Episode 25: How do we start to work on self-regulation?

Hey, everyone!  Welcome to the thought reflection episode of the Teaching and Raising Problem Solvers podcast. 

So, my new plan with the podcast is to have two super short episodes each week – one that's really a quote for reflection, and then a follow-up later in the week to dive into how you might take action on that quote of the week. 

Some of the quotes are going to be geared towards kids and some of them are going to be geared towards us, the adults.  In case you haven't already listened to episodes 22 and 23, in which I talked about where I believe we need to go in 2023, I think that a lot of the work that we need to do surrounding self-regulation development in kids and the co-regulation practices that I highly support starts with us, the adults, developing our own self-regulation skills.

If you haven't listened to the episode with the quote earlier this week, go back and listen to the last episode.  But I'll reread it to you quickly before I talk about an action step.  The quote, from Dr. Stuart Shanker and Teresa Barker’s book, Self-Reg: How to Help Your Child (and You) Break the Stress Cycle and Successfully Engage with Life, was:

Don't get me wrong: Self-control is important.  We're all aware of individuals who have risen to the top of their field who are models of self-control.  But much more fundamental is the stress load that we're under and how well we deal with this: how well we self-regulate. 

The first step in how I define self-regulation is the ability to be aware of your thoughts and emotions (or energy states).  That is the very first step.  The very first step is being aware of these things. 

I think that when it comes to self-regulation, when it comes to our own states, we live in such a time that busyness, productivity, and being on the go is highlighted.  It is kind of centralized to be busy and to feel like, “oh my gosh, so busy, so wild, so crazy…”  I still am guilty of that – I still do that all the time, and I'm kind of in an evolving season of my life where I'm really looking to shift that dialogue for myself.

But for purposes of thinking about how “busy” everyone says life is, the ability to slow down, the skill of slowing down, tuning in, and analyzing what's happening for us –analyzing our own thoughts in a situation, analyzing our energy and emotional states in a situation–is so important.  This is how we start to develop and enhance our self-regulation skills.  It starts with that awareness.  So if adults listening to this are looking for a place to start to develop their self-regulation skills, then we're really looking at starting with being aware of your thoughts and energy or emotional states in various situations throughout your day.

This shows up for me all the time.  For example, when I am in a store and I see somebody struggle at the checkout.  They start to get escalated and then somebody tries to come and help them but they start to just yell at the person, and then the whole situation blows up.  I think to myself, if that person had the capacity–because I always think we're operating under the best capacity that we have–if that person had the capacity to tune in, to recognize what was happening for them in that experience (because typically in a dysregulating experience like this our thoughts start to spiral out of control – so it starts with “oh, this dumb machine isn't working.”  “Oh, I'm going to be late for this.   I've got to go pick up the kids!  I'm not going to be able to…”  You know, things start to kind of evolve and spiral out of control. 

But I don't even think that the skill of being aware of your thoughts is something a lot of adults are tuned into.  I think that inner monologue, that inner self-talk is something that we start to internalize. 

Self-talk starts as externalized in kids (that's why kids talk a lot to themselves, or you'll hear them kind of whispering to themselves), and then it becomes more internalized as they get older.  That's why I really encourage modeling self-talk to parents and teachers, so that kids can see and hear what that sounds like and maybe identify, too, what you as an adult are feeling, so they can get a sense of what's going on for you internally and make a connection to the external expression.

But being aware of what's happening, being aware of your thoughts–even just tuning in to them–is a tremendous first step, and then connecting that to what's happening in your body.  And that's where I say energy and/or emotional states.  I tend to align with both, connecting physiologically what's happening with my emotional state.  So I'm stressed–my chest feels tight, I clench.  Sometimes I clench a hand, sometimes my shoulders.  I kind of pull them in, I clench my lats in the back. That’s what I do when I’m stressed.  So identifying those specifics kind of all helps to connect what’s happening.  Because in order to change, in order to align ourselves into a more regulated state, we first have to recognize that we’re not in a regulated state.  So that’s where a lot of work can come into handy, and starting to tune into that. 

Now, I am not a therapist.  I am not a mental health professional.  I strongly recommend that if you are struggling with chronic dysregulation, a trained therapist can be a great resource to add into your support network for developing self-regulation skills, because sometimes that ability to regulate is more difficult because of things that have happened in the past.  

So, just that quick note to you as a place you might possibly start.  Other action steps, though?  Think about starting to tune into what’s happening in your thoughts, what’s happening in your body, for your emotional and/or energy states, as you move through various experiences throughout the day.  That information will be really helpful as you start to think about that next part of the definition of self-regulation, which is changing those thoughts and/or energy and emotional states.  We have to start with being aware of them first.

All right, everybody – I’ll see you in the next episode!