“Being in control and having management of ourselves. Self-regulation is the ability to attain, maintain, and change ones arousal level, emotions and behaviours.” www.theottoolbox.com
Learning to self-regulate is a natural stage of development for young children and it follows on from co-regulation which I wrote about two weeks ago. In the majority of cases parents/carers ‘model’ through co-regulation how to manage our emotions and behaviours. This is significant as children develop and become more independent as teenagers and adults. There will be times, even as adults, when we may struggle to regulate our emotions and behaviours. We can see how for some children, teenagers and adults who may not have had ideal role models in terms of demonstrating self-regulation, that this can have a significant effect on their whole lives. It may severely impact on the ability to maintain good relationships, it may affect all aspects of ones life.
Throughout our daily lives we will experience numerous occasions every day where we may need to regulate or keep our emotions and behaviours in check. We all have to learn to get on with people appropriately at school, work and in our personal relationships. We will probably change and moderate our behaviours in different settings, what we do and say at a social gathering with our friends may be very different from how we behave in the office. It’s a skill we learn and most of the time won’t be conscious of altering our behaviour and language. From childhood into adult-hood we will have learnt how to cope with disappointment, anger, frustration, distress, embarrassment etc. We will have learnt how to calm down after something exciting or upsetting has happened and how to refocus our attention as we move from one task to another.
James
Everyone will experience times when their ability to self-regulate is affected by other factors i.e., tiredness, illness or stress. Self-regulation can be especially difficult for those with neurodevelopmental disorders like ADHD or those with learning disabilities, like my son James. As with many things, he has been my inspiration for wanting to understand about co-regulation and self-regulation. James’ emotions are somewhat erratic, it’s upsetting to me and those who care for him to witness the extent of his distress. It would be fair to say, from what we witness, that for the majority of time he is unable to regulate his emotions. He can appear to become disproportionately distressed over something that would seem insignificant to others. This could be something as simple as a drink being knocked over. If this happened with a young child yes, they may become upset but then this is when, with co-regulation, you would be demonstrating (subconsciously) that it’s ok “come on let’s move your book so it doesn’t get wet, look we can get a cloth and wipe this up and now it’s all better and we can carry on reading.” You get the idea, unexpected things will happen, things go wrong but you are demonstrating that this is how we can put it right and make it ok again. For James everything, for want of a better phrase, ‘is a much bigger deal’. The actual term for this is ‘Emotional Dysregulation’ which means that the emotional response does not fall within the conventionally accepted range of emotive response. For James incidences like the example I’ve given aren’t resolved so easily. There comes a point with James that unless you are able to intervene really quickly before he becomes distressed, talking to him and trying to reassure him actually increases his distress. At such times we often have to just give him some time and space to calm down himself. You could say that he is self-regulating and I guess to some degree he is; I just wish we could skip the awful distress that precedes it. It may not always be that way; he has a very severe developmental delay so maybe given more time and enough support this will improve. It actually has a little over the years. Sometimes now, to use the same example when something’s knocked over, if we are quick enough to respond with laughter or I’ll say “Oh no, James, what’s mum done?” in a really exaggerated way, he won’t get so upset, he may even laugh himself. Unfortunately, it’s human nature when something happens for us to jump up and start scrabbling for a cloth and frantically moving things out of the way of the spillage and it’s that frantic response or even the tone of our voice which James reacts to. But as I say it’s a work in progress. Another way in which James is unable to self-regulate is that he would not be able to control his behaviours in such a way to be considered more socially acceptable. For example, he may shout out and generally make noises when sat in a café eating. Whilst many will turn a blind eye others will stare or even make comment. Personally, I think we all need to have a far greater understanding when we are in social situations of those many people in our communities who behave in ways that others would not deem as socially acceptable but I won’t get on my high horse about that now!!
In recent years, many of us have become much more aware of the importance of taking care of our own physical and mental health. There is so much more information about this in the media and via online tools and apps. More people are conscious that they need to prioritise their own physical and mental well-being and will take time out to meditate, or go for a run, take exercise or have a long soak in a bath, whatever it is that rejuvenates us and makes us feel better and more able to cope with the stresses and strain of our lives. We understand that looking after ourselves in turn helps us to perform better in other areas of our life and taking care of our physical and mental health puts us in a much more positive place for building on our own ability to self-regulate. It’s important to acknowledge however that we all have vulnerabilities. We will all have particular triggers that are personal to us that will be a result of our own experiences and traumas and it’s natural that they will affect our ability to self-regulate in certain situations that touch us personally. That’s ok and we should accept that, it’s our experiences in life that fundamentally make us who we are. What’s important is that we do not see this as a weakness and that we should feel able to say to our friends, partners and even our employers if it’s relevant that ‘this is difficult because’ without fear of being judged or less able to do our jobs because of it.
Self-regulation will never fully be achieved, it’s an ongoing process. You can find lots of information on strategies to help improve self-regulation for both children and adults online. Here are a few websites that may be of interest.
Positive Psychology – positivepsychology.com
Verywell Mind – www.verywellmind.com
Raising an Extraordinary Person – http://hes-extraordinary.com (Autism and ADHD)
