It’s happening over and over again. Alejandra thought. For the last year, anytime she brought up the topic of moving in with her partner, Luca, he changed the subject or reached for his phone, making excuses about a work email or last-minute text he had forgotten to send. His avoidant behavior continued to hurt her, but after four years together, it didn’t surprise her: It was Luca’s MO to avoid difficult conversations, deflecting or distracting when things got too close. He behaved the same way when she shared her feelings with him, and she could see how much he struggled to communicate his own feelings, especially if they were upsetting. When he felt irritated or sad, rather than expressing what was wrong, he’d usually make passive-aggressive or snarky comments instead.
Though Alejandra loved Luca, his unwillingness to share his emotions, talk about their relationship, or explore difficult topics created a push-pull dynamic between them, with Alejandra always pushing Luca to engage or share, which only caused him to pull away further. When she had first brought up the topic of marriage with him, stating that she wanted it for herself without any direct reference to him, he had immediately changed the subject to a divorced coworker who was now dating much younger women, causing Alejandra to storm out of the restaurant. Maybe, just maybe, she could understand if she had talked about marriage after only six months together, but the conversation had taken place after they’d been dating for more than two years. Two years! she thought. They fought the rest of the night, and the incident created tension between them and touchiness that remained around the entire subject of marriage.
The couple stayed stuck in that cycle for several years, until Alejandra began to regulate her nervous system and break the dysfunctional habits that stemmed its dysregulation. She started to notice how threatened she felt when Luca changed the subject or mentally checked out when she broached any topic related to their relationship or shared her feelings about what was happening between the two of them. Over time, she learned to practice taking slow, deep breaths and feeling her feet firmly grounded on the floor or her body supported by the earth under her. If she struggled to calm herself in Luca’s presence, she’d excuse herself to use the bathroom until she felt grounded enough to reengage, limiting the times she stormed out of his presence or lobbed hurtful accusations at him.
The more compassion Alejandra developed for herself during those difficult moments, the more understanding and compassion she had for others, including Luca. In learning how her childhood trauma continued to activate emotionally immature coping strategies in herself, she began to see how Luca’s upbringing had made upsetting feelings and conversations not only difficult but also frightening for him.
Luca grew up with an academically gifted older brother and a younger sister who was a violin prodigy. As the middle child without an immediately obvious talent, he was both overlooked and criticized by his parents, who often asked him, “Why don’t you do well in school like your brother? Don’t you want to be good at something like your sister?” Luca often felt ignored, discounted, and ultimately unworthy at his core.
Overwhelmed by feelings his parents didn’t help him navigate, Luca started to distract himself in any way he could. At a young age he discovered alcohol, which helped ease the deep pain he felt, especially after he was sexually abused while hanging out with a group of older kids. Despite his increasing need for support, he avoided spending time at home, where he felt the worst about himself around his parents and “perfect” siblings. He started regularly staying out late with friends, partying, and getting into trouble. When his parents tried to talk with him about his low grades or seeming lack of motivation, he tuned them out by turning up the music in his room or made excuses about being hungry or having a headache. In his heart, he wasn’t a deflector or a liar, but his inner child was so hurt that he was willing to do anything to avoid confrontation, criticism, and, ultimately, more humiliation. Feeling unsafe with most types of physical and emotional closeness, he kept his relationships casual to avoid feeling too exposed and activating the deep-rooted shame he inevitably felt as intimacy began to develop.
When Alejandra realized all the ways in which Luca’s past trauma was driving his current behavior, she began to empathize with him rather than getting angry, upset, or hurt when he distracted or deflected during hard moments. She saw that it wasn’t that he didn’t care about her or their future together, as she had previously believed, but that his nervous system was activated, causing him to feel physically threatened and unsafe. He never learned how to navigate or tolerate tough emotions or difficult conversations and was often in Distractor Mode, one of the four common stress responses we explored in chapter 3. Distracting himself was how he had coped with his body’s threat-based state ever since he had been a little boy, and his reaction to Alejandra in such moments had little to do with her and more to do with how his nervous system was wired.
With a growing compassion for Luca, Alejandra was able to use a different approach to these activating interactions. The solution wasn’t to stop having difficult conversations with him; it was important that she express her feelings and desires. But she now knew that timing was everything when she brought up a threatening subject; if Luca’s nervous system was already activated because he’d had a long day, hadn’t slept well the night before, or had recently spoken to or seen his family, he’d likely shut down altogether if she tried to have a conversation that he’d perceive as stressful.
At the same time, no amount of strategic timing could prevent Luca from feeling uncomfortable when the conversation became challenging and from trying to distract himself to avoid physical and emotional discomfort it caused him. Now Alejandra didn’t take his reaction personally. Instead, she brought her nervous system back to safety if she felt activated by his reaction, trying to remain calm while having difficult conversations with him.
Practicing nervous system regulation in real time enabled Alejandra to help them both have tough talks and deeper conversations: she began to co-regulate with Luca, using the safety of her nervous system to help his nervous system relax into safety without saying a word. This is possible because co-regulation, which has been studied for decades by psychologists and developmental specialists, occurs largely through the unseen signals that our body sends those around us.
In moments of acute stress, Alejandra started to attune to Luca when she knew his nervous system was activated. Safely grounded in her body and its calm energy, she could feel his energy shift and notice when he was physically tense, visibly fidgeting, or had turned away from her, all indicators of the beginning of his stress response. In those moments, she would pause and check in with him to see if he had noticed his energy shift, too. If he seemed somewhat open and receptive to sharing, she might even ask how their conversation was making him feel.
At first, Luca struggled to answer those questions, but over time, Alejandra’s ability to help him feel safer allowed him to begin to open up to her. Instead of believing that she was always angry or irritated with him, he started to feel as though she, too, was softening and was even able to understand and be with him in his discomfort. Co-regulating in this way helped both of them create the safety they each individually needed to explore their emotions together and defuse the threat Luca often inherently felt in their conversations.
As time went on, Alejandra began to suggest ways that they could work together to help bring Luca’s body back to safety. During one conversation when he was particularly open and receptive, she suggested that they practice breathwork together by taking five slow, deep belly breaths. Other times, they hugged or put their hands on each other’s heart until they both felt more relaxed. If he began to feel overwhelmed or uncomfortable during those practices, she would suggest that they take a break until they both felt comfortable to begin again.
By practicing co-regulation and beginning to deepen their conversations and increase the security of their connection, Alejandra and Luca were eventually able to create a timeline to move in together that felt safe and doable to each. They set boundaries in advance of living together, which helped them both feel more comfortable with the prospect. Alejandra supported Luca going out every Friday with his friends, since socializing was still a big part of his life, while Luca reserved Saturdays for date nights with her. They compromised that one room in their new place would be entirely his, where he could be as messy as he wanted without her attention or criticism. Five years later, Alejandra and Luca are still living together, sharing deeper conversations and an authentic connection, as they continue to co-create safety when needed.
Co-regulation, as we’ll see in this chapter, won’t solve all your relationship problems. And it won’t help you pry open an emotionally shut-down person; that person has to take responsibility and make a conscious choice to show up differently in the relationship in order to create true and lasting change. But when two people are willing to do a little work together, this practice can significantly shift their relationship dynamics, even those that may have been stuck or dysfunctional for years.
Let’s take a deeper dive.
THE POWER OF CO-REGULATION
Humans are relational beings. It’s part of our evolutionary nature to relate to and connect with other people. We’re part of a complex, communal ecosystem in which we’re physically, emotionally, and neurobiologically reliant on one another. Our social brain is both dependent on and wired by other people in more ways than most of us realize. Throughout our life, the people around us, especially those with whom we spend the most time, impact the health of our nervous system and vice versa.
When two people are in proximity, their bodies communicate directly and continuously with each other, even though they remain physically separated by skin and air. Known as the social synapse, this communication is similar to the way our brain cells “speak” to one another, which is called the neural synapse. In the case of the neural synapse, our neurons send electrical and chemical messages through the gaps between them.
While social interactions include “seen” signals, like words, facial expressions, and sounds, the majority of the way we communicate with one another is through unseen signals that are electrical, biochemical, hormonal, energetic, and emotional in nature, all occurring outside our conscious awareness. Even if we’re not talking, looking, or directly interacting with someone else, our bodies constantly emit hormones, pheromones, electromagnetic energy, and neural impulses that impact each individual’s state of nervous system regulation.
You’ve likely detected these unseen signals if you’ve ever walked into a room and sensed that something was off or wrong with someone else, even if they didn’t explicitly say or do anything to suggest it. You picked up on their nervous system energy and other biochemical and hormonal signals. Or maybe you’ve turned around after feeling someone else’s watchful gaze or attentional presence, only to catch them looking your way, a phenomenon verified by research.47 These unseen signals play a role in creating our instinctual feelings or those that we sense without rational cause.
Many of us react to others based on seen signals—that is, what someone else directly says or does. But we’d be able to reduce far more conflict within our relationships if we started paying attention to their unseen signals as well.
Unseen signals have helped us as humans stay safe for eons, enabling our ancient ancestors to communicate danger to others in the same family or group without having to speak, yell, or make visible or audible gestures that could attract the attention of predators or warring parties. In modern times, unseen signals still serve the same purpose, alerting those around us that danger is imminent or nearby when we don’t feel safe enough to communicate that information directly. Remember, our hearts emit powerful unseen electromagnetic signals that can transmit messages of safety, so much so that playing a parent’s recorded heartbeat to their baby can reduce the baby’s crying by 40 to 50 percent.48
Though unseen signals are evolutionarily advantageous, they don’t always work in our favor when it comes to our relationships. If our nervous system is stuck in a stress response and our heart is emitting stressful or incoherent energy, our body will communicate stress, tension, and danger to those around us, even if the only threat is our stressed body. Whatever the cause, those around us will receive and absorb our stress signals, causing them to feel physically unsafe and possibly activating their own stress response. Then, as in a game of table tennis, we’ll keep lobbying danger signals back and forth, ratcheting up the collective stress level.
Here’s the thing: love has to feel safe in order for us to be open to receiving it. But the reality for many of us is that the only version of “love” we experienced as children did not consistently feel safe. Because trauma bonds are neurobiologically conditioned and familiar, we continue to seek safety in habitual patterns, regardless of how unsafe they continue to make us and those around us feel. With few of us ever feeling peaceful and at ease, we stay stuck in cycles of stress reactivity, often acting like cornered animals with each other, creating or escalating conflict rather than joining together in truly loving and collaborative relationships.
We can, however, begin to harness the power of co-regulation, the interpersonal and physiological process of using the state of our nervous system to connect and shift the physiological state of another’s nervous system. Simply put, we can use our body’s calm and relaxing energy to help the bodies around us to feel more calm and relaxed in our presence.
Let’s say you’re out for a celebratory dinner with your sibling after you just got a promotion when you make a comment that your meal was cold or bland. Your sibling, who picked the restaurant and has been looking forward to taking you out, suddenly feels that you’re criticizing their choice and, fearing that you will be upset the rest of the dinner, starts to act in ways that could end up ruining the night. They freeze up and become quiet, distracted, and uninterested in their food (a common sign of the freeze or shutdown response is loss of appetite because of our slowed digestion).
Though you may not feel that their reaction is justified or even that big a deal, it doesn’t matter to your body; your nervous system will sense their stress, possibly activating your own stress response. You may go into fight mode and get angry at them for “overreacting,” snapping at them to stop being so sensitive. Or you may go into fawn mode and start asking every several minutes if everything is okay, offering to share your dinner, or bringing up subjects that usually excite them. No matter how your nervous system reacts, your body and theirs will continue to volley stress signals back and forth, increasing the overwhelm for both of you, causing your sibling to shut down and withdraw even more and you to dial up your yelling or appeasing. Pretty soon, dinner is unbearable and your night out together is actually ruined.
Practicing body consciousness and co-regulation could have helped you recognize what was happening in real time and possibly change the outcome of the evening. When you first noticed that you were activated at the restaurant—your jaw started to clench, your breath quickened, or your heart began to pound, indicating a fight-or-flight response—you could have taken a few slow, deep belly breaths, turned your attention to the feeling of your feet supported by the floor under the table, and told yourself that you were safe. You could have reminded yourself that your sibling’s learned perfectionism has nothing to do with you and is a stored trauma response and coping strategy developed as their best attempt to stay safe in your overly critical family environment.
By helping yourself feel physically and emotionally safe, you no longer have to become overwhelmed by your sibling’s stress and can avoid your habitual tendency to snap at them or hound them about what’s wrong. Instead, you change the climate of unseen stress signals reverberating around the table, creating physical and emotional safety for you both. Although there are other verbal and physical ways to co-regulate in such a situation (we’ll talk about these later in the chapter), the work described here is all nonverbal.
Don’s experience offers another example of how co-regulation can work. After beginning to work from home during the covid pandemic, Don adopted a new meditation routine. Every day during his lunch hour, he meditated for ten minutes usually alone in his bedroom. One afternoon, though, he decided to meditate in the living room where his toddler son was playing. For the rest of the day and evening, he noticed that his son was calmer and had fewer tantrums. That was when Don decided to experiment and meditate every afternoon near his son, which produced the same results fairly consistently as the boy’s body absorbed his father’s peaceful, calm nervous system energy. When Don added a second short meditation practice before his son’s bedtime, the boy had an easier time falling asleep. If meditation isn’t part of your routine, we can co-regulate with others when engaging in other forms of regulatory behaviors, like gentle stretching, rhythmic swaying, or joyful dancing with them.
It can be particularly helpful to practice intentional co-regulation whenever there’s conflict or tension in a relationship. One partner can suggest to take a pause from the conversation to create safety by doing breathwork together or holding each other until they’re both relaxed. If hugging feels too intimate or uncomfortable, you can hold hands, sit next to each other in silence, or gaze into each other’s eyes.
For many people, touch and direct eye contact can feel unsafe, so it’s helpful to experiment to find what’s most comfortable for you and your loved ones. We’ll continue to explore more ways to co-regulate with others at the end of this chapter.
CO-REGULATION BEGINS IN CHILDHOOD
As infants and young children, we experienced soothing co-regulation if our parent-figures regularly smiled, gave us loving looks, used calming voices, hugged or cuddled us, and were consistently in a parasympathetic state when they interacted with us. When we became stressed or distressed and our nervous system was activated into fight, flight, or freeze or shutdown mode, our parent-figures (often unknowingly) used the safety of their own nervous system to bring ours back to a calmer, more receptive state.
If we experienced consistent moments of soothing co-regulation, we learned over time that we could trust our parent-figures, predicting and relying on their ability to provide us comfort and support. Physiologically, research shows that infants who receive this attunement and emotional security from their mothers have increased vagal tone for up to five years afterward (mothers who co-regulate with their children have better vagal tone, too)49 and young children have lower coristol levels.50
Of course, no parent can be present and attuned to us all the time. Studies show that if our parent-figures co-regulated with us for just 30 percent of the occasions when we needed them, we grew up somewhat regulated or securely attached.51 If they were unable to soothe us during an upsetting experience, initiating a repair process (something we’ll talk more about in the next chapter) after they themselves were regulated increased our chances for a secure attachment. But very few of us received these consistent, soothing co-regulation or needed moments of repair.
Most of us instead grew up without an emotionally attuned parent, and as a result, we never learned to feel truly safe or secure in our body or relationships. Though many of us may have received loving looks and occasional hugs from Mom or Dad, if those looks and hugs went away when there was conflict or other overwhelming emotions in the home, we likely didn’t receive comfort or support when we needed it most. That created fear, confusion, and emotional inconsistency or insecurity for us as children, and, as a result, we never learned how to regulate our own emotions. Today, as adults, we’re likely still emotionally underdeveloped and unable to self-regulate, often reacting to current conflicts, stress, or other emotional upset in the same ways we did as children. Some of us try to avoid conflict and discomfort altogether, sometimes “ghosting” others to flee from any possible upsetting interactions rather than communicating directly. Others sulk and stomp away from conversations when we don’t get our way or fall silent, completely ignoring those around us.
Even the most well-meaning parent-figures who desperately wanted to help us weren’t able to actually soothe us unless their bodies first felt safe to them. When I was young, my mom was rarely able to soothe me because she never felt safe in her pain-ridden body. Instead, I absorbed her dysregulation and cycled through my own nervous system stress responses. Any slight discomfort would immediately throw me into fight-or-flight mode. Without the emotional resilience or tools to cope with this constant physical agitation, I grew up running around the house and “bouncing off the walls,” as my mom described it, trying to discharge my overwhelming energetic discomfort. Looking back, I think that my agitated energy, coupled with the lack of healthy coping tools in my family, was a big reason why I was funneled into countless after-school programs and activities, which were a socially approved, even celebrated outlet for my pent-up energy.
When I wasn’t busy and going seven days a week, as my mom characterized it, I would complain about how bored I was and nag others to play with me. I said it so often that it became a family joke. Sadly for me, none of us knew that for my dysregulated body, “I’m bored” really meant “I’m feeling uncomfortable on my own right now and need to feel connection or support.”
