You (as a human) weren't born knowing how to self-regulate.
But you were born with a human brain.
A brain that can continuously, throughout life.. learn, update, adapt, and develop new ways of responding to the world around you.
We learn to get better at regulating and optimizing our own mind-brain-body systems through experience, and by experiencing ourselves with other nervous systems.
But there is something happening in our world that can interfere with that process.
In systems thinking, there is a pattern sometimes called "shifting the burden to the intervenor."
A system has capacities that could help it regulate itself...
but increasingly, those capacities are handed over to something outside the system.
It does this because handing over something for someone or something else to do for us (out-sourcing) is a lot less effort (at first)…
And I think about this a lot when I look at our world.
We have so many ways to turn to/grab/consume something outside of us in order to alter our internal experience.
Something to distract us, stimulate us, soothe us, energize us, validate us. Something outside of us we can use in an attempt to feel better.
Some of those things can be incredibly useful.
It’s not that we "shouldn't" turn to external support.
It's important that we have things we can turn to (when needed, and when it's adaptive)
The problem is when these external ‘state-shifters’ start replacing our own explorations and efforts to discover and strengthen capacities within ourselves.
Because there is intelligence inside the system too.
The capacity to notice, experiment, tolerate uncertainty long enough to learn from it. To find ways to feel good about ourselves when not a single other human will ever see it, like it, share it.
To notice what brings us toward or away from well-being. And then to update, iterate and adapt.
To learn that what helps my nervous system in this moment might be different from what helps yours.
Self-regulation is something our human brain-body system has the capacity to keep learning.
And maybe one of the most important things we can do for another human being is..
to help create the conditions where they can become more skillful at accessing their own capacity to notice, learn, adjust and adapt.
References and further reading:
Meadows, D. H. (2008). Thinking in systems: A primer (D. Wright, Ed.). Chelsea Green Publishing.
P.S. If you'd like to explore these ideas more deeply, here are a few ways to learn with me:
🧠 Super-Regulators™ Neuroscience Academy: Explore the neuroscience beneath human learning, regulation, adaptation and transformation .. and learn to bridge that science with the work you already do.
Teach the Nervous System™: Learn to explain nervous system regulation with credible, concrete neuroscience .. especially for people who don't want to hear about (or have anything to do with) “soft skills” or "feelings work."
EXPLORE TEACH THE NERVOUS SYSTEM
The Adaptive Brain: The Science of Setbacks, Mindset & Change: Explore what the incredible human predictive brain can teach us about discomfort, setbacks, learning and our capacity to adapt
