all about in the beginning and throughout is learning how to separate yourself from your thoughts so that you actually start to notice your thoughts.

as opposed to your thoughts being sort of on repeat unconsciously. So when you start to notice your thoughts, you become the deeper awareness that is actually seeing the mental gymnastics. And the part of you that's seeing the mental gymnastics is the part of your awareness that you're trying to wake up. And when we talk about...

on social media about why it's so important to be self-aware and you want to cultivate that in yourself. And it's a red flag if you meet someone and they're not self-aware. Self-awareness is being able to separate our egos. From our behavior, being able to say, oh, I'm aware, I have insight into myself. I have sight. I can see my thoughts. You know, I can see that I'm in a story. I can see that I'm not behaving well. I can see that I'm behaving well, you know. So that's what self-awareness is.

And meditation is just a practice of building that deeper sense of awareness. And there's also meditation where if you're a strongly visual person, like lately, kind of meditations that I've been really loving. I'm like deep down the rabbit hole of visualizations because it's been life changing for me and I'm a visual person. So I can go deep into visualization and going into that and deepening your breath again.

This is all in an effort to calm the autonomic nervous system so that you then create an imprint, a memory. It's like almost like muscle memory so that when you're triggered, you can then lean back into the memory of a deeper breath and into a slower paced nervous system. And you can then harness it. Now, is it difficult when you're triggered? Of course. I fail all the time. But every time where I'm like so annoyed and I want to write that email and I'm like, you know what, Jillian, just wait.

You don't have to send that email right now. And then I don't. I'm so relieved. I've never regretted waiting. And I've only been incredibly proud of myself when I do. And I'm like, in that moment, that's growth.

That is growth. That is maturity. That is me being better. That's just better for me, better for everyone around me, better for the world, just better. Some sort of meditation, understanding your breath, and then practice. So you're going to practice calling your friend instead of that person when you're reactive. You're going to practice taking a walk before you have that conversation where you feel triggered.

You're going to practice deepening your breath. You're going to practice taking that pause, maybe sitting down, noticing that you're really uncomfortable. noticing right becoming the witness becoming the awareness that's seeing yourself get a little crazy and you're just like okay i'm gonna chill for a moment i'm gonna chill i'm gonna slow down again maybe i need to call a friend

Maybe I have to splash some water on my face. Maybe I need to go for a walk. Maybe I just need 90 seconds. And you're going to keep practicing that over and over again. And then you're going to bring it a step further when you're starting to notice yourself getting into storylines. Oh, they don't like me. They're not calling me back. I'm not being chosen or like.

Screw them. They don't love me. If they love me, this or that, like that whole battlefield that starts to happen inside our heads. And then you're going to say, OK, I am really uncomfortable right now. My thoughts are out of control. But I do realize that I am in my head right now and potentially getting very close to destructive relationship behavior.

And so it's your ability, which you do have the ability, we all do, but we have to practice it in order to really make it our capacity. We all have the ability to look at our behavior and say, oh. I'm about to do something not right. Or like, I am in the midst of doing something that is not good for me or the relationship. And then we all have the ability to stop.

all have the ability to stop. And like I said, it may have to be something that you practice a lot. In fact, most people have to practice it diligently every single day. But it is the game changer. Because, like I said, and I will say it again, the ability to regulate our emotions. is really what determines the quality of a relationship because it determines how we communicate. It determines how we feel about our partner, right? If we're getting stuck in resentment or not.

It determines how we feel about ourselves in the relationship. It truly is everything. And remember, if you're going into withdrawal, if you're pulling away from your partner, if you're getting clingy, if you're protesting, these are all reactions. If you're getting sad and in your head and a story and not communicating, that is a reaction. You absolutely can get angry at your partner.

You absolutely can get upset at your partner. Like that's part of it. Like you are allowed to be angry. You're allowed to be hurt. Having those feelings, those emotions don't necessarily mean you're dysregulated. It's what we do. do it's how we react to the emotion that really determines whether or not we're regulated or not and so that's really what it is if you're angry

You can just say, yeah, I'm really angry with you right now. I need a moment to calm down and then I can come back to the conversation. It could also be like, wow, I'm really pissed off at them. Am I pissed off at them because I'm giving this a negative meaning? Or am I pissed off because they really crossed a boundary with me and I have to have a conversation with them? But it starts with being honest with yourself about your level of reactivity.

So to recap, you want to know how to use your breath. And so I would practice the deepening of the breath, whether it's through sitting quietly. whether it's movement yoga, whether it's through some sort of meditation or breath work, so that you understand how to use your breath. And that is a huge tool in your tool belt.

that you can pull out every time that you are feeling reactive so that you can create the pause between trigger and response. Again, that breath might have to be also a walk. It might have to mean stepping away. It might just mean, you know what? I'm going to respond to this text in this email, but not before I take 90 seconds. And then I will see.

If I really want to respond to this email, and if I do, chances are after 90 seconds, I'm going to respond to it very differently so that after I hit send, I'm not then going to get. you know, shameful or it's not going to keep me up at night about, oh my God, I was so reactive and this and that and that and this, right? So practice the 90 seconds for these little things. Practice the 90 seconds.

And just experiment with that for the next couple weeks. And those 90 seconds, by the way, you're taking a breath. Maybe you're getting a glass of water. And again, you might need much more time, especially if you're in a heated argument or there's going something on with your partner. And maybe you need longer than 90 seconds. Maybe it's 120 seconds. But try the 90 seconds.

Because it's kind of a trip when you start to notice this, how many times in a day you're sort of reacting to something. And start to implement the 90 seconds. And let me know how it goes.

So that's it for this week's episode of Jillian on Love. I do hope that this was helpful. I do want to hear from you. So please do not hesitate to reach out to me and my team. We really work hard on reading all your messages at hello at jillianonlove.com. I do believe that this might be one of the most, if not the most important episode that I've done for...

healthier relationships. So please, if you know anyone, anyone in your life who could benefit from this, please do not hesitate to hit share because You just never know whose life you could be changing. You never know whose relationship you could be saving. And if you feel inspired to leave a five-star review on Apple or Spotify or anywhere, it really helps us. Keeps us going. And I thank you for being here. Until next time. Jillian on Love is a QCode production.

Executive produced by David Henning and Steve Wilson. Produced by Shin Yin Hu. Editing and music by Will Tendi. Extra value meals are back. That means 10 tender, juicy McNuggets and medium fries and a drink are just $8. Only at McDonald's. For limited time only. Prices and participation may vary. Prices may be higher in Hawaii, Alaska, and California and for delivery.

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