A Metabolic Theory of Acute Emotion Regulation: The Temporal Constraint Model as a First-Principles Theory of Emotional Dynamics

The "Lab-to-Life" gap—the consistent failure of effortful emotion regulation (ER) strategies during acute real-world emotional outbursts—represents a foundational crisis in psychological theory. We propose the Temporal Constraint Model (TCM) as a first-principles framework, deriving the limits of cognitive control from the metabolic costs of neural computation. We identify an Initial Activation Window (IAW)—the first 2–5 seconds post-trigger—during which an emergency reallocation of metabolic resources transiently suppresses the Central Executive Network (CEN). Drawing on longitudinal observations from a large-scale ecological field implementation ( families), we outline five neurophysical constraints for acute intervention and propose the Immediate-Labeling-as-Return Hypothesis (ILRH). This model provides a falsifiable framework for bridging the gap between top-down psychological constructs and the thermodynamic realities of the human brain.