There’s no self-regulation without co-regulation
Inner work won’t cut it — you need relationships to help you “master yourself.”
Dear Connector,
As a reminder, I’m hosting Communicate Your Way Into Safety workshop on 17th October in Sahara Studio, Edinburgh. This will be a spacious three hours to connect, play AR games, and discover what helps YOU feel safe in connection.
You can book your ticket here.
And if you wonder why this is important… Well, this is what this post is for.
In this society, we’ve got a lot of things backwards — including the idea of what an individual should be able to do on their own. Part of that hype is the urge for everyone to learn how to self-regulate.
Now, I’m not going to say it is not useful. It is. But one thing that’s rarely mentioned is that our ability to self-regulate usually depends on what co-regulating experiences we’ve had in the past.
Self-regulation is a form of self-mastery that comes after meeting the need for food, safety, and belonging. Especially that last one is often ignored in the culture of individualism and “lifting yourself up by the bootstraps.”
The myth of self-sufficiency
John Bowlby, one of the first attachment theorists, once said that “life is best organized as a series of daring ventures from a secure base.” This points to the need for safety as a prerequisite to the ubiquitous “stepping outside your comfort zone.”
These days, lots of people expect themselves to be able to climb to the “top of the ladder” without having their basis covered. All those stories of entrepreneurs eating canned beans and rice while working on their dreams, and then having a breakthrough? That’s bullshit.
I’m not saying it never happened for anyone. I’m saying this isn’t the intuitive order in which most people meet their needs.
But we ignore this. We position human growth and development as the individual responsibility, without contextualizing it. In her article Where were we while the Pyramid was Collapsing? At a Yoga Class, Ruth Whippann writes:
“We have developed a new and pervasive cultural narrative around human wellbeing that has seeped through virtually sections of society. This narrative inverts Maslow’s pyramid, positing self-realization not just as something to pursue when the basic fundamentals are in place, but as a viable alternative to those fundamentals.
We have collectively adopted a kind of neoliberalism of the emotions. Rather than seeing psychological health and flourishing as the result of a basic social contract that aims to provide for all, we are increasingly seeing it as the result of individual effort, divorced from our circumstances or the societies in which we live.”
People feel pressured to master themselves or build a business while living in debt, with unstable pay, no social security, and often — lacking social connection, too. This idea is ingrained in the capitalistic way of thinking, which also translates to our emotional health.
It’s hard for an individual to be healthy in an unhealthy society. Among other things, this means it’s damn hard to be good at self-regulation if you don’t have enough positive experiences of co-regulation.
The link between the self- & the co-
In the top Google search results, the most commonly cited definition of self-regulations seems to be this one — attributed to Marleen Gillebaart by Very Well Mind:
“The ability to control one’s behavior, emotions, and thoughts in the pursuit of long-term goals.”
That’s what I would call a “coaching definition.” In more physiological terms, self-regulation is the ability to bring your own nervous system back to a state of safety after it has been disrupted.
But the new buzzword isn’t self-regulation. It’s co-regulation — and, for a good reason. The relationships in which we can come back to safety are one of the biggest resources we can have to support our wellbeing.
When I think of co-regulation, I don’t need a formal definition. I intuitively know what it means.
It’s when I curl up under a blanket after a stressful day with my partner. It’s when I cry my eyes out and a friend comes to hug me and say it’s going to be alright. It’s when I see a group leader’s composure and emotional stability, and my sense of safety grows because of it.
From the physiological standpoint, co-regulation is attuning your nervous system to another person’s. According to attachment theory, the first person you ever do this with is your attachment figure — usually, a caregiver. They are the one you see as a source of safety and comfort. A baby doesn’t have the tools to bring themselves back to safety. They need a stable adult to learn it from.
Through the process of “rupture and repair,” we learn to move flexibly between different emotions — or, nervous system states. This flexibility is what we call emotional resilience — or, self-regulation skills.
While a lot of our ability to self-regulate comes from our childhood experiences, it’s not determined by it. In her book Polyvagal Exercises for Safety and Connection, Deb Dana explains through the lens of Polyvagal Theory how our ongoing experiences of co-regulation continue to shape us:
“The ability to self-regulate is built on ongoing experiences of co-regulation. Yet, even as we develop self-regulating capacities, the need for social interaction and co-regulation remains throughout our lifetime (…). We depend on the people around us for co-regulation and try to offer experiences of co-regulation in return.”
So much for our self-sufficiency and individual responsibility to “master ourselves.”
How to leverage co-regulation for better self-regulation in adult life
This perspective of interdependency is what we need more of in the conversation about health. Meanwhile, it’s missing from the mainstream.
Even Harvard Health Publishing misses the mark. In their article on self-regulation, they don’t once mention that it’s dependant on the ongoing co-regulation opportunities.
Instead, they cites a host of “tips” for an individual to learn how to manage their own internal states through self-control:
“When you feel upsetting emotions, tell yourself to calm down and think more clearly.
Try to relax by taking deep slow breaths, counting to 10, or taking a walk.
Don’t react until you feel like you have your emotions under control.
Think about responding instead of simply reacting.”
“Tell yourself to calm down and think more clearly”— really? If that was all we needed to do, people wouldn’t be stuck in loops of anxious thoughts and emotional dysregulation.
Here, we’re back to this expectation our culture puts on us. We should be able to “lift ourselves by the bootstraps” and save ourselves from the mental health challenges we experience .
But because these challenges were created in relationship, they need to — and can — be repaired in a relationship. Here, the Polyvagal and Attachment theorists agree:
“Attachment theory hypothesizes that early caregiver relationships establish social–emotional developmental foundations, but change remains possible across the lifespan due to interpersonal relationships during childhood, adolescence, and adulthood.” — Saul McLeod at Simply Psychology
While you’re doing any kind of self-work and engaging neuroplasticity, it’s important to simultaneously engage in social connection that mirror this process. You nervous system needs reinforcement from the outside that new ways of being are welcome in this world.
This is what we’re going to do next week, in Edinburgh, in a workshop that I’m hosting for the first time. Come join and…
A bit more personal context…
For me, The Salisbury Centre has been the co-regulating environment for close to three years now.
It’s been my housemate Susannah who extended countless invitations to calming platonic touch that allowed my body to co-regulate first, self-regulate second.
It’s been a group of friends that nourished a culture of welcoming different feelings in social situations, rather than perpetuating the norm to always say “I’m fine.” In birthday celebrations, we’d sing the awkward “All-emotions-are-welcome birthday to you” instead of “Happy birthday to you.”
It’s been a community that welcomes people of different abilities and health levels, and from different walks of life.
It’s been a workplace that puts wellbeing before productivity.
I had been doing self-work in the form of meditation, therapy, breathwork, and other “healing modalities” for seven years before living at The Centre. To some extent, they helped. But from where I stand today, I can see it was the power of being with safe people in a safe environment that did the job.
I’m a more resilient individual now, and that’s only partly because of the work I’ve done on the inside. A bigger part of that change was the environment, friendships, and community that offered ample occasions for co-regulation.
Looks like a great workshop! Important topic as well. I see a lot of value in what you are saying about the need for co-regulation. We are in a tough place in this culture that still mainly views the individual as a separate entity, a “buffered self,” as Charles Taylor calls it, which is constantly reinforced by media and those around us. Yet, our best science states now that the self is truly a dialogical, relational construction (nevermind that many millennia old wisdom traditions have always held this view), and there is ample evidence which shows that we solve problems best when we work together to solve them. For instance, an individual has about a 10% success rate solving logic problems, by themselves, yet with the introduction of another person into the task, that success rate jumps to over 80%! This culture of buffered self seems to be one of the chief impediments to actual development as you point out so aptly, and agree, how can we even begin to be healthy if our health requires us to be in deep contact with others, emotionally, logically, and every other which way, if our sense of self is actually co-created with others in genuine connection and dialogue! I’m intrigued by the polyvagal theory you mention and can’t wait to dive into it! Thanks for your important article! And good luck with the event!