What we are all getting wrong about nervous system regulation

Nervous System Regulation or some variation of it (regulating, co-regulating, etc?) has become so popular on social media in recent years. There are practitioners that are using social media to bring awareness to this skill that most of us did not learn growing up. 

Even in my work, I often talk about co-regulation and regulating to feel more secure when we are emotionally turbulent. Typically, this is expressed through honoring our emotions allowing our bodies to do the regulating for us rather than trying to mentally regulate/ control our emotions. 

Like anything that gets popular on social media, a lot of nuance often gets lost and when teaching about a topic. With something as important as our mental health, it’s very important that we don’t lose the nuance because it can lead to experiencing more harm than good. 

Social media is great as an introduction to a topic but we have to do our homework. 

Three important nuances to nervous system regulation 

1. Regulation is not appropriate in every moment 
2. Regulation is a result, not the goal itself 
3. There’s something even more important than regulating our emotions 

What gets missed  in the conversation around regulation is that there are prerequisites to regulating ourselves. 

First of all, we need to be taught how to actually regulate/ connect our bodies. Otherwise we won’t know when we are actually regulating. 

Another important element is that our environment/circumstances will determine whether or not we can regulate because if we do not have safety physically or psychologically it’s going to be very difficult for us to regulate ourselves. 

You might be saying “well, I’m regulating so that I feel safe.” Yes- but actually, you’re regulating so that your body feels safe and that requires space to do so. 

If you’re in an active war zone or you’re currently in a traumatic situation, your external circumstances aren’t safe and therefore it’s not appropriate for you to regulate. 

Our emotions are our instincts. If you are in a harmful situation,  different emotions are going to be activated in order to protect you in those moments. 

Experiencing your emotions is more important than regulating and trying to override your emotions is more harmful than good. 

There’s a reason humans have evolved with fight-flight-freeze responses because there are moments in our life where those are the appropriate responses. 

Again, the nuance gets lost in social media because we talk about these as “trauma responses” and yes, there are moments when we have the right conditions and these are still triggered based on unprocessed emotions however, we don’t want to conflate the two. 

Another important thing to remember is that regulation and being regulated is a byproduct of our needs being met.  We are typically seeing regulation and regulating ourselves as the goal in itself.

While there are ways to regulate yourself, it’s also something that happens naturally when you are in a safe environment when your needs are fulfilled.

If you make regulation the goal at all times, what you’re doing is overriding your honest emotions (how your body is trying to communicate with you) in that moment.

We want to listen to our emotions (the third step of The Mighty Emotions Method) to see why this emotion is presenting itself. 

We can also disassociate or connect to our breath temporarily to feel relief but it won’t prevent us from being re-triggered because our emotions are trying to communicate with us.

Rather than engaging in a relationship with those emotions, you’re seeking to ‘regulate,’ i.e., shut them down. 

Sometimes disassociating or regulating and shutting them down is the appropriate response. 

So the nuance there is that it takes time to understand ourselves and develop our self-awareness enough to know when a response is appropriate and when it’s not based on our circumstances. 

We ultimately want to develop this skill of self-awareness so that we’re not as reactive instead of only learning how to regulate when we are in a reactive state or an activated state. 

Lastly, regulation is a byproduct of having our needs met and so understanding what our needs are and how those needs are uniquely satiated for us specifically is going to lead to being regulated naturally. 

The goal should always be to understand ourselves so that we can take care of ourselves and we can get the support that we uniquely need. 

Each of us is born with different temperaments, but we are programmed and conditioned growing up to all behave in the same way and so we all think that we naturally react or respond in the same way when we don’t. 

For example, some people have very high needs for physical connection. Some people don’t have as high needs because they feel connected in other ways. 

If your only goal is to learn how to feel calm, you’re going to miss out on the very important work of understanding what your needs are so that you can take care of yourself.

It is ultimately through meeting your needs that you naturally experience more regulation. 

You naturally have a higher window of tolerance to stress so that things don’t trigger you as quickly or as intensely. 

I do my best to share nuanced information on social media, but given the time limit restrictions and the lack of attention span, it is difficult to express. 

By no means am I saying in this blog post that the people who speak about this issue are doing it incorrectly or that something is wrong with the information that they’re sharing. I just felt like I needed to make this article to highlight some really important nuances when it comes to discussing this work. 

Of course we need to learn how to regulate because there are going to be situations where we need to find our ground and  anchor ourselves. However, it’s not the most important thing to learn and to understand. 

What’s more important to learn and understand is what are your needs and how can you get them met in healthy ways to suit your temperament? 

This understanding of yourself, this self-awareness is going to benefit you immensely regardless of what you’re experiencing. 

If you are at the beginning of your journey with learning how to regulate and understand yourself then please be gentle with yourself because it is a process. It is a journey. It’s trial and error and you will get there. Don’t give up. 

Click here to learn more about how to process your emotions 💚