No one has ever given me a map of how the human nervous system works in different moments of our life. Especially in moments when things are most difficult and I’d have appreciated it the most. Over the last couple of years, I’ve had a chance to get closer and closer to a sense of what that map might look like. And I’d like to share it with you!
From a scientific perspective, there are 3 ways that we can move through a stressful or difficult experience or day. These are the 3:
- auto-regulation
- co-regulation
- self-regulation
Let’s take a look at each of these and see how to best use them for your own inner awareness and sense of wellbeing. If you’d like to learn more about the internal brain workings from the research I’m describing below, you can read my earlier article on brain facts or look up “The Polyvagal Theory” by Stephen Porges as well as “In an Unspoken Voice” by Peter Levine.
My experience has been that the more access we have to self-regulation, the more connected, alive and ultimately fulfilled we will be in our lives. While all 3 are important functions of our nervous system, only the 3rd option fundamentally changes our programming and relationship to our environment. So if you’re looking for change, skip to self-regulation below.
1.) Auto-regulation: The strategies you fall back on when things get tough
The first method to finding your center again after you feel stressed, angry, sad or tired is what scientists call auto-regulation. Auto-regulation means that you’re following largely unconscious behavior patterns that you’ve adopted as a habit over time. One thing that defines auto-regulation in some ways is that there’s little choice, you’re simply falling back on old patterns that help you cope.
That doesn’t mean that they are bad! It simply means that you are following your brains implicit memory patterns. Here’s a list of auto-regulation patterns that are common. See if there are any among them that you identify with:
- Eating a chocolate bar
- Taking a hot shower
- Having a drink
- Snorting cocaine
- Watching a movie or videos on Youtube
- Going for a run
- Taking a walk in nature
- Working out
- Watching pornography
- Playing online chess (oddly specific, this is a big one for me)
Of course, there are many, many more auto-regulation patterns in the world. Looking at this list, my own takeaway is twofold:
- First, all of our auto-regulatory behavior is well intentioned. Whether it is taking drugs or going for a walk in nature. We do all and any of these behaviors solely to help us feel more at ease and less stressed.
- Secondly, you will notice that the long-term consequences of these behaviors differ. And some, although learned as unconscious patterns, don’t bring the long-term relief we’re looking for. It’s been documented for example that your sense of feeling depressed, although temporarily numbed, goes up after the effect of a couple of drinks wears off.
How to make auto-regulation your friend
See if you can identify any auto-regulation behaviors in your life and make a list of them. Then see, which of them are the ones that are the most beneficial to you. For myself, I sometimes take a hot shower when I’m feeling not so great, and sometimes I like to eat (lots!) of candy. I’d argue the first one has slightly better consequences than the second.
After you’ve made the list, and I think this is the most important step, see if it’s possible for you to acknowledge to yourself that all of these behaviors are intended to help you. Having compassion for each and everyone on the list may be hard. But if you embrace it and can see that they all are really there to support you, working with them and maybe changing some in the long-term will be much easier.
Next, see if you can deepen and expand those auto-regulatory behaviors that you feel are most beneficial to you. For example I would often use pornography to auto-regulate and occasionally go for a walk in nature near my house. By acknowledging both as important patterns to help and soothe me, I made an intention to go for walks more often, as that had more long-term positive effects for me than watching pornography. That allowed my patterns to shift slowly, I didn’t beat myself up so much after watching porn and I felt like I was overall embracing myself and my needs, especially in times when I didn’t have enough cognitive resources to make decisions.
Caveat: I believe we need auto-regulation patterns
For a part of my life, especially when I lived in a buddhist monastery, I tried frantically to stay conscious and aware of all of my behavior all the time. That works for a while until I got tired and let my mind and body drift off and do whichever habits come into my mind. That was a very painful cycle of effort and disappointment. Today, I like to welcome my auto-regulatory patterns that kick in, whenever I’m too tired or something difficult has happened and I want to feel better. This alone created a huge shift in my experience of more well-being and sanity.
2.) Co-regulation: To seek out connection with another human
As mammals we have evolved over millions of years to live together in groups of varying shapes and sizes. It was a fundamental survival mechanism for us to not be alone. A lot of scientific evidence points towards the fact that it was because of our capacity to collaborate and be together we could evolve to the level of intelligence we are at today.
This is no different when it comes to stress and difficult experiences. As we can observe with most toddlers, whenever something difficult or stressful happens to them, the first thing they do to regulate is to turn to their caregiver. They know instinctively that a warm embrace, soothing words, stroking of the hair is what they need right now.
As adults, we are no different from these toddlers from a behavior perspective. Only our patterns have shifted a bit. Here’s a list of common co-regulation patterns that we might see among humans:
- Cuddle with a loved one
- Go to dinner with a friend
- Calling your parents or a trusted person
- Go to the movies with your friends
- Play a group sport activity
- Grab a drink with your colleagues after work
How to make co-regulation your friend
The advice here is very similar to auto-regulation above. Any and all of our co-regulatory behaviors are intended to help us, to destress and to allow us to find our balance and sense of wellbeing again. And yet, as I’m sure you can see from the list above, some of these patterns are more desirable from a long-term perspective than others. Although having a group of drinking buddies can be genuinely helpful, expanding that pattern to badminton buddies may prove more beneficial in the long-term for example.
The trick to me personally is not to abandon any or all of these patterns immediately as you discover them. Instead, see if you can bring more awareness to them as you find yourself flowing through them. If possible, with a sense of curiosity and wonder, that sounds something like “oh, interesting, I’m noticing I’m really looking forward to cuddling with my partner tonight as I’m thinking about this stressful day.”. This will allow you to deepen those patterns that really correspond and help you hold the difficult experiences. And to slowly change the ones that aren’t as beneficial.
Caveat: Most men I know struggle with co-regulation (except for sports)
If you’re a man (like me, I should add!), it’s likely that co-regulation was only available to you in a very limited way: drinking, playing video games or sports where those co-regulatory patterns I was taught that were most prevalent. And yet, research shows that some of the most effective co-regulatory patterns are those that include physical touch and other forms of tenderness. Personally, being able to see cuddling as a wonderful way to engage with my partner, destress from the day or a difficult experience was very scary at first. Even more so, it was almost embarrassing and not quite available to me as an option in the first place.
As I learned and eased my way into it slowly, it became more and more of a resource, although sticking with my old patterns for a while as I built up new ones like cuddling was crucial.
3.) Self-regulation: Restoring goodness in yourself with wide-reaching, positive consequences
The 3rd way that we can find our way back to feeling happy and alive after something difficult or stressful happened to us is self-regulation. Self-regulation, different from auto-regulation, stands for a conscious being with our difficult experience that transforms the underlying patterns profoundly. I’ll write more about the neuroscience of self-regulation soon, but you can read about the most important brain facts I wrote about before.
To give you a better idea, here’s a list of common self-regulation patterns we can work with:
- Journaling
- Meditation, yoga (caveat alert!)
- Talking to a therapist
- Talking about what happened with a trusted friend
- Doing an emotional resilience session (this is my work these days!)
- Dreaming
Self-regulation differs from auto- and co-regulation. First, just like the first two points, it helps us to regulate and come into a sense of presence and wellbeing again. Secondly, it also transforms and changes the underlying pattern that made us stressed or triggered in the first place. Knowing that is huge I believe and has become a big source of joy and connection for me over the last few years since I discovered this.
A short story of self-regulation:
You’ve just got home from a long day of work. You feel tired and your shoulders are still very tense from that meeting with your manager talking about some feedback on your last project. You feel kind of bummed out and since you learned a bit about self-regulation, you try to bring this point to your most empathetic friend Ash to talk it through. Ash’s also learned a lot about self-regulation and knows how to give you the empathy you need as you’re working your way through the story.
Slowly but surely, as you’re reflecting on what happened, the tense shoulders, the fear and anxiety in the meeting, the fogginess in your brain, something else emerges. Not only does there seems to be a sense of order to your feelings of overwhelm and tension, an old image of the past is coming back too. You’re about 7 years old and see yourself sitting in your chair in 1st grade in school. You had just finished your very first test and the teacher was handing out the graded papers. As the teacher turned to you, they handed you back your test with the words “Didn’t go very well, huh? Maybe study more next time.” with an expression on their face that triggers shame and disappointment for you.
With your friend Ash’s help you slowly separate your adult-self from your 7-year-old self and give it the love and affection it wanted in that moment. Tears start flowing down your eyes as your body is able to release and let go of the old shame and disappointment it was never able to make sense of. The feedback from your boss on the project all of a sudden seems a lot less scary and you realize that much of it was in fact quite helpful and you agree with it. Your whole body sensations have changed and turned into a warm, easeful and restful state.
This story can of course unfold by ourselves in a meditation, through journaling, with a therapist or sometimes even in a dream where we transform a difficult memory or experience that way. In many moments when we talk about “stress” or a difficult experience from the past, we’re talking about something similar to the story above. There’s a deeper layer to what created our feelings and sensations. And often only by going to that deeper layer can we truly not just feel better again, but also not feel the same way when a similar trigger happens in the future.
The more self-regulation moments we encounter in our lives, the more space, the more ease and the more flow we get to experience. This is because less and less experiences will cause the deep amount of stress, anxiety and anger connected to the underlying, old pains from the past.
Caveat: Mediation and yoga is auto-regulatory for most, but can be used as self-regulation
The topic of meditation is an important one I believe, because more and more people are becoming interested in the benefits of mindfulness, yoga and similar practices. For most people and in most circumstances, I’d categorize it as auto-regulation. Meaning that breathing exercises or gentle body movements like Yoga restore our goodness and wellbeing momentarily. Only rarely do they touch on the deeper seated pains and difficulties of our past that I talked about in the example above.
The reason I think this matters is because many people seek out meditation to some extent to heal deeper pains and wounds. In my experience, without some guidance and support, this however rarely happens. In fact, I’ve met buddhist monks who have meditated sometimes for 10-20 years several hours daily, who have barely touched any of their deeper emotional wounds. My sense is they have a great auto-regulatory tool, however little emotional transformation of their habits and patterns. Understanding the difference is important I think because it allows us to be honest with ourselves, our intentions and our experiences.
How to have more self-regulation in your life
My personal experience with self-regulation is that it is most effective with a trusted, skilled friend who has some experience in empathy or with a therapist. This is because going into the deeper, alienated spaces within ourselves can be a tricky journey at times. I certainly got lost many times trying to do it alone. I like to compare it to climbing Mount Everest. We may be able to do it alone, but doing it with a guide has much higher chances of success. My own personal journey has also led me to offer support for self-regulation to anyone interest by way of the emotional resilience sessions that I’m holding. Feel free to reach out if you’re interested in that!
Over to you! What has worked for you from any of the ideas above here? I’d love your take on how the idea of regulation and it’s different forms concerning the human body lands for you.
Leo Widrich
I'm the Co-founder of Wild Life, an honest community & retreat center forming in the green hills in Central Europe near a beach. In the past I worked as a coach and software entrepreneur.
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