A practical guide to staying steady when business feels triggering

Emotional regulation sounds like something you either have or you don’t. Like you’re the calm, steady type, or you’re the person who spirals, reacts, shuts down, procrastinates, or takes everything personally.

But in real life, emotional regulation is a practice. It’s not a personality trait.

And if you run a small business, it matters more than you might realise. Because when you’re dysregulated, your decision making changes. Your boundaries wobble. Your confidence drops. Your thinking gets louder. You send the email from urgency. You avoid the message you need to send. You overthink your pricing. You chase reassurance. You scroll before bed because your mind won’t switch off.

You don’t need to become unshakeable to run a business. You just need a way to notice what’s happening early, and a way to come back to centre when you’ve been pulled off it.

This post is a guide you can use right now. It combines a simple skillset practice, a mindset reframe using the ABC model, and a few grounded insights about why regulation can feel hard when you’re building something that matters to you.

What being regulated actually feels like

Before we go into tools, it helps to define what you’re aiming for. Because “being regulated” can sound vague.

A regulated state often looks like this:

In the body, you feel more open and flowing. Your shoulders and neck soften. Breathing deepens. Sleep comes more easily. You don’t feel as braced or contracted.

In the mind, you trust your ability to cope. You accept that solutions can be imperfect. You’re less drawn into catastrophic thinking or mental rehearsals.

Emotionally, there’s more ease. More self trust. More peace with the decision you’ve made, even if it’s not perfect.

Notice none of this is about never feeling stressed. It’s about having enough internal steadiness to meet stress without being taken over by it.

Why solopreneurs get dysregulated so easily

Running a business means uncertainty. It means visibility. It means decisions. It means exposure to feedback, silence, rejection, and comparison. Even good things can be activating, like growth, attention, or responsibility.

Dysregulation often shows up when something hits a tender spot, such as:

Waiting for approval or validation after you’ve sent work or shared something publicly
Fear of causing inconvenience or stress to others
Uncertainty when you can’t control timing, logistics, or outcomes
Feeling unprepared, behind, or not good enough
Information overload, global uncertainty, and the pressure to keep up, including technology and AI driven noise

And because we’re human, it shows up physically too. Tension in shoulders and neck, shallow breathing, distraction habits, disrupted sleep, checking apps repeatedly, scrolling before bed, even feeling more contracted in the belly.

The body often reacts before you consciously notice. You might think you’re fine, then realise you’ve been holding your breath for ten minutes.

That’s why emotional regulation starts with awareness, not analysis.

The Three Brains Model

Why one part of you takes over

One useful way to understand emotional regulation is to see decision making as something that happens through three centres: gut, heart, and head. The 3 brains model of intelligence was developed by Christoffel G. Sneijders.

The gut brain is about survival and protection. It wants safety. It wants quick action. It can be driven by a fear of vulnerability.

The heart brain is about connection, belonging, and meaning. It wants togetherness. It can be driven by a fear of rejection. It often shows up as people pleasing, over giving, or putting others first.

The head brain is about analysis, prediction, and control. It wants to be right. It wants certainty. Its fear is often making mistakes, and its pitfalls are overthinking and procrastination.

When these three parts collaborate, you feel whole. You can sense what’s true, feel what matters, and think clearly. When one hijacks the others, things get messy.

A lot of solopreneur dysregulation is the head brain shouting over everything else. It analyses and predicts because it thinks that’s how you stay safe. But when you’re stressed, thinking harder rarely helps. It usually amplifies the loop.

So the question becomes, how do you bring the three brains back into balance?

You start by stabilising the body and creating space.

The Skillset

Stabilise first, then think

If your mind is running loops, the first step is not to solve the problem. The first step is to stabilise. You can’t logic your way out of a stress response while your nervous system is braced.

Here’s a simple practice you can use in the moment.

Step one: become aware
Just notice that you are dysregulated. That alone is brave. Awareness is not always comfortable because it can reveal things you’d rather not feel. But awareness is the beginning of choice.

Step two: anchor in the body
Bring attention to something that feels safe and real. The breath, your hands, your feet on the floor, the sensation of contact with a chair. This shifts you out of past and future and into now.

Step three: check what the body needs
Before you do any mindset work, ask a very practical question. Do I need water. A stretch. A walk. Food. A few deeper breaths. A pause from the screen.

This matters. You’re not a brain on a stick. You’re a body.

Step four: observe the mind instead of being lost in it
When thoughts keep looping, gently label what’s happening.

“Oh, I’m thinking like this again.”
“That’s interesting.”
“That’s the spiral.”

Not sarcastically. More like you’re watching weather pass through the sky.

This is how you stop being inside the thought and start witnessing it.

Step five: then choose a different way to think
Now you’re ready for mindset, because you’ve created enough steadiness to see the thought rather than obey it.

A Mindset Tool That Works

The ABC model of emotions

The ABC model is a simple way to understand emotional reactions without shaming yourself for having them.

A is the activating event. Something happens.
You see someone you know and wave, they don’t wave back.
You send an email and don’t get a reply.
A client reads your message and goes quiet.
A post gets low engagement.

B is the belief your mind creates about that event.
“They don’t like me.”
“They don’t value my work.”
“I’ve said something wrong.”
“I’m not good enough.”
“This is going to fail.”

C is the consequence. The emotional and behavioural outcome.
You feel unlikeable. You blame yourself. You get anxious. You overthink. You chase reassurance. You procrastinate. You shut down.

The key is this: the event is not what creates the consequence. The belief does.

So rather than trying to force yourself to feel better, you stay with A and observe B without identifying with it. That changes C.

Here’s how to use it as a practice.

Choose a recent moment where you felt dysregulated in your business.

Write it out like this:

A: What happened, purely factually.
B: What did I immediately believe or assume.
C: How did I feel, and what did I do next.

Then pause. Breathe. Feel your feet.

Now ask:

Is B the only explanation.
What else could be true.
If I didn’t believe B, how would I respond.

You are not gaslighting yourself. You’re widening the lens. You’re giving your mind more options than its default fear story.

A short visualisation for when things feel out of control

There’s a simple image that can help when your internal world feels like a storm.

Imagine you’re in rough water at the surface, lots of noise and churn, but you choose to dive beneath the waves. Underwater, it’s quieter. Still. Clearer. You stay there for a few minutes. Then you resurface, and you choose your next step from that steadier place.

You can do this in real time in a bathroom break, a short walk, or two minutes at your desk. It’s not about avoiding the storm. It’s about remembering there is stillness available beneath it.

What changes when you’re more regulated

Emotional regulation does not mean life gets easier. It means you get steadier inside it.

When you’re regulated, you’re less likely to:

Send reactive messages
Over explain yourself
People please
Undervalue your work
Procrastinate out of fear
Get lost in catastrophic thinking
Lose sleep replaying conversations
Make decisions from urgency just to stop discomfort

And you’re more likely to:

Communicate clearly
Hold boundaries
Stay consistent
Think more creatively
Trust yourself
Recover more quickly after a wobble
Choose your next step without the emotional drama

This is why regulation is a business skill. It directly impacts your visibility, pricing, marketing, client relationships, and decision making.

A simple takeaway practice for the week

If you want one thing to practise, keep it simple.

When you notice yourself dysregulated, pause and use this phrase:

Awareness creates choice. Practice creates capacity.

Then do the smallest version of the process:

1.  Anchor in the body
2.  Name the belief
3.  Choose one calmer interpretation
4.  Take one grounded action

Even if the action is just: drink water and come back to the email later.

Because the real win is not perfection. The real win is not spiralling for hours before you notice.

The real win is catching it earlier.

Not a quick fix

If you’re reading this and thinking, “I should be better at this by now”, that’s the head brain again, trying to be right, trying to get you to improve through pressure.

Emotional regulation grows through repetition. Through lived experience. Through being willing to notice what’s happening, without making it mean something awful about you.

If you try these practices, I’d love to hear your take on them.

P.S. If you'd like the support, encouragement and accountability of a group of wise and welcoming women, find out more about The Women Entrepreneurs Group here: 
www.thewomenentrepreneursgroup.com