♟️ How Your Emotional Beliefs Shape Your Emotional Resilience
New research reveals how your views on emotional life predict the way you handle distress
We can all improve our ability to regulate our emotions—we can practice reframing thoughts, calming our body, or talking ourselves down from a spiral. But new research suggests the story starts even earlier. Our beliefs about emotions—how controllable or useful we think they are—shape the very strategies we reach for in the first place.
If you believe emotions are overwhelming and pointless, you may be inclined to suppress or avoid them. But if you see emotions as manageable or valuable, you're more likely to respond with active coping strategies.
If this is true, then it’s possible that subtle shifts in mindset could play a big role in transforming long-term wellbeing. So here’s what the evidence suggests.
🖇️ The link between emotional beliefs and coping strategies
In a 2025 study published in Personality and Individual Differences, researchers surveyed 579 university students about their beliefs around emotions and the types of emotion regulation strategies they commonly use.
Participants completed the Emotion Beliefs Questionnaire, which measures how controllable and how useful people think positive and negative emotions are. They also completed validated questionnaires assessing how often they used a range of regulation strategies—some that are considered adaptive (like cognitive reappraisal or acceptance), and others that considered maladaptive (like suppression, rumination, or blaming others).
The researchers looked for correlations between these factors. They found that people who believed emotions were uncontrollable or useless were significantly more likely to rely on maladaptive strategies like suppressing negative emotions, catastrophizing about their sensations, or ignoring their feelings. They were also less likely to use adaptive strategies like emotional reappraisal, acceptance, or support-seeking.
These types of patterns held for beliefs about both negative and positive emotions, suggesting that devaluing even positive emotions may disrupt people’s motivation to think constructively about their mental well-being.
To better understand individual differences, the researchers then used latent profile analysis to identify distinct emotion regulation profiles within the sample. Seven emerged:
Some profiles (~23% of the sample) combined strongly maladaptive beliefs—beliefs that emotions were uncontrollable or useless—with high use of avoidance-based strategies like suppression and withdrawal.
Other profiles held adaptive emotion beliefs and showed strong use of constructive strategies like reappraisal, acceptance, and support-seeking. Approximately 26% of the full sample fell into the group with the most adaptive pattern overall.
Some participants (~9%) held adaptive beliefs but still showed maladaptive patterns of regulation—suggesting beliefs are important, but not the whole story.
Together, the data paint a picture of how beliefs may influence behavior, especially at the earliest stage of emotion regulation. Before deciding how to manage a particular emotion, we first need to justify whether it’s worth engaging with at all. The perception that emotions are useless or uncontrollable makes us less likely to productively engage with them.
Maladaptive beliefs may increase the odds that we disengage from emotional discomfort, attempt to suppress emotions, or act out in other unhelpful ways. In contrast, seeing emotions as a manageable and important part of human life may encourage us to respond with greater care and flexibility.
⭐️ Takeaway tips
#1. What do you believe about your emotions?
If you often feel stuck in harmful emotional habits, take a moment to reflect on your underlying beliefs. Do you view sadness, anger, or anxiety as useless or out of your control? These beliefs may be shaping your behavior in subtle but influential ways. Understanding and addressing your beliefs should be part of your self-care routines so be curious about your inner narratives.
#2. Shift your mindset to support better regulation
Just like emotions themselves, beliefs about emotions aren’t fixed. With time, reflection, and support, you can shift toward a more constructive mindset and unlock healthier ways of responding. Cultivating a belief that emotions—whether pleasant or painful—are both manageable and meaningful can help you stay engaged rather than despondent. You may be able to open the door to more adaptive strategies and greater emotional clarity.
#3. What works for others might not work for you
The study found some variation in how people regulate emotions, even when they have similar beliefs. That means effective emotional coping isn’t universal and people will differ in their “ideal belief profile”. Instead of mimicking others or trying to force specific regulation strategies into your life, experiment with what actually works for your own psychology and context.
“We should never believe anything we have not dared to doubt.”
~ Christina, Queen of Sweden