ERI
Emotion Regulation Inventory
This exploratory questionnaire describes difficulties with emotion regulation: recognizing and accepting one's emotions, their intensity, the impulsive actions they lead to, avoidance or suppression, and difficulty calming down. It helps clarify a complaint such as "I can't handle my emotions" and choose which skills to work on first, in CBT as well as in dialectical behavior therapy.
- Number of questions
- 24 questions
- Estimated duration
- 6 minutes
- Language
- English
- Original name
- Emotion Regulation Inventory
- Target audience
- Adults
- Category
- Emotion regulation
- Exploratory questionnaire
- Exploratory questionnaire
Preview of the 24 questions
Scoring & interpretation
Scoring
| Emotional intensity | 11 / 16 |
Emotions that rise quickly and strongly, sometimes over little things, and abrupt mood changes.
Areas to explore: the situations that trigger the strongest surges, how fast the emotion rises, what makes the person more vulnerable (fatigue, lack of sleep, pain, stress).
See also: ERS.
| Recognizing emotions | 10 / 16 |
Difficulty perceiving what one feels, naming the emotion, and understanding what triggered it.
Areas to explore: the emotions the person easily tells apart and those they confuse, body signals, what came before the most recent strong emotions.
See also: TAS-20, LEAS.
| Avoiding or suppressing emotions | 8 / 16 |
Efforts not to feel or not to show one's emotions: masking them, keeping busy, avoiding what might stir them up.
Areas to explore: the emotions hidden and from whom, what the person fears would happen if they showed them, what these efforts cost them (fatigue, distance from loved ones, delayed outbursts).
See also: AAQ-II, MEAQ.
| Acting on emotion | 7 / 16 |
Impulsive actions taken under the influence of a strong emotion and regretted once it has subsided.
Areas to explore: what the person does when the emotion is strong (messages, decisions, spending, eating, alcohol), the consequences, what sometimes helps them hold off.
See also: UPPS.
| Accepting emotions | 6 / 16 |
Judgment of one's own emotions, experienced as excessive, inappropriate, or unacceptable.
Areas to explore: the emotions considered off-limits, the rules about expressing emotions learned in the family, how others react when the person shows what they feel.
See also: DERS.
| Difficulty calming down | 6 / 16 |
A sense of helplessness in the face of a painful emotion and a lack of ways to bring it back down.
Areas to explore: what the person has already tried and what helps a little, how long it takes them to calm down, the people and activities that soothe them.
See also: DERS, DTS.
No validated clinical or psychometric cutoffs have been established for this test yet. The results should therefore be considered exploratory indicators, meant to support the clinical interview, not diagnostic findings.
Scoring
Each statement is scored from 0 (never) to 4 (very often) based on its frequency in everyday life. Each domain combines 4 statements spread throughout the questionnaire, giving a score from 0 to 16.
Reading the profile
There is no total score. Domains are ranked from most to least elevated, each with a description of what it covers and points to explore in the interview. The profile distinguishes awareness of emotions (recognizing them, accepting them) from managing them once they arise (intensity, impulsive actions, avoidance, calming down). A profile dominated by intensity and impulsive actions suggests emotional undercontrol, and a profile dominated by avoidance suggests overcontrol: the two are not worked on in the same way.
Clinical cautions
The questionnaire contains no questions about self-harm or suicidal thoughts, which an emotion experienced as unbearable can lead to. These should be explored in the interview, especially when the "Acting on emotion" and "Difficulty calming down" domains are elevated.
Limitations
This exploratory questionnaire has not undergone psychometric validation and has no cutoffs. It supports the clinical interview and does not provide a diagnosis.
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