Self-regulation is a flexible way of knowing and understanding our body and mind.\u00a0 Self-regulation is the ability to monitor and have control of our thoughts, emotions, behaviour and impulses.\u00a0 Self-regulation helps us experience and express our emotions.\u00a0 It provides us with the confidence to alter our self-expression with other people in any situation.<\/p>\n
Self-regulation is a key skill in navigating through conflict or arguments.\u00a0 It is the capacity to stay aware of our thoughts and feelings while recognising and understanding the other person\u2019s experience.<\/p>\n
Self-regulation is having greater control of strong emotions triggered by uncertainty, grief, abandonment, or excitement for example.\u00a0 In essence it is the capacity to be flexible and choose how we respond.\u00a0 Self-regulation is the ability to act in our best interest, consistently in line with our deepest values.<\/p>\n
It is a turning point in therapy when a person expresses or shows feelings they have been avoiding.\u00a0 The avoidance of strong emotions causes us to feel anxious and depressed.\u00a0 Individuals can explore and express these feelings in therapy.\u00a0 It is in the context of a safe therapeutic relationship that we can learn how to engage socially, maintain a secure attachment, and regulate our emotional states.<\/p>\n
People feeling depressed and anxious often feel they have no say or self-determination over how they feel and behave. \u00a0An aspect of people feeling they lack control in how they relate with others is their inability to see how they contribute to conflict.<\/p>\n
Often a person feeling anxious and depressed will avoid their emotions and body sensations.\u00a0 Feeling shame and self-hatred towards their body is not uncommon.\u00a0 A well-worn and unrewarding habit of over thinking as an attempt to resolve difficulties can occur.<\/p>\n
Families that do not relate well or prize relationships can equip individuals without skills in self-soothing autonomously or when relating with others.\u00a0 When people find it difficult to regulate themselves they may have grown up in a family where their parents were too busy to give them adequate attention.\u00a0 Harsh, critical, inconsistent, insensitive and performance orientated attention from caregivers also hampers a person’s ability to be with their emotions.<\/p>\n
People can turn to mind-body psychotherapy for support to learn helpful ways to come to terms with emotional overwhelm and develop self-confidence.\u00a0 As a therapist we realise that people often are already doing something unconsciously to take care of their emotions or body dysregulation.<\/p>\n
The therapist helps a person become conscious of what is already helping them to feel calm.\u00a0 It is important to ask the client questions, such as: \u201chow do you calm, comfort, soothe and reassure yourself?\u00a0 Do you have supportive people around you?\u00a0 What are your hobbies or interests? \u00a0And what are you doing for yourself that you haven\u2019t yet recognised is soothing you?”<\/p>\n
An aspect of learning to self-regulate ourselves begins with self-awareness.\u00a0 The therapist supports and encourages a person to slowly become conscious of their self-judgment for feeling emotions, or feeling fearful of being themselves, or self-imposing a pressure to perform successfully.<\/p>\n
First the therapist provides a holding environment to help the client share difficult memories and strong emotions without feeling overwhelmed.\u00a0 Second the therapist models for the client how to begin to self-regulate their emotions and body sensations.\u00a0 This includes trusting the body and it\u2019s self-expression by using mindfulness to develop a witnessing self.\u00a0 A person learns that it is safe to be present and attend to their body sensations and emotions without needing to analyse or interpret them.<\/p>\n
As a person becomes mindful they can gain a sense of agency by paying attention to their internal experience in the present moment.\u00a0 They can begin to know themselves and decipher what triggers their emotions and body sensations. \u00a0An individual can then locate their adult witnessing self being separate from their inner critic or sabotaging self. \u00a0This is why mindfulness is an important tool used in therapy as it enables one to be able to step back and observe oneself.<\/p>\n
Self-awareness and having the ability to feel grounded in the body assists in our capacity to regulate our emotions and body sensations. \u00a0For example the therapist invites the client to be curious and sense how their body breathes and \u00a0how it relaxes. \u00a0A person can sense how they connect to their skin boundary and their environment in the here and now without dissociating. \u00a0It is liberating for us when we learn how to regulate ourselves. \u00a0We feel containment in our body and we feel safe and strong to be able to express ourselves with confidence.<\/p>\n
References:<\/p>\n
What is self-regulation? Self-regulation is a flexible way of knowing and understanding our body and mind.\u00a0 Self-regulation is the ability to monitor and have control of our thoughts, emotions, behaviour and impulses.\u00a0 Self-regulation helps us experience and express our emotions.\u00a0 It provides us with the confidence to alter our self-expression with other people in any…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1119,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,11,34,32,31,14,18],"tags":[37,49,28,45,52,44,42,50,48,51,47,46,38,43,29,35],"class_list":["post-1117","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-anxiety","category-depression","category-family-of-origin-issues","category-mindfulness-bodymind-psychotherapy","category-relationship-difficulties","category-self-esteem","category-trauma","tag-anxiety","tag-attachment-repair","tag-body-centered-psychotherapy","tag-bodymind-psychotherapy","tag-caregivers","tag-conflict-resolution","tag-depression","tag-family","tag-mindfulness-based-psychotherapy","tag-parents","tag-personal-development","tag-self-awareness","tag-self-esteem","tag-self-regulation","tag-somatic-psychotherapy","tag-trauma"],"yoast_head":"\n