Caption: Montage of images from 'Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus' by Mo Willems. Photographs by Lou Shackleton.
How regulation works in practice
Welcome to this three-part series on regulation! In this post, we’ll:
- Understand why regulation is important to humans.
- Define regulation and dysregulation.
- Learn about regulation in action (featuring: jumpers!).
Ready? Let’s go!
WHY regulation IS IMPORTANT
Regulating our emotions and those of others can help us in a lot of different areas of our life. A lot of us are walking around ignoring those emotions. Or, if we do notice them, we don’t know what to do with them (Hi! My name’s Lou and I’m a hot mess!).
It’s hard to articulate our emotional responses to things in the moment. Take a look at the number of times outbursts on airplanes feature in the news cycle. From disputes over reclining seats to missing out on the pasta option, things can escalate. Emotional outbursts go back at least as far as Jerry Springer, and beyond. Our primate friends, monkeys, are more likely to run when they see other monkeys with fear on their faces. In contrast, monkeys that see other monkeys looking angry are more likely to fight. Some monkeys can tell if things might be building towards a fight. And when they notice this, they start grooming other monkeys to keep things calm.
Regulation can help you to:
- Collaborate with others at work.
- Manage and resolve conflicts.
- Maintain healthy communication.
- Build intimacy.
- Support others who may be struggling.
Let’s explore the meaning of two key terms: regulation and dysregulation.
WHAT IT ALL MEANS: key terms
WHAT IS regulation?
In biology, regulation is the constant process of adapting to stay within set limits. This is happening all the time in our bodies. There are loads of systems constantly adjusting to changes in ourselves and in our environment. And they keep us alive! It’s pretty amazing. We’ll talk about one of them, temperature regulation, shortly. And this series will shift to focus on another one – emotional regulation. Learning about emotional regulation can help us to navigate emotional responses.
WHAT IS DYSregulation?
In contrast to regulation, dysregulation describes a change in circumstances that takes things outside the set limits. Here’s a story about a jumper to illustrate the point.
HOW REGULATION WORKS: an example
‘I can’t regulate my own temperature,’ my husband told me for years. At first I hummed in sympathy. I noticed that his face would get quite pink after dinner. Later, I would suggest, ‘Are you a bit hot? You look like you’re hot. Your face is pink.’ ‘Yes,’ he’d say. ‘I’m overheating.’ Later still, it occurred to me to suggest that he take his jumper off. ‘Ah, yes,’ he replied. ‘That’s a good idea.’ He’d take his jumper off, and immediately seem less flustered and stressed. We still joke about this revelation. How simple a thing, to notice you’re hot and take your jumper off and immediately feel more comfortable. I smiled when I first noticed him doing it without prompting, and caught his eye. He smiled too.
When my husband said, ‘I can’t regulate my own temperature’, he meant something else. He could regulate his temperature – his body did the same things as anyone else. The blood vessels in his face widened to help him to lose heat, making him look pink. He would lose some heat from breathing, and from water evaporating from his skin (sweat). But he overlooked the change he needed to make to help his body to regulate. He was noticing the signals his body was giving him. But he wasn’t responding to them.
Do you notice that you’re hot and flustered, wearing one layer too many? As humans we don’t have some kind of magic inbuilt temperature regulation system. Our bodies don’t have air conditioning! If it keeps getting hotter and hotter in our environment? There’s no internal process that will keep our body temperature safe. There is some automatic adjustment: Adults sweat, for example. And, when it’s cold, the blood vessels in our extremities contract to help us to hang on to what heat we have left. But for the most part these mechanisms cannot work on their own to keep us at a steady temperature. They also work as signals that prompt changes in behaviour. Signals that, if we don’t pay attention to them and change something, we can lose a finger or toe or faint or worse. So there are two parts to this: Automatic responses that work on their own to help us lose heat. And that also act as signals to prompt us to change our behaviour to lose more heat.
When we notice the signal and respond, we bring ourselves back to a more balanced temperature. We take a jumper off; we return to a more balanced temperature. We make a choice to notice these signals. And we can make a choice to respond to them, too. Or, like my husband, try and get through it by ignoring it.
This is self-regulation. We notice a change, and we respond to it. We take an action that helps us back to the more comfortable part of the temperature range, back to balance.
LEARNING TO REGULATE
We aren’t born knowing how to regulate. So in the next post in this series, we’ll look at regulation in babies and toddlers. We’ll look at how to understand it in ourselves. We’ll learn the two types of regulation that can help us in our daily lives.
While you’re waiting for that, why not try:
- Exploring this list of feelings – I had no idea there are so many different words we can use!
- Using flashcards to get better at reading emotions in others’ faces.
- Drawing your emotions on a sticky note with a Sharpie, to the calming tones of Peter Draws (youtube) – for when words just don’t cut it.
I’ve used this video myself before! Here’s one of the drawings I did, posted on instagram.