Exploring Regulation & Resilience
Week Three: Purple Elephant Trauma Series
This article is a summary of the posts that have been shared on Facebook this week. The impact of trauma is felt by those who sit on both sides of the political aisles. It is neither red nor blue—thus, a purple elephant. More important than any election result is that we care well for one another and also the most effective way to do that is to learn about the impact of trauma. Trauma is the purple elephant in every conversation I read. We need to be better informed! When we know better, it is then possible to do better. It is time to begin class!
Note: What I will be offering in these posts is only a glimpse of the depth of knowledge you can access in ATN’s Trauma-Informed Certification!
Day One: What Does Being Regulated Mean?
Question: What does it feel like when your nervous system is regulated?
The first time I saw this image of the Window of Tolerance. I was preparing to teach a workshop alongside a child therapist. I was the lived experience part of the duo at that point—I had just published Brave— and my goal was to use the opportunity to absorb everything I could learn about why I had shown up to therapy in complete disarray.
This image changed everything that I thought about my internal emotional rollercoaster that I had tightly controlled my whole life and could not seem to do any longer. Over time, with added trauma and the impact of toxic stress my window began to narrow until, as I described it, it became as narrow as the space under a doorway. Almost anything could push me out of the window.
The window is where you are when you feel calm and relaxed or focused. Being smack dab in the center is a wonderful place to be but we can’t always be there. Things happen and we we bounce up and down in the window and sometimes bounce out into either hypoarousal or hyperarousal. Occasional going outside of the window is normal dysregulation; staying in that space is not healthy. Self-regulation means you can move back to the window and spend most of your time bouncing around in that space. It isn’t normal to always be “calm.”
Healing includes the healing of the impact of trauma but also requires the development of the necessary self-regulation skills to be able to remain inside the Window of Tolerance. This is very different from controlling your emotions. This will be explained tomorrow.
Day 2: What is Co-Regulation?
Question: How does co-regulation build regulation skills?
Today’s topic is one I have worked to understand since college, but only until recently understood the impact of early experiences on the adult’s capacity for self-regulation. Infants are not born with the ability to self-regulate. They are completely dependent on self-regulated adults to care for their needs. This includes both physical and emotional needs. As an adult who is attuned to the infant’s needs figures out what they need, it provides a model for how the growing child can begin to care for himself.
The video below describes this process perfectly!
The attachment styles of adults are based on the degree to which this process is successfully accomplished. More on this another day. For now, you are born with personality traits, but you are not born with an attachment style. Every child has the potential to develop secure attachment.
There are many reasons why a caregiver may not be capable of self-regulation and the ability to co-regulate with a child. It could be their own story of a parent who for some reason could not co-regulate with them. Trauma and neglect may be part of that story. This is one way that trauma passes from one generation to another.
The most damaging impact of trauma is how it impacts self-regulation. It is possible to heal this impact. I have shared many of these in the Brave Survivor series on my Substack. Unfortunately, most—like myself—learn to control themselves instead. The difference between self-regulation and control will be our topic for tomorrow.
Do you work with children or teens? This video explains how you can be a co-regulator for children who struggle.
Day 3: What is the Difference Between Self-Regulation and Self-Control?
Question: Are we controlling or regulating our emotions?
Those who were well nurtured by co-regulators as children develop self-regulation skills that buffer against a traumatic event causing long-term trauma. Children who have not developed self-regulation skills with the assistance of co-regulators are the most likely to exhibit ongoing trauma-related behaviors. When they are shamed and/or punished for these behaviors—at home, at school, and in faith communities—many will learn to control their behavior and be rewarded for doing so.
I was this child.
Two years into therapy—while listening to a sermon—I realized that I had never developed self-regulation skills and had instead lived my life by tightly controlling my emotions. I had lived out the fruits of the spirit by controlling myself. I wrote a blog reflecting on this epiphany—you can read it here—but this is part of what I said:
“I did not live out my life being the person the abuse could have made me. The effects were all there, I just learned to control and live above them . . . Control works, God enables, the Fruits of the Spirit are possible—except joy. I had to heal to find joy.”
It is simply impossible to feel joy in a body that is dysregulated. I don’t know how many times people have expressed their desire for joy when communicating with me—in their lives and in their faith. Many have “tried harder” to be more positive or more spiritual. They are trying to solve the problem with the wrong solution.
I often use the analogy of holding a beach ball under the water to explain how we try to control the impact of trauma (or toxic stress). Imagine pushing the ball down and trying to hold it under the water. It is exhausting. Healing transforms the impact of trauma—that needed to be controlled—into something that no longer needs to be controlled. This allows you to stop holding the ball under the water and let it float to the top. The transformed trauma can then be like a beach ball floating on the water that poses no threat even if it bumps into you occasionally. You know how to navigate (and enjoy life)—even in a pool filled with beach balls.
Imagine the difference between walking across a pool navigating between the beach balls vs. going out and trying to hold all of the beach balls under the water. This is the difference between self-regulation and control.
Day 4: How do Resilience and Survival Differ?
Question: What does resilience mean and how do we become resilient?
The following definition explains what resilience looks like. It does not explain how one gets there. It also doesn’t distinguish between those who appear to be resilient who are in actuality are being really good survivors.
“Resilience is the process and outcome of successfully adapting to difficult or challenging life experiences, especially through mental, emotional, and behavioral flexibility and adjustment to external and internal demands.” (Source: APA)
If resilience only meant that in the face of traumatic events, I could put my head down and just keep plowing through life, then I was the poster child. If it meant that I knew how to pivot when things went very wrong, then I could be seen as flexible. If it meant I could control—as discussed previously—the impact of trauma that coursed through my body every day, then yes, I did meet internal demands. It is easy to mistake survival for resilience—especially for those who are high achievers.
Resilience can be developed but it is best achieved through the early attachment relationship with an attuned caregiver. When emotional needs are met on at least a fairly consistent basis, young child come to believe that—even though bad things might happen—the world is generally a safe place where people care about them. That is the foundation for resilience.
When this nurturing foundation is not built—there are many reasons—the child comes to believe the world is at worst a dangerous place, at minimum not a place where others care. The child accepts that it is up to them to get needs met. This foundation results in a very different world view and behaviors.
Survival-based behaviors are normal ways to get needs met when the healthier options are not available. That is why it is called survival. As a child, I had all of the behaviors on the survival side of the diagram. As an adult, I learned to control them and/or make them look more socially acceptable. That is how survival disguises itself as resilience.
Day 5: How are Co-Regulation, Self-Regulation & Resilience Connected?
Question: How does someone become resilient?
True resilience grows out of nurturing relationships—as children and as adults. You can’t simply teach resilience skills in a relational vacuum and expect them to “stick.” Developing resilience results from a long process of nurturing experiences and being supported while facing adversity. This is co-regulation.
Resilience is also built when unavoidable ruptures occur and are followed by relational repair. During this healthy process of relational care, our nervous systems develop self-regulation skills. I will discuss the nervous system further next week.
I was asked this important question on Facebook: “How do you go from controlling to self-regulation?”
As was mentioned yesterday, those who did not experience this healthy growth process learn to live by controlling themselves. Since I had only ever known control I couldn’t even imagine what self-regulation would feel like instead. At first, I thought this meant being calm all the time. That is why the Window of Tolerance was so important to understand.
Then I thought that self-regulation meant that I would never need anyone to help me. This also wasn’t true. We are all relational beings and co-regulation is important no matter our ages.
Then I thought that healing the memories would calm my nervous system and magically endow me with self-regulation skills. I wish this was true. Instead, it has required years of searching to find the best ways to get my nervous system back in the middle of the window after being triggered (dysregulated), It used to take days and weeks. Then it reduced to hours and finally to less than an hour most of the time. That is self-regulation. (See more about this here.)
For those who have known me for years, I likely do not appear much different as I move through a day. I know that I am not even close to the same person who had to keep such tight control of my emotions. What used to look like resilience was not; it was control.
One of the biggest dangers as we help others heal is emphasizing regulation skills (though important) without building a relational foundation first. This most often only results in changing what control looks like.
It is nearly impossible for survivors of childhood trauma to move from surviving to thriving—which is true resilience—without building a solid relation-based foundation. This requires safe relationships which will be discussed further next week. While this may not always require professional trauma-based therapy, for many who have been impacted by childhood trauma (maybe most), it will.
Week Three Reflection Questions:
Can you explain how co-regulation and self-regulation are connected? How are self-control and self-regulation different? What is the difference between thriving and surviving? Does this information expand your thoughts about the development of resilience?