Affect is much harder for adolescents to regulate than it is for adults, owing to the particular NeuroDevelopmental changes that are in train during adolescence. Adoelscents are much more easily overwhelmed by the emotional context of their social activities, and once overwhelmed, take longer to settle back to their 'baseline'. See Affect storms.

Regulation of emotional responses occurs via structures in the frontal areas of the brain (see NeuroDevelopmental for details), but when these are inadequate for the task, other methods may be recruited.

Included amongst these is Self Injurious Behaviour, but less dramatic techniques are also used, such as tending to communicate through the mitigated medium of text messaging, or email, rather than face-to-face contact, the use of drugs and alcohol, or more 'healthy alternatives' such as vigorous exercise, etc.

One of the cardinal features of many, if not all of the personality disorders is a pervasive failure to regulate affect in adaptive, effective ways. Mentalization, when working effectively, is a powerful tool in helping to regulate affect, but, equally, it is severely constrained when affect is uncontrolled; you cannot have effective Mentalizing when there is uncontrolled affect.

Aside from the NeuroDevelopmental aspects, Affect Regulation is developed within the context of a secure Attachment Relationship (see Secure Base).