Reflective quiz · For adults · ERQ
Free emotion regulation quiz.
Ten questions, about two minutes. This is the ERQ, which looks at two very different things people do with a feeling: rethink the situation, or keep the feeling from showing. Most of us lean on one more than we realize.
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About this quiz
What do you do with a feeling?
There are two very different answers. One is to change how you are thinking about the situation, which changes the feeling itself. The other is to feel it just as strongly and make sure nobody sees. Both are ways of coping, and the difference between them turns out to matter a great deal.
Plenty of capable, well-defended people are quietly excellent at the second one, and have never thought of it as a strategy at all. Answer for how you generally are, and you will see which you lean on.
The Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (ERQ) was developed by James J. Gross and Oliver P. John (2003). Reproduced here with the kind permission of Dr. Gross, for free educational use.
Composure has a cost
Therapy for people who hold it all together.
Some of the most capable people we see are the most practiced at not letting anything show. It works, right up until it does not, and it quietly keeps other people at a distance. Our doctoral-level psychologists help you understand where that habit came from and widen what is possible. In Carlsbad, Encinitas, Vista, or online across California. It starts with a free 15-minute consultation.
Questions
About the emotion regulation quiz.
01 Is this a diagnosis?
No. Emotion regulation is not a disorder, and the ERQ is not a diagnostic tool. It describes two habits of managing feelings. There are no clinical cutoffs, so your scores are a description, not a verdict.
02 What are reappraisal and suppression?
Reappraisal means changing how you think about a situation in order to change how you feel about it. Suppression means keeping the feeling from showing on the outside. Both are ways of managing emotion, but they work at different points, and they tend to have different consequences.
03 Is suppression bad?
It is not a moral failing, and it is sometimes exactly the right call. Plenty of people learned to hold it in because, at some point, holding it in was the safest thing to do. What the research consistently finds is that relying on it habitually carries a cost over time, to wellbeing and to closeness with others. That is worth knowing, not worth feeling ashamed about.
04 Can I change how I handle emotions?
Yes. These are habits, not fixed traits, and they are quite responsive to attention and practice. A lot of therapy is exactly this work: noticing what you do with a feeling, understanding where you learned it, and slowly widening your options.
Ready when you are
You do not have to hold it alone.
Starting is a small step: a short, no-pressure conversation to see if we are a good fit. We would be glad to hear from you.