Co-regulation— the missing link
Exploring the magic and power of co-regulation, where one calm enough nervous system calms that of another. Plus, why your attempts at self-care may not be working and what to replace it with instead.
When it comes to mental health, wellbeing, and the fields that help us live healthier lives, sometimes I wonder if we’ve lost the plot.
In self-help and wellness spaces I’m noticing an emphasis being placed on personal responsibility (awesome!), self-development (cool!), and self-care (great!). While these things are all worth pursuing and have merit on their own and as a whole, sometimes I wonder if we focus on them too much. I wonder if we focus on them at the expense of focusing on the bigger picture— which is that we are a social species. We need relationship skills and relational healing too.
Lately I’ve been wondering if wellness culture has an unhealthy obsession with the Self. If our self-healing work doesn’t make us better partners, friends, family members, colleagues, and community members, then what is our deeper healing work really for? In other words, what is self-development if you have no one to share the life you’ve worked so hard for? How can you take responsibility for your healing and growth if those around you are committed to their same patterns?
I don’t have any concrete answers to these questions, but I do have some thoughts on what I think wellness culture has been missing.
The missing link
From the moment we are born, we rely on a caregiver for survival. We are born dependent on our caregivers for external regulation. External regulation refers to our literal need for an outside person to do our internal regulation work for us. External regulation is the blueprint we use to become emotionally available and socially viable for co-regulation. Through co-regulation, we can use our own calm nervous system to help someone else calm theirs. In today’s culture, with a drastic decline in our collective social health, we are severely lacking in opportunities for co-regulation. Co-regulation is the missing link.
Our nervous systems are incredibly wise in that they rely on cues from the environment to determine how to react, respond, think, feel, and behave. Our nervous systems match and sync up with those around us. As tiny humans, we learn to experience our emotions and learn about relationships through co-regulation. We can feel calm when we are shown what calm feels like.
Co-regulation is a biological imperative
Co-regulation is an essential component of relationships. In other words, our species developed the ability to help other members of our species become calm, focused, soothed, and in control. In that regard, co-regulation is a biological necessity. Through the power of co-regulation, we have the ability to reduce the stress of those around us. This is not a cognitive process. Co-regulation occurs through the felt sense. Co-regulation gives us a felt experience of safety by offering us a safer opportunity for connection.
And here’s where the magic comes in. Our nervous systems are wise in that co-regulation is literally contagious. The felt experience of co-regulation enables each of us to learn how to self-regulate. Yes, that’s right! Co-regulation is a pre-requisite for self-regulation. Therefore, in order to master our own self-regulation, we must first master this in connection with someone else. This is why I worry that an over-emphasis on the Self is not actually helping the people who are struggling.
When co-regulation is absent
It should be said that co-regulation doesn’t happen to the same degree for everyone. When co-regulation doesn’t happen at all, we sometimes override, disregard, or miss out on our natural need for closeness by relying on our own resources to help us feel safe. In doing so, we teach our nervous systems that relationships (with people, pets, a hobby, or nature) are not reliable sources of co-regulation and attunement. This is how some people learn to become overly self-sufficient and hyper-independent.
In the absence of co-regulation, all future attempts at self-regulation are survival responses. Let me slow this down for us. If you’ve never experienced what true co-regulation feels like, it is likely that our future attempts at regulating our own nervous system will be from a place of survival instead of coming from a place of true self-regulation. This is how attempts at self-care and self-regulation fail; in the absence of co-regulation, self-regulation is ineffective.
Some of us have also had to learn how to soothe ourselves from a place of distress and survival (survival soothing) versus learning to feel soothed by caregivers, co-regulation, and connection. Some of us learned that the safest option for us to become regulated enough is to do it by ourselves. This results in a nervous system trained to mistrust the safety available in secure and well-meaning relationships.
The Mathematics of Co-regulation
When kids are surrounded by dysregulated adults, their nervous systems tend to match the energies they’re around. Kids have a much harder time regulating their own emotions, thoughts, and behaviour when they are surrounded by the dysregulated adults. Put simply: Kids cannot regulate themselves when they are surrounded by dysregulated adults. Here’s how this happens:
If we have not been shown how to regulate ourselves through a felt experience we have a much more difficult time doing it in adulthood. In order to effectively regulate our own emotions, we have to first know what it feels like.
As I mentioned before, co-regulation is a prerequisite for self-regulation. In order for kids to develop the skills required for self-regulation (also called self-soothing or auto-regulation), they have to know what it feels like through experience. Some kids, and especially those surrounded by dysregulated adults, don’t consistently receive this essential prerequisite for self-regulation — a safe, calm, and attuned nervous system to help them regulate, calm down, or de-stress.
As shown in the image above, the presence of dysregulation will produce a dysregulated child, except in the presence of a regulated adult.
A regulated adult plus a regulated child will result in a regulated child.
A regulated adult plus a dysregulated child will result in a regulated child.
A dysregulated adult plus a dysregulated child will result in a dysregulated child.
A dysregulated adult plus a regulated child will result in a dysregulated child.
With that in mind, it is important to remember that the presence of dysregulation is contagious, except when an adult nervous system is used to overpower, override, and overpattern the dysregulation of a child.
When kids are surrounded by dysregulated adults, dysregulated peers, or any chaotic and high pressure environment for that matter, they have a much harder time responding in a clear, rational, balanced, and calm manner. One of the most effective ways we can help kids become calm or stay calm is by being aware of our own emotions and modelling a calming emotional response to events and situations.
And this is not just true of kids. Dysregulation is contagious because we need to maintain the ability to adapt to our environment, even if dysregulation leads to dysfunction. Since dysregulation is contagious for our nervous systems, as adults we must do our best to soothe ourselves so kids can learn how to do it too.
In relationships, in families, and at work, there are two different roles we can fall into: co-regulators and co-escalators.
Co-regulators are those who set a calm tone. They make people feel joyful, safe, and help others lower their levels of stress. Their calm presence makes others feel calm. Their own self-regulation offers a sturdy nervous system which others use to regulate themselves.
Co-escalators are those who ramp up the stress and create a culture of worry, hurry, alarm, and overwhelm. Their stress makes others stressed. Their escalation causes others to escalate.
It is both the absence of co-regulation and the presence of co-escalation that increases our stress response, resulting in our own stress escalation. In intense environments, co-regulation is highly sought after. Without it, we are prone to distress, panic, burnout, loneliness, and social unhealth.
If we can’t figure out this missing link and get a handle on co-regulation, our social health will continue to decline. The good news is that it just takes one calm nervous system.
If co-regulation feels confusing, weird, or unattainable, there is still hope. Find the calm nervous systems in your life and practice receiving the co-regulation they offer.
We don't just need co-regulation as kids— we need it as adults too.
Jake