Safety and Co-regulation
Asking yourself, “Am I a safe person” is your part of the work to ensure you’re offering co-regulation in your relationship.
Can someone show up messy around me? Can they disagree with me without fear?
Can they trust that I’ll own my mistakes, speak honestly, and hold space with empathy?
Being safe isn’t just about finding the right people—it’s about becoming one, and our nervous systems are craving that for co-regulation.
Our nervous systems are wired for connection. From the moment we’re born, we rely on others, especially safe, attuned caregivers to help us feel calm, secure, and grounded. This process continues throughout our lives. Co-regulation is basically when one nervous system helps another settle. It’s a back-and-forth, a kind of emotional syncing between two people. This is how we offer safety and connection to someone who’s struggling—and how others offer it to us.
When you don’t feel safe, your nervous system can shift into survival mode. That might look like fight, flight, or freeze responses. And when you're in that place, it's hard to be calm, kind, or even think clearly, let alone collaborate or connect.
If you're stuck in a hyper-alert state (thanks to your sympathetic nervous system), it often shows up in your relationships first. You might find yourself snapping, interrupting, picking fights, shutting down, or suddenly feeling like quitting everything. On the flip side, if you're in a dorsal vagal state, you might feel like everything's just... off. You could feel numb, flat, unmotivated. You might isolate, avoid messages, ghost people, or feel like you're disappearing from your own life.
We can only offer co-regulation to others when we're in a regulated state ourselves. That sense of connection and safety we all crave, it starts with coming back to calm within, and is cultivated in reciprocity.
When we’re around someone who feels safe, calm, and regulated, our body picks up on that often without us even realizing it. It's like our nervous system says, “Oh, you’re calm… maybe I don’t need to be on high alert anymore.”
