Goldilocks and the 3 Categories of Emotional Regulation

Goldilocks is a cautionary tale of finding balance and violating boundaries.

Photo by Hans-Jurgen Mager on Unsplash

Through the course of the fairy tale, Goldilocks wanders into the house of 3 bears who are incredible homemakers. She tests their chairs only to discover one is too hard, one is too soft, the final is just right. A taste test of each one’s porridge reveals one is similarly too hot, too cold, and the last one just right. Finally, their beds undergo a comfort test with the same three results. When she finds the perfectly comfortable bed, she falls asleep, evidently forgetting she is trespassing, and is promptly eaten by the returning bears. 

The moral of the story is that finding balance takes time (and trespassing on bears is a bad idea). 

The theme of balance is a parable used in many industries - like balancing performance and capacity in software or cooking a steak to the perfect medium rare. It’s even the basis for the “Goldilocks Zone” in astronomy, used to describe planets like Earth that are just close enough to a sun to not be frozen (like Neptune) and not so close they are uninhabitable (like Mercury).

The combined message of boundaries and balance also makes Goldilocks a perfect parable for emotional regulation. When we feel a strong emotional reaction, whether positive or negative, we are faced with the options of ignoring our feelings, letting them drive our actions with no limits, or finding a balance. 

Also, just like Goldilocks, we need to be aware of our surroundings and whether our actions are moving us towards a desired outcome or the mouths of bears.

Option 1 - Shut It Down (Too Cold)

There will always be moments in our lives when emotions boil over. It may be fear, or any alternate expression of fear like rage, sadness, etc, or it might be any of the joyous family of emotions like elation, love, confidence, etc. 

Through strong societal or peer pressure (like from family, work, or friends), we may feel that it is unsafe to express these feelings, or we may feel too “out of control” when they rise up in us, and we will search for a coping mechanism. It’s not uncommon to shut down in this situation and simply do our best to keep a lid on any rising emotion. 

Comedian John Mulaney quipped on this topic in regards to his Irish upbringing:

This approach may spare us the short term pain of having our emotions invalidated, but we can quickly hit additional, more complicated consequences.

For one, emotions are nearly impossible to feel selectively. To borrow an analogy I heard to explain this phenomenon, emotions are like a singular faucet - it is either on and we are feeling them or it is off and we are not. We don’t get to just feel the “good” ones and limit the “bad,” nor should we want to.  “Negative” emotions serve important functions in our lives, even if we would rather not feel them.

The Nagoski sisters, in their book “Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle”, discuss emotional processing through the metaphor of a tunnel. Something happens to incite an emotional reaction, and that starts us into the tunnel, which is where we feel the emotion and process what to do with it, before we exit the tunnel and no longer hold on to the feeling. We can stop our processing anywhere in the journey, and there are plenty of legitimate reasons to pause, but it’s important to complete the processing or the feeling will simply linger, unresolved. 

When we do not express our feelings, we can begin to experience any or all of these:

• Burnout 

• Emotional fatigue

• People pleasing

• Detachment 

• Depression 

• Resentment

The mounting pressure of repressed emotions can overwhelm us, driving further detachment or an eventual explosion. 

Option 2 - Feel All the Feels (Too Hot)

Given the repercussions of holding everything in, it may seem reasonable to get in touch with our emotions and immediately express them when we have them. This may entail quickly expressing anger for perceived slights, breaking down when we hit moderate levels of stress, or simply stating our emotions with the expectations that others need to attend to them.

This approach may prevent us from bottling up our reactions to the point of an outburst, but we have to be aware of potential adverse consequences for ourselves and our relationships. 

When we immediately access and act out our emotions, we can quickly come across as “dumping” our emotions on others. In a workplace conflict, we may feel angry, but if we just express our anger through yelling or crossing our arms with no apparent desire to reach a resolution, we create an emotional burden for ourselves - and those around us - to bear. 

People often describe these moments as the times when they “got carried away” with an emotion, whether anger or sadness or joy. It’s these moments where we do not access any awareness of our emotions (as we would in a mindfulness practice, for example), we are simply experiencing them. This is the enormous difference between saying “I feel angry” (noticing and acknowledging without identifying with the emotion) versus “I am angry” (feeling that the emotion IS us). 

Feeling emotions while taking no responsibility for them will drive the perception from others that we are unreliable, too hot-headed, difficult to be around, or emotionally taxing. This is likely not our intention, which makes it important to be aware of how our reactions are influencing others as well as ourselves. 

As a caveat, we have to take care to balance what criticisms we take on, as we all have a right to have emotions without judgment. There are those who will manipulate the guilt we feel for overreacting to shut down the emotional reactions they don’t want to see, so we should take any external assessments of our emotions with a grain of salt, relying on ourselves and trusted friends to assess ourselves.

Option 3 - Notice Our Feelings, Choose Our Actions (Just Right)

So if feeling nothing can be damaging, and feeling everything can also be damaging, what is the middle ground? 

We want to be fair to ourselves and feel that our emotional reactions are valid, while not having to hide them or overwhelm everyone around us. We also don’t want to stop anywhere in the emotional tunnel of processing and leave unresolved feelings hanging around to slowly smother us. 

This is where mindfulness practices are incredibly useful. While often used in the same breath as meditation, mindfulness refers to a broader ability to stay present and aware of our thoughts. This means being able to notice our emotions as they come up (acknowledge that something is making us feel angry, for example), while not identifying with the emotion and letting it drive our reactions. Meditation is an excellent mindfulness practice for this reason, as it is a way of acknowledging and identifying emotions without attaching to them, but meditation is not the only way for us to be aware of our thoughts. 

By practicing labeling and documenting our emotions, through journals, therapy, or any number of other reflective practices, we can improve our ability to notice and process emotions while still remaining in control of our reactions.

If a coworker offends us, for example, we might notice a quickly rising anger. If we are practiced, we can be aware of this without immediately flaring up in a fury. From there, we can make choices to align with outcomes we would like to see and more calmly assess the situation. Is this a common occurrence? Do we feel comfortable pushing back on this person? If they have repeatedly shown no respect for our boundaries, the anger can then be used as a reminder that it is time to push back. If we acknowledge but do not attach to the emotion, we can choose to constructively confront someone we might otherwise try to ignore or scream at.

Like Goldilocks, it may take time and experimentation for us to find a good balance between expressing and hiding emotions, and we will have to repeat this process with new situations as they arise. This practice will help us make better choices as we grow, and we can begin to apply this skill in a “meta” sense, choosing our reactions as well as choosing when to experiment. As Goldilocks’ tragic ending warns us, we should be aware of our surroundings while finding personal balance, becoming more deliberate about choosing our battles

After all, if Goldilocks had been able to acknowledge her hunger or fatigue without stealing porridge or sleeping in the beds of bears, she might have been closer to higher life-objectives - like never being eaten by bears.