This was a dark day in my pregnancy. I felt horrible, throwing up the whole day. Iād fought with my mom over something I donāt even remember now, but seemed supremely important then. I felt alone and angry.
Then, out of the blue, our usually hyperactive dog came around and hugged me.
I hugged him back and promptly, everything felt better : )
That is the magic of co-regulation, where we use others around us as a crutch to modulate our own nervous system.
Babies learn to regulate- calm down after a cry, shift among states of arousal and rest - by co-regulating with their parents.
As they grow, kids learn self-regulation too. So they can shift gears on their own. But co-regulation is still our most basic way of getting to a better place. And we use it throughout our lives.
Itās been on my mind quite a lot these last few weeks. Iām not sure why. But I know I need to talk about it. These are two of my entwined thoughts on co-regulation:
Co-regulation Works In The Space Between People. Not In The Words Between Them
In med school, I had this ritual of walking out of the hospital through the paediatric ward on hard days. I didnāt know much about co-regulation then, but I did know this worked. Making silly faces with kids put me in a better mood.
Babies give us their wholesome happiness, not sage life advice. Yet, how happy they make us!
Itās the same with animals
See, all the beings who donāt talk at you are better at this!
When weāre in closed off body states (generally every kind of feeling we call ābadā), we are talking āatā people and they āatā us.
Weāre not really open to the words coming in. For all our body knows, we are threatened. And threat is not the time to nit pick flimsy verbal cues. We look for the big things. Like how likely we are to have our throats slit. We decide that by reading the room, not reading isolated words.
That is why the fabric of co-regulation is the non-words, not the words.
Itās Also Why Co-regulation Works Way Better In Person
In physical interactions, we āseeā the other- their gesture, posture, intonation, pace, rhythm, movementā¦We can reach out and touch their arm or defend ourselves if they prove dangerous.
That wayās hardwired into us. The more itās watered down, the more inputs we loose. The more inputs we lose, the more threatened we feel.Ā
We grasp for the missing pieces.
To our bodies - evolved to survive out in a scary, shifty wilderness - a cue not being there could mean it was hidden, could mean it was dangerous.
So we extrapolate and fill the gaps.
Since we have nothing external to work with, we fill them with cues from our own system. Our body, the state of our nervous system, our past experiences with the context of the words and the person uttering them.
We donāt see text as words alone because we canāt. That cue doesnāt exist in our primate brain.
Words donāt exist in vacuum. So we fill in the atmosphere. And this is something most of us donāt consciously know.
That we are in an echo chamber. That the angry voice you read your colleagueās text in, is yours, not his.
Echo chambers strip us of the chance to co-regulate
Theyāre all right when weāre in a calm, curious state. We donāt need help regulating then. Weāre also smarter about interpreting social cues then, so we can make do with lesser information.
But when weāre distressed, things can quickly escalate if we go by disembodied communications, if we rely too much on words and literal language.
Think of all the angry conversations that made you angrier. All the times your sadness turned deeper after talking about why youāre sad.
When weāre agitated, itās best to self-regulate
Read that text after youāve had a chance to become grounded.
If you go the co-regulation route, find a friendly human/ animal whoās physically present with you. Whom you can touch and smell and hug.
If you canāt, choose a mode of communication that gives you access to maximum non-verbal cuesā¦as much of the space among words as possible.
Video convos are second best for me. They strip away some essential stimuli, but preserve a lot more than audio alone.
Text works worst.
Synchronous texting really strains my system if Iām dysregulated. Itās like I canāt seem to find a spaceā¦a chinkā¦. to break free and move along to a better place.
Asynchronous texts are not a great help here. But at least, they give the time and space to respond later, once weāre feeling better.
All That Said, Words Have One Redeeming Power
Occasionally a perceptive statement can make a chink in armour - a gap in the story someone has been getting lost in. And light can come in through that chink.
But even then, the light is the otherās nervous system state we perceive and sync into.
And that is best shared looking into each othersā eyes.
This is hardly a well shaped essay. It has jagged edges. But this is its time to go out into the world.
The well shaping takes a lot longer, and I canāt believe how long I went without knowing this and how much woe it caused me. So if my half-formed essay opens a chink for someone elseā¦
Iām humbled and grateful : )
Quick Life Update
The last month was gloriously unproductive and Iām feeling weirdly happy about it.
Okay, maybe Iām happy about the fact that it doesnāt rile me up the way it used to.
My sleep rhythms were whacked and I hit an energetic trough that made getting things done look like lofty faraway dreams. So I lay in bed, awake into the night, wee hours of morning on some days. My inner children sulked and shouted and called me names as I tried to keep the adulting going. I stuck to a ghost of my yoga routine and thankfully it carried me through the most tiresome days. A few imminent changes-decisions on my mind. I guess they are to blame.
Iām not back to my best, but I feel the wave starting to rise again. So all good. Other than the days getting hotter. Way hotter. That sucks! š„µ
By April, Iāll want to run away. My vagabond instincts always kick up in our hot, humid South Indian summers.
"Making silly faces with kids put me in a better mood."
I felt this same way when I worked with kiddos. Especially when they were having a rough time, making silly faces made them smile/laugh, but I think I got more out of it lol
Happy to hear you had an unproductive month that you enjoyed having!