Co-Regulation

topic

Co-regulation is the neurobiological process through which one nervous system helps regulate another — with calm, attuned, present human presence producing autonomic nervous system calming in a distressed person through the social safety signals of warm eye contact, calm prosody, gentle touch, and regulated breathing that communicate through the vagus nerve's social engagement system that the environment is safe and the nervous system can return to its regulated baseline. Co-regulation is the developmental precursor to self-regulation — the mechanism through which children develop self-regulatory capacity through consistent co-regulatory experiences with attuned caregivers.

Role

Co-regulation is simultaneously the most ancient and most neglected resource for emotional regulation in adult life — with the nervous system remaining throughout the lifespan as responsive to the regulating presence of attuned others as it was during the developmental period when that co-regulation was essential for survival. Most contemporary approaches to emotional management emphasize individual self-regulation while underemphasizing the profound regulatory resource of human presence — when the research shows that social connection and co-regulation consistently produce physiological calming more rapidly and more completely than individual self-regulation strategies alone. The friend who sits with someone in distress, the therapist whose calm presence soothes before any technique is applied, and the partner whose regulated embrace calms a flooding partner are all deploying the most powerful regulation resource available: another regulated nervous system.

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