How the Creator of the Mood Meter Teaches Emotion Regulation
Emotions shape every decision, relationship, and outcome in our lives. Yet most of us were never taught how to work with them. Marc Brackett, Ph.D., founding director of the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence and creator of the Mood Meter, addresses this gap head-on in his latest book, Dealing with Feeling: Use Your Emotions to Create the Life You Want.
Published in 2025 by Celadon Books, this practical follow-up to the bestselling Permission to Feel focuses on the critical skill of emotion regulation—the “R” in the evidence-based RULER approach (Recognizing, Understanding, Labeling, Expressing, and Regulating emotions). Brackett shows that there are no “bad” emotions, only ones we have not yet learned to understand and direct intentionally.
The result is a clear, science-backed roadmap for turning emotional awareness into better relationships, stronger performance, and greater well-being.
Why Emotion Regulation Matters More Than Ever
Success in career, family, friendships, and personal goals hinges largely on how we handle our feelings in challenging moments. Do we react impulsively? Shut down? Or respond with clarity and intention?
Brackett argues that regulation is not a fixed personality trait. It is a set of learnable skills. Drawing on decades of research, personal stories, and work with schools and organizations, he explains why so many people struggle: we undervalue emotions, rarely receive formal training at home or school, chase quick fixes, and lack institutional support for emotional skills.
Dealing with Feeling shifts the focus from suppressing or indulging emotions to skillfully managing them. Readers learn to identify how they feel, decide how they want to feel, and apply strategies to get there.
Core Ideas from Dealing with Feeling
Brackett structures the book around practical frameworks rather than abstract theory. Key themes include:
- Emotions as information: Every feeling carries useful data about our needs, values, and environment.
- Precise labeling: Moving beyond vague terms like “bad” or “stressed” to specific words (disappointed, overwhelmed, hopeful) creates clarity and better strategy choices.
- No bad emotions: Acceptance is foundational. Unpleasant feelings are signals, not enemies.
- Regulation as a skill set: Techniques fall into categories such as quieting the body and mind, critical thinking/reframing, drawing strength from relationships (co-regulation), and supporting emotional health through sleep, nutrition, and movement.
- From self to others: The same tools help us support children, colleagues, partners, and teams.
The book includes actionable exercises, a practical guide for building skills over time, and stories that make the science relatable. It is written for adults while remaining highly relevant for parents, educators, and leaders who want to model and teach these skills.
How Dealing with Feeling Connects to the Mood Meter
The Mood Meter—the color-coded tool developed by Brackett and the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence—sits at the heart of emotional awareness. It maps feelings along two dimensions: energy (high to low) and pleasantness (unpleasant to pleasant), creating four quadrants:
- Red: High energy, unpleasant (anger, anxiety, frustration)
- Blue: Low energy, unpleasant (sadness, fatigue, discouragement)
- Green: Low energy, pleasant (calm, contentment, relaxation)
- Yellow: High energy, pleasant (excitement, joy, enthusiasm)
Daily check-ins with the Mood Meter build the recognizing, understanding, and labeling skills that make regulation possible. Dealing with Feeling then equips readers with the strategies to shift or sustain those states intentionally. Together they form a complete system: the Mood Meter helps you see where you are; the book teaches you how to navigate from there.
This pairing is especially powerful in schools (where RULER is used in thousands of classrooms), workplaces, and homes. When families or teams share a common language for emotions and a shared toolkit for regulation, conflict decreases and connection increases.
Get Mark Brackett’s New Book
Dealing with Feeling – a practical guide to understanding and managing emotions from the creator of the Mood Meter.
Practical Strategies You Can Start Using Today
While the full set of tools lives in the book, here are representative approaches aligned with Mood Meter practice:
- Check in first. Plot your current state on the Mood Meter. Name the feeling with precision.
- Quiet the body. When in the red or high-intensity zones, use slow breathing, movement, or brief physical resets to bring the nervous system down so clearer thinking becomes possible.
- Reframe with intention. Ask what the emotion is telling you and what response would serve your longer-term goals.
- Leverage relationships. Share the feeling with a trusted person or help someone else regulate (co-regulation is a major theme).
- Support the foundation. Prioritize sleep, nutrition, and movement—the physiological base that makes emotional skills easier to access.
These steps turn abstract awareness into daily practice. Over time they become automatic, exactly as Brackett intends.
Who Should Read Dealing with Feeling?
- Parents and caregivers who want to raise emotionally intelligent children
- Educators and school leaders already using (or exploring) RULER and the Mood Meter
- Managers and team leads seeking better workplace culture and decision-making
- Anyone who feels stuck in reactive patterns and wants evidence-based tools instead of generic advice
The book complements Permission to Feel (which introduced the full RULER skills) by going deeper on regulation—the skill most people find hardest and most transformative.
Start Building Emotional Skills Today
The Mood Meter gives you a clear map of your emotional landscape. Dealing with Feeling gives you the navigation skills to use that map wisely. Together they support the same goal Brackett has pursued for more than 25 years: helping people of all ages use their emotions to create the lives they want.
Explore Mood Meter posters, digital tools, and classroom resources right here on themoodmeter.com. Then pick up Dealing with Feeling to take the next step in your emotion regulation practice. The skills are learnable, the research is solid, and the benefits compound across every area of life.
When we stop fighting our feelings and start working with them, everything changes.