Beyond Emotion Regulation
“Understanding Survival Responses and the Importance of Internal vs External Validation”
The idea of understanding ourselves better can feel unnecessary or uncomfortable for some. Self-awareness may not be seen as a priority and examining emotions might seem like it won’t make any meaningful difference anyway. Instead of exploring our inner world, we might focus on emotion regulation, which may be to manage or control emotions, because engaging with them feels overwhelming. However, focusing solely on managing emotions overlooks a crucial part of the journey towards self-awareness and emotional maturity.
At the heart of many emotional struggles lies the survival response, a set of automatic reactions that our body and mind use to protect us from perceived danger. While these responses serve a vital purpose, they can become deeply ingrained, particularly in those who have experienced trauma and/or emotional overload. To move beyond simply regulating emotions and to begin the process of knowing ourselves better, it’s essential to understand what we’re feeling , to examine our emotions and to understand the role of external vs. internal validation.
In this article, I will take a closer look at the dynamics of survival responses, the difference between internal and external validation and how emotion regulation plays an essential role in enabling self-awareness and emotional growth. I will also explore the importance of identifying and naming our emotions in the service of understanding why we feel the way we do, as this awareness helps us recognise how our emotions shape our actions, guide our decisions and influence our relationships
The Role of Survival Responses
Survival responses are automatic reactions designed to keep us safe in the face of perceived threats. They include the well-known reactions of fight, flight, freeze and fawn, which activate when we sense danger. These responses serve to protect us by preparing us to fight off a threat, flee from it, become immobilised, or appease it in order to secure safety.
While these responses are crucial in moments of actual danger, they can become over-activated in non-threatening situations, especially (but not only) in people who have experienced trauma. When survival responses are triggered in daily life, they can lead to heightened anger, avoidance, emotional numbness, or people-pleasing behaviours that can interfere with relationships and our self-worth.
In these cases, survival responses often shift towards controlling the environment or other people, rather than focusing on understanding or validating ourselves. Instead of looking inward for validation, survival responses push us to seek external validation, making it about how others perceive us or how we manage their responses, rather than developing a healthy relationship with ourselves and our own emotions. This external focus keeps us disconnected from ourselves, preventing us from developing a sense of internal validation and self-awareness.
When Survival Responses Take Over
When survival responses dominate, they push us to react automatically, often bypassing our own needs for internal validation. For instance, someone might respond to a disagreement with anger (fight), shut down emotionally (freeze), withdraw from the conversation (flight), or agree with others simply to avoid conflict (fawn). These reactions are driven by an unconscious need to control how others react, attempting to manage external circumstances instead of reflecting on our own internal experience.
When survival responses focus on controlling the environment or seeking external validation, they move us away from understanding our own feelings and desires. Instead of reflecting on what we need or feel, we become hyper-focused on managing other people’s perceptions, approval, or behaviours. This external focus makes it difficult to develop a secure sense of self, leaving us dependent on others for emotional stability. It creates a cycle where we feel the need to constantly adjust ourselves based on the reactions of others, rather than developing the ability to self-validate.
The Importance of Internal Validation
Internal validation is the process of recognising, acknowledging and accepting our own feelings, thoughts and experiences, independent of external approval. It involves cultivating a sense of self-worth that is not contingent on how others respond to us. When we rely on external validation, we allow the opinions and actions of others to dictate how we feel about ourselves. While some degree of external validation is natural, excessive reliance on it can trap us in survival responses that are focused on controlling or pleasing others.
By understanding ourselves better and taking the time to examine our emotions, we begin to cultivate internal validation. This self-awareness allows us to recognise our emotional needs and validate our own experiences without needing approval from others. Knowing ourselves gives us the tools to internally affirm our worth, rather than constantly seeking reassurance or approval from our environment. This idea captures quite nicely what it means to create and develop a good quality relationship with oneself.
Emotion Regulation: What It Really Means
Emotion regulation is the ability to monitor, evaluate and adjust one’s emotional reactions, particularly in situations that may evoke stress or other strong emotions. However, emotion regulation is not just about dampening emotions or controlling outward reactions. It involves understanding and sometimes altering the way we experience emotions. This is so that we can respond in ways that reflect our own values, needs and goals, rather than being driven by the need to either control the environment or to seek external validation.
True emotion regulation is about fostering internal validation and includes several key components:
1. Awareness: Recognising the emotion as it arises and understanding where it comes from.
2. Modulation: Adjusting the intensity or duration of the emotional experience in a way that reflects your needs, not external demands.
3. Expression: Deciding how and when to express emotions in a way that aligns with who you are, rather than how you think others expect you to behave or how you think they ‘should’ behave.
4. Adaptiveness: Managing emotions in ways that promote personal emotional growth and wellbeing, allowing for internal validation rather than relying on external factors.
By examining emotions rather than just trying to manage or suppress them, can provide insight and help us understand why we feel a certain way. This deeper understanding helps us shift from needing external approval, to finding contentment and affirmation within ourselves. When we know ourselves, we can better regulate our emotions because our responses are grounded in internal stability, not external feedback.
Why Some People Struggle to Pause
Many people, particularly those who have experienced trauma and/or emotional overload, find it difficult to pause and reflect in the moment before reacting. Their emotional and physiological responses are so tightly intertwined that they feel unable to stop and think. When the body enters fight-or-flight mode, survival responses take over, often leading to a fixation on controlling the situation or pleasing others to feel safe.
In these moments, it’s challenging to examine emotions or pause to consider the situation from an internal perspective. Instead, we focus on how others are reacting or how we can influence the external environment. This external focus makes it hard to develop internal validation because our sense of safety and self-worth is based on how others respond, not on our own emotional needs.
The Power of Curiosity in Self-Awareness
One of the most effective tools in shifting from external to internal validation is curiosity. By developing curiosity about our emotions and behaviours, we create the space to examine our emotional experiences without judgment. Curiosity allows us to ask questions like:
• Why am I feeling this way?
• What does this emotion want to tell me?
• Am I responding based on my own needs, am I seeking validation from others or am I trying to control the ‘other’s’ response?
When we approach our emotions with curiosity, we begin to notice whether we are acting out of a need for external validation or grounding ourselves in internal validation. Curiosity helps us shift from controlling others to understanding ourselves. This process is crucial in building self-awareness and breaking free from survival responses that are focused on the external world.
Survival Responses and Emotion Regulation: A Dynamic Process
Pausing, reflecting and responding thoughtfully is a dynamic process that can help us manage both survival responses and emotions. When an emotion arises, it’s essential to:
1. Feel the emotion: Notice the physical sensations and thoughts that come with the emotion.
2. Pause: Instead of reacting immediately, take a moment to ask yourself ‘what’ you are feeling and to ‘describe’ the feeling. Labelling the feeling is a very important first step in this process.
3. Examine: Take a moment to consider the situation and the context. Are you having a natural response to an event or to what somebody said or, are you having an exaggerated, intense response. Ask yourself why you might be feeling this way and what triggered the emotion, reflecting on whether your response is driven by external validation or a need to control an outcome. Remember to focus on naming your feeling(s) and asking yourself whether you are seeking external approval or preferably can you ground your response in internal validation.
4. Respond: Choose a response that aligns with your internal values and needs, rather than being driven by the desire to control an outcome or please others.
By examining whether our responses are grounded in internal validation, we can better regulate our emotions and create healthier emotional patterns. Over time, this practice helps us develop the ability to self-validate and act in ways that are authentic and empowering.
Conclusion: Moving Beyond Survival Responses
Survival responses and emotion regulation are deeply interconnected. While survival responses serve an important function in keeping us safe, they can become disruptive when they focus too heavily on controlling an outcome or seeking external validation. Emotion regulation helps us manage these responses, but the real path to emotional maturity lies in examining our emotions and understanding whether we are driven by a need for external validation or the ability to ground ourselves in internal validation. Shifting from seeking approval from others to trusting our own inner sense of worth is essential for deeper self-awareness and emotional growth.
By approaching emotions with curiosity and a willingness to examine our reactions, we create space to pause, reflect and respond in ways that align with our internal values. This leads not only to more effective emotion regulation but also to a deeper connection with ourselves. By learning to lean into internal validation, we cultivate a stronger, more stable sense of self that is less dependent on the reactions and opinions of others.
When we minimise the importance of self-awareness or understanding ourselves better, it is often because we are protecting ourselves from the discomfort of emotional exploration. But through curiosity and self-reflection, we can begin to understand the role that survival responses play in our emotional lives. This understanding leads to more effective emotion regulation, internal validation and ultimately, a healthier relationship with oneself and others.
By embracing this dynamic process of curiosity, internal validation and intentional action, we open the door to experiencing emotions in a way that is rooted in understanding, self-compassion and conscious choice, rather than just survival.