🔼: [[💡 Emotional Regulation]], [[⭐️ Community Care]] #### ⭐️ Co-Regulation “Co-Regulation” is trauma parlance or “therapy speak” for finding comfort in company, it’s what happens when we feel settled and safe in the presence of another. It can look like showing up for and supporting people through emotional challenges or being shown up for. It’s what children do when they run back to their caregivers when something scary happens. It’s what we do when we come home and relax with our pets. It’s [[💡 Emotional Regulation|Emotional Regulation]] in connection with others, a form of [[⭐️ Community Care]]. > [!NOTE] > Never in my life have I asked someone to “co-regulate” with me — I dislike this term for its clinical slant and dehumanizing focus on “nervous system regulation,” but I haven’t yet come up with another. Co-regulation is foundational to [[🕯️ Self-Regulation]]. We learn to [[🕯️ Tending to feelings|🦮 feel through our feelings]] by being emotionally supported by our caregivers and people who love us from the moment we’re born, though many of us didn’t get enough of it. The more experience we have with Co-Regulation, the easier [[🕯️ Self-Regulation]] becomes. That said, [[🔑 We need each other|🔑 we all need co-regulation]] sometimes, especially (though not exclusively) when we’re struggling or hurting. ###### Keys - [[🔑 Emotional Suppression is often mistaken for Care]] - [[🔑 Care, Maintenance, and Regulation can overlap and synergize]] - [[🔑 All Emotional Regulation is Co-Regulation]] - [[🔑 Emotional Regulation is not the end goal]] - [[🔑 We need each other]] - [[✍️ The Myth of Self-Reliance]] - Loving relationships are a form of [[⭐️ Self-Care]] ###### How to Find It Most of the time, co-regulation is something that happens on its own when we’re connecting with others we feel safe enough with. It doesn’t have to be “a thing,” it can just be “spending time with a friend or other comforting presence.” It comes from just living. ”Oh hey, I can see your face or hear your voice or hug you and now I feel safe enough to voice and feel what I’m feeling. And now I feel better, less alone, and more like myself.” If we've been through [[💡 Trauma|Trauma]], it’s normal to have [[💡 Parts|Parts]] who fear that other people and [[☀️ Vulnerability|vulnerability]] are dangerous. The number of people who feel comfy to us might be quite small. But we only need a ‘safe enough’ person — friends, family, coworkers, a therapist or practitioner, even strangers. Or even [[Animal Companions]], plants, wildlife in the [[⭐️ Outdoors]] like birds and trees. We can find comfort in the company of untouched nature. --- People may be inconsistently willing or available to be with us, so it's a good idea to have a [[⭐️ Community]] of people we can turn to, even if it’s just two or three. It can be helpful to spend time with people (even strangers) and pay attention to the way we feel around them, observe the qualities of other people whose presence we enjoy, how we feel when we’re together and apart. We can start to notice what people and places soothe us and which bring us more stress or which make it more difficult to be ourselves, which move us toward [[💡 Burnout|Burnout]], and then adjust accordingly. ###### See Also - [[🕯️ Resourcing]] [^1]: