As a Certified Synergetic Play Therapist, I facilitate a type of therapy that helps kids “re-wire” their neural pathways, so they feel more confident in managing emotions, challenges, and, well, all of this [frantically gesturing at the messy world around us].
A big part of that is supporting kids (and parents!) in regulating their nervous system. The term “regulate” has become a bit of a buzzword, and you may feel confused about what it actually means. Many of us have learned to view “regulated” as “calm,” and we may believe that if we’re not calm all the time, something’s wrong with us. We may consider nervous system activation as a problem that needs to be fixed with “coping strategies” so we can get back to “normal.”
But that pressure can actually add to our overwhelm and anxiety in moments of stress or big feelings—and it can make regulation feel like just another task on the seemingly endless to-do list of being a human.
What’s helped me better understand regulation is viewing it as less of a job to do, and more of an invitation to tune into myself and my needs in the current moment. It’s a practice that requires “being with” myself and my distress before I can “do” anything about it. By paying attention to and getting curious about my current experience, I can then take action to support myself.
Finding felt safety
There’s a good reason why it can feel challenging to be with our inner experience in moments of activation. When we perceive that we’re in danger (whether or not we actually are), our nervous system initiates different stress responses in our body in order to protect us. During this process, we’re disconnected from our prefrontal cortex—our “thinking brain.” Instead, our nervous system gets hijacked by our amygdala, or our “survival brain,” which is focused on doing whatever it needs to do to keep us safe.
In order to engage in coping strategies that involve planning, problem solving, and perspective-taking, we need to be able to use our “thinking brain”—but we won’t have access to it until our “survival brain” realizes we’re not in danger, and we experience felt safety (not just actual safety—we have to really FEEL that we’re safe).
A lot of factors can impact our sense of felt safety—from bodily needs like hunger and fatigue, to trauma history, to sensory challenges. For kids and adults alike, coregulation and connection can be a powerful source of felt safety. After all, our ancestors depended on the support, protection, and resources of the group to survive, and we still do in many ways.
If we experienced consistent coregulation thousands of times as a child—from a caring adult who was able to reflect, understand, and guide us through our distress—those moments have formed neural pathways that help us find our way back to felt safety as an adult. We have internalized that coregulation as a template for self-regulation.
If we didn’t experience that kind of coregulation as a child, it’s likely we’ll have no idea how to be with ourselves in moments of activation. So in addition to seeking out coregulation now as an adult, we can benefit from learning how to offer felt safety to ourselves.
Pausing, acknowledging, and validating the emotions and anxiety we’re experiencing when we’re activated can have the same comforting and stabilizing effect as coregulation from a person we trust. With practice, this kind of self-attunement can provide enough felt safety to bring us back to our “thinking brain.”
Practicing self-attunement
Self-attunement is a fancy way of saying that we’re noticing what we’re experiencing and then we’re responding to it in a way that encourages felt safety.
Think of the way we “attune” to babies when they’re upset: first, we notice they’re crying. Then, we move toward them, perhaps talking to them or picking them up. We try to meet their needs, even if we’re not quite sure what they are, by rocking them, soothing them, and responding to their distress with our words, expressions, presence, and actions.
With self-attunement, we’re the baby in distress. We’re regulating ourselves by noticing and responding to our own needs.
Often, I work with parents who want their kids to learn and use coping strategies to manage their emotions and stress. And this is a really important aspect of self-regulation! However, kids won’t be able to use coping skills effectively—they won’t know what they need, or when—without learning how to self-attune first, to notice and be with the discomfort, anxiety, and big feelings that come up when their nervous system is activated.
To do this, they need the support of a regulated adult as they get to know their inner experience during challenging moments. This is why the first stage of the Synergetic Play Therapy process involves a lot of exploration of the way things currently are—what the child is feeling and perceiving about themselves and their world. The child uses play, art, games, and conversation to gradually explore the emotions, thoughts, body sensations, behaviors, and needs they experience when their nervous system is activated. As the child gains awareness of all these things, they can then use that information to support themselves via—you guessed it—coping strategies.
Being the “thermostat”
Practicing self-attunement can also be powerful for parents. This process can help parents re-connect with their “thinking brain” when they’re feeling cranky, rushed, overwhelmed, or engaged in a power struggle. Instead of being the “thermometer,” moving up and down in reaction to their child’s activation, they can be the “thermostat”—setting the temperature of the interaction by focusing on their own regulation.
Remember, self-attunement means 1) noticing, and then 2) responding. So, this could mean pausing during a hectic moment and acknowledging, “Okay, wow, things feel like A LOT right now. I can feel myself getting sucked into this chaos, and I’m getting overwhelmed.”
When parents can turn inward and self-attune in this way, it establishes a moment of felt safety amidst their activation. Once the parent sees and responds to their own distress, they can do what they need to do to support their own regulation. The exact words don’t matter—the act of attuning to their needs does.
For example: “I know this is hard, and I’m safe here in this moment, even though it doesn’t feel that way. What do I need right now to remind myself that I’m safe?”
For the parent, this could include:
-A drink of water or a deep breath
-A brief break
-A self-compassionate pep talk
-Giving themselves permission to be five minutes late
-Visualizing themselves in a bubble of calm while their energetic child buzzes around them
-Using any of the coping strategies listed in the next section
Or, if they don’t quite know what they need, continuing to attune to themselves amidst this uncertainty: “I’m not sure what I need right now, but I’m going to be here for myself until I do know.”
Of course, this is easier said than done. I should know—I’ve fumbled through this process for years as a play therapist. I’ve had many sessions where I’ve found myself activated after a child has thrown something at my head, dumped the toys out of every possible bin, spilled sand all over the place, or yelled at the top of their lungs.
Sure, a part of me knew it was “just” play. But loud noises, chaos, uncertainty, and loss of control can still activate our “survival brain,” whether we want it to or not.
And, my job as a therapist is to provide coregulation, so I’ve learned the power of self-attunement in those moments. I’ve practiced pausing and noticing when I’m getting swept up in a storm of nervous system activation, and how my brain and body are responding—the panicked thoughts, the tense muscles, the impulse to run away or roll over and hide under a pillow. And I’ve gradually, through trial-and-error, explored ways to respond in those moments that help me regulate and reconnect to my “thinking brain” (more on that next).
Responding to the nervous system’s needs
In the play therapy process, and in the real world, practicing self-attunement requires developing an awareness of the thoughts, emotions, body sensations, and behaviors that come up when we’re feeling dysregulated. How do we know, exactly, that our nervous system is activated? What are the clues that we’ve been taken over by our “survival brain”?
For example, if we’ve perceived a threat and we perceive that we can do something about it, our body will shift into the sympathetic nervous system response—more commonly known as the “flight or flight” response. We may know we’re experiencing this response if we’re feeling tense, irritable, or aggressive, and we have physical symptoms like a racing heart or pounding head.
We may be feeling overwhelmed, disorganized, defensive, or hypervigilant. Our body is likely sending lots of energy to our hands, feet, and even our mouth, because we may need them to protect ourselves (or to run away!). That energy will stay cooped up in our bodies until we discharge it somehow.
Once we’ve developed enough self-attunement to notice we’re having this response, we can pause, take a breath, recognize the urgency and energy building up inside, and try different ways of moving it through our bodies.
For example—we may take deep breaths, inhaling through the nose and into our belly (not just breathing shallowly into the chest) and slowly exhaling as if blowing through a straw. I like to do this while placing a hand over my heart for extra grounding—sort of a “hey buddy, I’ve got you” kind of gesture to myself.
Other ways to discharge that fight-or-flight energy include shaking out our hands and arms, marching or stomping our feet, humming or chewing gum, pushing the palms of our hands together or doing wall push-ups, bouncing up and down on a yoga ball or trampoline, and squeezing a fidget or using thera-putty.
Other times, we may shift into the dorsal vagal response, or the collapse response. An example of this is the “playing dead” reaction we see in opossums, and it happens when we perceive that we’re not safe and there’s nothing we can do about it. We might know we’re in this state if we feel spacey, numb, or lethargic; struggle with low energy and low mood; and experience a tendency toward helplessness, hopelessness, and isolation.
One way to support our nervous system when we’re in this state is to use deep breathing again, but this time focusing on longer inhales, breathing in through our nose and into our bellies. This can give our bodies an extra boost of energy. Or we can do sensory grounding to gently come back to our bodies when we’re zoning out—by noticing what we can see around us, feeling the ground supporting us underneath our feet, slowly wiggling our fingers and toes, using our hands to squeeze or add gentle pressure to our arms and legs, or stretching our arms above us to open up our posture.
Regardless of which nervous system state we’re in, when we’re feeling activated, self-attunement can involve checking in with ourselves to see if we need to tend to any bodily needs—maybe we need a snack, a drink of water, movement, sunshine, or a nap.
We can also build self-attunement by describing (internally or aloud) what is happening in our bodies—e.g., “my legs feel heavy,” “my chest feels tight,” or “my stomach feels swirly.” As we mindfully notice what we’re experiencing, we’re shifting back to using our “thinking brain” and can then engage in further strategies to support our regulation (like the ones listed above).
Different strategies work best for different people, and different bodies have different capabilities. Sometimes, we may even ping-pong back and forth rather quickly between the above responses, depending on our perception of the situation—this is why self-attunement is so important, as it allows us to notice what feels best for our body moment to moment.
Reconnecting to the “thinking brain”
By attuning to ourselves, we can notice, pause, and use strategies like the ones above to complete the stress response cycle and guide ourselves back to our ventral vagal response—and this is the act of regulation.
When we’re experiencing the ventral vagal response, we perceive that we’re safe. We’re connected to our “thinking brain” and can connect with others. We can think and communicate clearly. We can feel angry, sad, or scared, and still be “regulated”—we can notice and express those feelings without becoming overwhelmed by them. We’re aware and grounded enough to be able to mindfully choose and use coping strategies that help us manage those feelings in a healthy way.
As humans, we’re going to regularly shift into different nervous system responses, especially in challenging situations—that’s what our bodies are designed to do. Becoming dysregulated isn’t a problem to fix—it’s a very human reaction that serves a purpose. Sometimes it’s necessary in order to keep us safe, and there’s so much wisdom in that. Other times, self-attunement allows us to connect with ourselves in moments of distress, so we can guide our sensitive nervous system back to felt safety and regulation.
Regulation, then, isn’t about staying calm—it’s about getting activated, over and over, and then coming back to ourselves, over and over. So even when we’re surrounded by chaos (or piles and piles of dumped-out toys), we can experience some relief and refuge in the present moment, and inside ourselves.