Emotion Regulation Questionnaire for Children and Adolescents

Not necessarily. High Suppression on ERQ-CA means you tend to inhibit emotional expression. Suppression is a risk factor for anxiety and depression (chronic suppression requires effort and can intensify underlying emotion), but it does not diagnose a disorder. Many people use suppression in some contexts without having clinical anxiety. To assess for anxiety/depression, answer questions about worry frequency, sad mood, and functional impairment on measures like RCADS or PHQ-9.

Mostly yes—cognitive reappraisal is generally adaptive and associated with better mental health. However, excessive reappraisal without acknowledging genuine distress can become avoidant. For example, constantly reframing a genuinely difficult loss as 'a learning experience' without grieving can inhibit healthy emotional processing. Optimal emotion regulation is flexible: reappraise when helpful, accept and validate emotions when needed, and seek support when overwhelmed.

Yes. Emotion regulation strategies are learnable skills. If you tend toward suppression, therapy (CBT, mindfulness, emotion-focused therapy) can help you develop and practice reappraisal and acceptance skills. With practice, reappraisal becomes more automatic and less cognitively effortful. Many teens who receive emotion regulation training show increased reappraisal and decreased suppression scores over weeks to months.

This pattern suggests your child is trying to inhibit emotional expression (suppression) while experiencing significant anxiety. The anxiety may be driving the suppression (trying to 'hold it together'), and the continuous suppression effort may intensify the underlying anxiety. Treatment should target both: therapy (CBT, acceptance-based) to reduce anxiety and teach reappraisal and acceptance instead of suppression.