Basic Emotion Regulation Skills 133creating music. And a gardener plants flowers for the reward of seeing them blossom. All of these
rewards reinforce these behaviors and make them more likely to be repeated in the future. If you
didn’t get a paycheck for going to work, you wouldn’t go anymore. If your teachers told you that
there was no chance for you to graduate, you’d probably drop out. And if you only got weeds every
time you planted a garden, you’d probably stop doing that too.
In the same way, your emotions can serve as rewards that reinforce your behavior. Here’s a
simple example of how pleasurable emotions can reinforce a behavior: Phil helped his friend Stefan
move into a new apartment (a behavior). Stefan was very grateful, which made Phil feel happy
about helping him (an emotion). So the next time Stefan asked for a favor, Phil was happy to help
him again (another behavior) because it would make him feel good again (another emotion).
However, emotions can reinforce self-destructive behaviors as well. Consider this example:
Teresa, who struggled with overwhelming emotions, once said, “If I feel bad, I want my husband
to feel bad too.” Logically, this doesn’t make sense, but thoughts, emotions, and behaviors aren’t
always logical. As a young girl, Teresa had never been taught how to cope with her distressing
emotions. When she was in emotional or physical pain, she suffered alone without anyone’s help.
No one paid attention to how she felt.
Then, as an adult, she realized that someone would give her and her pain attention if she
hurt the other person too, usually by making them feel upset. For example, when Teresa felt upset
at work, she would go home and pick a fight with her husband about something unimportant (her
behavior), and he would feel miserable as well. Then he would finally recognize how Teresa felt
and talk to her about her feelings (which was her emotional reward). Teresa may not have been
consciously aware that she was hurting her husband on purpose, but that didn’t matter. At some
point in her life, her thoughts had become automatic: “I feel bad, so I have to make someone else
feel bad; then I’ll feel better.” And because her behavior was consistently rewarded with a posi-
tive (although illogical) emotional experience—validation from her husband—her behavior was
reinforced and repeated in the future.
The Basics Teresa’s ExperienceEmotion or thought “I feel sad.”
Behavior She starts a fight with her husband.
Behavior is rewarded Her husband recognizes how she feels.
Behavior is repeated There are more fights in the future.
However, the way Teresa coped with her distressing feelings only made her feel better for a
very limited amount of time. In the long term, her marriage suffered at the expense of her emo-
tional validation. Teresa and her husband had frequent fights as a result of her behaviors, and these
fights always made her feel even worse.