Regulation Exercises

Regulation exercises are simple, repeatable practices that help you calm an overwhelmed nervous system and bring intense emotions back down to a level you can manage. Rachael Sloan names them, alongside self-reflection and self-inquiry, as one of the core tools for healing from divorce.
When your marriage ends, your body reacts as if your survival is under threat. Anger spikes. Sadness hits out of nowhere. Your mind races late at night. Regulation exercises give you a way to respond to those waves instead of being carried away by them.
They are not about forcing your feelings to disappear. They are about learning to work with them.
One example Rachael Sloan teaches is the volume dial exercise. When anger rises, you picture a dial and imagine turning it down. Sometimes the anger drops. Sometimes it spikes instead. Either result tells you something. A spike usually means the anger is protecting you from sliding back into depression, and that's useful to know.
Another example applies to sorrow. Instead of pushing sadness away or feeding it with old memories and sad playlists, you let yourself feel it without judgment and allow it to move through you.
These exercises are the backbone of the Stabilize phase of her framework. About 30 days of consistent practice can give you real emotional stability. That stability helps you survive the divorce with clearer decisions about money, custody, and your kids, and later it gives you the footing to thrive.
The key is repetition. One exercise on one bad night won't change much. A few minutes a day, over weeks and months, teaches your nervous system that you can handle what you're feeling. Once you know that, the hardest moments start to lose their grip.