Background <p>Emotional regulation disorders play a&#xa0;central role in the development and maintenance of mental illness. As women overall have a&#xa0;higher prevalence of mental illnesses and utilize psychotherapeutic treatment more frequently, the question arises as to the importance of gender in emotional regulation.</p> Aim of the study <p>The aim of this study is to explore whether and to what extent women and men differ in clinically relevant strategies for regulating their emotions.</p> Material and methods <p>The study included 905 female and 441 male patients from a&#xa0;psychosomatic clinic. Data were collected using the “Questionnaire for assessing emotional experience and emotion regulation (Benecke 2008)”, which records emotion regulation strategies that are important from a&#xa0;psychotherapeutic perspective. The data analysis was performed using multivariate methods.</p> Results and conclusion <p>The results show that women and men have more similarities than differences in their emotion regulation. Significant differences only occurred in individual strategies (physical expression of feelings, spontaneity, use of physical signals to understand one’s own emotions, search for social support and pattern reflection) and were consistently associated with small effect sizes.</p> <p>This suggests that gender plays only a&#xa0;minor role in emotion regulation in everyday clinical practice. For practical purposes, the findings suggest that therapy should be tailored to the individual rather than to gender.</p>