Quick answer
James Gross orders emotion regulation in time, from the situation you enter to the response you show. A 2015 review adds that trouble can sit at whether to regulate, which strategy, the tactic itself, or watching it over time.
Here is an illustrative example. Ellis is at the kitchen sink when a three-word text from Maren lands, and a hot worry shows up before any reply is typed. Nothing in this scene was observed by a researcher. The names are placeholders so you can see five steering points in one relationship moment. James J. Gross ordered those points in time. The account used here is his 1998 process model, as set out with Thompson in "Emotion Regulation: Conceptual Foundations," in the Handbook of Emotion Regulation.
The order matters because an emotion is not a single switch. Generation keeps going. What you do at the end feeds back and changes the situation you are standing in. The first four families act before the response is fully underway. Gross calls them antecedent-focused. The fifth family acts on the response itself. He calls that one response-focused. You do not have to use all five. You do have to know which one you are in, or you will think you "managed it" when you only hid it.
Situation selection, before you are in it
Situation selection means choosing whether to enter the situation that is likely to stir the feeling. In the sink scene, Ellis could leave the phone in another room until the dishes are done, and meet Maren's text on purpose ten minutes later. That choice happens before the worry has a full stage. It does not erase Maren. It chooses the moment of contact. Selection can also mean walking toward a situation, not only away from one. Ellis could decide to call instead of letting the three words sit on a glass screen. Both are selections. The model does not rank them. It only puts them first in time.
People sometimes hear "selection" as avoidance with a diploma. The family is wider than that. You are always selecting situations, including the ones you stay in by habit. The question the model offers is whether you chose with the feeling in mind.
Situation modification, once you are already there
Situation modification means changing the situation you are already in. The text has landed. Ellis can still change the setup: step away from the sink, sit down, and answer in a fuller sentence than the three words invite. The feeling is closer now. The situation is no longer only "a text exists." It includes a wet counter, a rush, and a person who has not replied. Modifying that setup is not the same move as deciding, this morning, to keep the phone elsewhere. The first move never entered. The second move edits what has already started.
In a relationship, modification is often practical and easy to skip. You change the lighting, the timing, or who else is in the room. You are not yet changing your mind about what the text means. You are changing the conditions around it.
Attentional deployment, and what gets the spotlight
Attentional deployment means directing attention inside the situation. Ellis can stare at the three words until the worry fills the sink, or notice the water, the plate, and the fact that Maren has been in meetings all day. Attention does not rewrite the text. It chooses what the mind rehearses while the body stands there. Gross places this family after selection and modification and before the thought is changed. You can attend to the threat cue, or to another part of the same moment, without yet telling yourself a new story about it.
If you have ever reread a short message twenty times, you have met this family from the inside. The situation stayed put. Your attention did the work of turning the volume up. Deployment can turn the volume down, too, by giving attention somewhere else in the same room. These notes do not claim a success rate for that shift.
Cognitive change, including reappraisal
Cognitive change includes reappraisal: a change in how you understand what is happening. "Maren is brief because the meeting ran long" is a different meaning from "Maren is done with me." Both can be wrong. Reappraisal is not a trick that forces the kinder story. It is the family in which the meaning itself is the lever, and it sits before response modulation in the time order. The first four families are antecedent-focused, so this lever is pulled while the emotion is still being generated, not only after the face has already arranged itself.
You might be thinking reappraisal means talking yourself out of a true alarm. The model does not say every new story is accurate. It says changing the appraisal is a different kind of move from biting back the expression. A false comforting story is still an appraisal. A truer, harder story is also an appraisal. Accuracy is your job. The family name only tells you where in time the move sits.
Response modulation, including suppression
Response modulation includes expressive suppression. By this point the feeling is in motion, and the tactic acts on the response: the face, the voice, the reply you do not send. Ellis can type "all good" with a flat chest and shaking hands. That is not reappraisal. The meaning may still be "I am being left." The modulated part is the outward answer. Because emotion generation keeps going, that flat reply becomes part of the situation Maren will answer next. Feedback runs from the response back to the situation. A suppressed text can create the very distance the worry feared. The model names that loop. It does not promise you can skip it.
Suppression is not morally worse inside the model, and it is not the same tool as the four earlier families. It is later. If you only ever use it, you will think emotion regulation means a calm face. Gross's order says the calm face is the last place, not the only place.
The problem may not be dysregulation
Sheppes, Suri, and Gross, in a 2015 review in the Annual Review of Clinical Psychology, extend the model. Difficulties can sit at identification, selection, implementation, or monitoring. Identification asks whether to regulate at all. Selection asks which strategy to use. Implementation asks whether you can carry the tactic out. Monitoring asks how it goes across time. A feeling that hurts is not automatically a failure of regulation. Emotional problems are not always emotion dysregulation. Sometimes the fitting move is to feel the worry and reply honestly. That is an identification decision: not every state should be steered away.
These notes do not give a percent improvement for any tactic. Do not let a chart on another site lend this model a number it does not have here. The sink scene cannot tell you which family you should pick this week. It can only keep the five places from collapsing into "be calm."
If worry, anger, or sadness is running your sleep, your work, or your relationship, a licensed mental health professional can assess you. This article explains a model. It does not treat you. Anger and sadness inside a fight use the same families in a different sketch, not this sink. For a page about closeness rather than steering points, see day-to-day closeness. Use either page as education, not as your chart.
The next time a feeling rises with someone you love, which of the five places will you actually be using?
Works this model rests on
- Gross, J. J. (1998), and Gross and Thompson, "Emotion Regulation: Conceptual Foundations," in Gross (Ed.), Handbook of Emotion Regulation.
- Sheppes, Suri, and Gross (2015), Annual Review of Clinical Psychology.
Frequently Asked Questions
- What is the time order of the five families?
- You meet the situation first: pick it, then edit it, then aim attention, then revise the meaning. Reappraisal belongs in that meaning step. Last comes the response, where expressive suppression belongs. The opening four act before the response is fully going. The last acts on the response.
- Does the process end once you react?
- It does not. Generation keeps moving, and the reaction feeds back so the setup around you changes.
- If regulation is the problem, where can it snag?
- The 2015 extension names four seats: the choice of whether to regulate, the strategy you pick, carrying a tactic out, and keeping watch over time. A hard feeling is not automatically a regulation failure.
- Does any family come with an improvement percentage?
- No. These notes never attach a percent-better figure to a tactic.
- Did the sink scene happen to a real couple?
- No. Ellis and Maren are placeholders in a labeled illustration. The scene is not a case history and not a result.