Nobody likes being nervous. When you’re nervous, your pulse starts to race; you get sweaty hands; your mouth goes dry. These symptoms are our bodies preparing us for imminent disaster, telling us to either flee the scene or fight. They’re clues that something is happening in the present that needs your full attention. It might also be something from your past that is putting you into this state. So, when you get this nervous, when you start to panic, what is it that calms us down?
In the fifth module of the Embodied Early Developmental Movement and Attachment Therapy, we’re going to be exploring how we can better manage these nervous impulses through co-regulation.
Personally, I’ve found that somatic therapy is one of the best ways to help people’s nervous system process trauma. It’s a technique that teaches people to listen to their body’s signals. It can also be very useful to help us process trauma that happened to us long ago. Everyone has something in their past that was traumatic, perhaps when you were a child. For small children to properly process these feelings and reactions, they need co-regulation. Co-regulation means that, in order to settle and calm the nervous system, someone else needs to be there to help.
Imagine being on a plane when you hit some turbulence. It might make you feel a little nervous, but you logically know there’s nothing to fear. The problem is that the person in the seat beside you is freaking out, believing that the plane is about to go down. Their panicked reaction actually makes you MORE nervous. Well, this is the exact opposite of co-regulation. That’s co-fear.
When a small child sees something scary that they don’t understand, they instinctively want their mother. Once she is there, they can calm down. This is co-regulation in practice. In truth, our nervous systems are meant to be co-regulated as children for many, many years.
In truth, we seek out co-regulation for our entire life. We are meant to co-regulate. If you have a good friend and you simply feel better in their presence, that’s co-regulation. When a partner takes your hand, and you feel that things are going to be alright, that’s co-regulation.
In this module, we will be looking at the many different ways we can co-regulate with movement and somatic movement therapy. Not only that, we’re going to be taking a deep dive into all of the neurobiology behind trauma and learn ways that we can help.
The Embodied Early Developmental Movement & Attachment Therapy training course is specifically designed for psychologists and therapists, movement professionals, educators, and body workers. It is also a profound training program for parents. This is how I started my journey in this work.
Over the next two years, this course will be introducing concepts that might completely change the way that you view yourself and the way that you work with your clients. This kind of personal growth can be remarkable, leading to changes in your life that you can’t even imagine right now. I invite you to join us on this journey in the fifth module of The Whole Person: Embodied Early Developmental Movement & Attachment Therapy Intensive training course!