The Astounding Power of Co-Regulation

Have you ever been around someone who is a nervous wreck and found yourself taking on their anxious state? 

Or, perhaps, you spent time with a grounded friend and experienced yourself dropping into a feeling of well-being? If so, you have had an experience of our emotional influence on one another!

Co-regulation refers to the reciprocal sending and receiving of signals of emotional safety. With this positive feedback loop, you can learn to benefit from another person’s nervous system to help regulate your nervous system.

Attachment Science and Oxytocin

John Bowlby, the father of Attachment Science, revolutionized the understanding that humans come into the world primed for social bonding, biologically ready to connect to attachment figures.

Since Bowlby’s discovery, we also know about oxytocin — the hormone that has come to be known as the ‘bonding hormone’ between mothers and newborns.

Fascinating findings show that the higher the oxytocin levels in a mother while pregnant, the more bonded she is to that child in the first years of life. Just after birth, when a mother and child have skin-to-skin contact, oxytocin surges through both, further solidifying their bond. 

These oxytocin spikes happen in various ways: through eye contact, soothing voice tones, and safe, inviting gestures. Also included are shared emotional states of warmth, openness, curiosity, and acceptance. 

The Still Face Experiment

Dr. Edward Tronick of the University of Massachusetts Boston’s Infant-Parent Mental Health Program created a phenomenal mother-infant experiment in 1975 that advanced our understanding of the importance of co-regulation from the start.

In The Still Face Experiment, an engaged mother suddenly withdraws interaction with her child and becomes non-responsive. We see repeated attempts of the child to re-engage the mother and the alarms that go off for the child when their efforts fail.

Without a reparative experience by the mother, the child’s distress continues, and their sense of agency diminishes.

Tronick’s findings have led to widespread application, which includes a prediction of child behavior and an exponentially greater understanding of the origins of relational trauma.

The Vagus Nerve and Your Social Engagement System

Dr. Stephen Porges, a renowned neuroscientist, brought another angle to understanding co-regulation with the development of the Polyvagal Theory. 

With Porges’ understanding of the vagus nerve, the autonomic system evolved to include not only the sympathetic fight or flight system, but also, the parasympathetic system — the calming part of your nervous system that provides for your social engagement system. 

Porges made sense of attachment from the perspective of your nervous system and your need for a safe emotional connection.

We, humans, are social creatures; your ventral vagus nerve wires you for social engagement as part of your survival system — positive connections to other people and your environment help you feel grounded and safe.

As the vagus nerve of your social engagement system sends signals of safety, you can calm down.

Bonding in Partnerships

No doubt, in intimate partnerships, the signals of your ventral vagus nerve are essential for the creation of a safe connection from which you can thrive. 

Research conducted using Sue Johnson's Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) for couples demonstrated the astonishing power of a loving, secure bond. Couples who were initially unhappy were part of a clinical trial.

The researchers asked the woman to take an fMRI scan, telling her that when she saw an 'X,' a shock to her ankle would follow. Neither a stranger nor her husband holding her hand was a buffer from the shock.

After EFT therapy, where the couple established a safe, loving connection, the woman again entered the fMRI scan. This time, with her husband holding her hand, the shock sensation faded, and the strength of their secure, loving bond remained in the foreground.

Indeed, a safe connection serves as a buffer through life's challenges!

Co-Regulation Throughout Your Life

Furthermore, social engagement and co-regulation are operative and impactful in many of your interactions, even those that are less foundational.

Research findings show that when doctors treat patients with the flu with warmth and kindness, they recover faster than patients who are the recipients of dry, impersonal interactions. 

It makes sense that warmth and kindness create a foundation of safety, within which you do not need to put energy into defending yourself.

Your physiological and metabolic resources can be put into healing rather than defending.

Co-Regulation Precedes Self-Regulation

Bowlby’s, Tronick’s, and Porges’ work lead to the critical, pivotal conclusion that co-regulation precedes self-regulation.

From birth, we have a biological expectation to be met by a regulated human being.

The fulfillment (or lack of fulfillment) of attachment needs impacts not only childhood but your entire life.  

There is a correlation between your previous emotional experiences with a dependable caregiver and your ability to self-regulate. 

It’s also possible that your self-regulation results from the tenacity with which you have actively sought out reparative co-regulation.

Co-regulation and Trauma

Porges defines trauma as a ‘chronic disruption of connection.’ 

In relational trauma, interruptions, sometimes outright failures, occur in the reciprocal feedback loop of healthy relationships.

Without childhood co-regulation with a caregiver, we attempt to self-regulate, but it comes from survival efforts rather than from an experience of safety.

If a caregiver feels dangerous or unpredictable, we move into self-protection and operate from the sympathetic, fight/ flight part of the nervous system. From a more driven stance, an ‘I’m going to make it through’ white-knuckled adaptive survival response, it’s hard to make a genuine connection. Instead, it becomes an attempt to find a replacement for the experience of co-regulation. 

You can reach out to others from a socially engaged, ventral vagal position– from a safe place. 

Connecting your nervous system to other systems that offer signals of safety allows you to thrive.

Healing Trauma—What You Can Do

If you did not have adequate co-regulation from your caregivers, what can you do to heal?

You can start with awareness of your own experience of relating to others.

Our nervous systems are continuously gathering information. You can listen to your body to hear cues of safety when they are present, tracking your bodily experiences like heart rate, breathing, and muscle tension.

You can also notice when you feel most like yourself and gravitate toward those people and situations that support emotionally safe conditions.

Even with professional contacts — your doctor, dentist, etc. — you can intentionally gather people around you who offer reciprocal interaction and a feeling of relative safety.

Challenges on the Road to Healing

With developmental trauma, you might run into shame, guilt, and experiences of fight/ flight/ freeze behaviors when you’d like to be socially connected.

You might find yourself overly defensive, avoidant, or shut down when a better part of you wants to be engaged and connected. This dynamic can be perplexing and challenging to sort out by yourself.

Take the Next Step

You can seek the help of a therapist who understands your built-in biological need for co-regulation.

AEDP (Accelerated Experiential Dynamic Psychotherapy) is a therapy based on Attachment Theory. AEDP supports the healing of relational trauma for individuals and can help you to create corrective emotional experiences.

Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) for couples will support you in building a secure bond, with a lasting foundation for your relationship.

Please reach out if you’d like to supercharge your ability to heal relational trauma — you can heal!