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S2 E4: The Importance of Regulation and Co-Regulation

S2 E4: The Importance of Regulation and Co-Regulation

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 In this episode, Amy, Emer, Emma, Angela and Lelanie discuss regulation, defining the term and sharing the neurology of being regulated and dysregulated. They dive into how we as individuals experience this through our senses as well as through our emotions. In this conversation, they also highlight co-regulation and how co-regulation can support individuals who may need the support of another to regulate their nervous system. Transcript Speaker: Hello, and welcome to this episode of Sensory Chat, the podcast for parents and others interested in all things sensory integration. Speaker: Hi, I'm Amy Stevens and I'm calling in from Salisbury in the southwest of England. I'm a speech and language therapist and an advanced practitioner in Ayres sensory integration. Speaker: Hello, I am Emer Broderick and I am an occupational therapist based in London in the UK. I am also an advanced practitioner in Ayres Sensory Integration. Speaker: Hi, I'm Emma Snowdon and I am a children's physiotherapist and I'm also an advanced practitioner in sensory integration. Speaker: Hi, my name's Angela. I am an occupational therapist based in Melbourne, Australia and I'm also an advanced sensory integration practitioner. Speaker: Hello, I'm Lelanie Brewer. I'm a children's occupational therapist and academic researcher based in Bahrain. Speaker: Today we thought we would move on slightly from our last episode. We talked in our last episode about our sensory preferences, and we introduced the idea that actually rather than there being anything wrong and that sensory processing, there's something wrong with that, we all process sensory information and we all have our preferences. We talked about maybe some of the difficulties that we experience in our families and with our children, not because there's something wrong with our child, but that we have different preferences that may clash or not necessarily sit together really well. That led us into thinking about regulation, and what we mean by regulation and self-regulation and the importance of co-regulation with the parent-child interaction, that parent-child bond when they're really little to help lead us and to be able to self-regulate. We thought that we would have a discussion about that for this episode. When thinking about regulation, I think we all have an idea what regulation is in our mind. I think we can certainly recognize when we are not regulated, but what do we mean? For me, I always take this back to the neurology, and I don't get into really serious sciencey stuff here, but really simplistically, let's take this to what we would consider as stress. When we are stressed, we are not regulated, we are not calm, we are not in a state where we can function efficiently. For me, that's what regulation is. We can look at regulation in terms of our senses. Are we sensory-regulated? Are our senses working in a way that is going to allow us to function? We can look at it in terms of our emotions as well. Emotionally, if something really bad happened to us that impacts how we are feeling and how calm and how focused we are able to be. For me what's really important is those two things are really, really closely linked. If our senses are not regulated very well and they're not in balance and they're not allowing a dysfunction, that is really going to impact how we emotionally feel, but vice versa as well. If something really awful has happened to us or something really exciting has happened to us, that's going to impact how our senses will feel as well and how we will process the sensory information that's coming in. Just to give you an example of that is a time in my life when I was really, really stressed, taking too much on as you do as a working parent. It was those times that I started to notice that actually I couldn't cope so well with noises around me and I couldn't cope with bright lights in supermarkets. The big thing for me is I worked up, I just couldn't cope driving because that was just too much of a sensory demand. I think this helps us to realize that this is actually, when I'm working with children and sensory difficulties, it always comes back to regulation. Let's focus on where we are, how we are, and how our child is. That is the bit that I like to start with. If we think about co-regulation and where does this ability come from to be able to regulate ourselves? That comes right back from when our babies were actually in our womb or those early days. This is what we mean by attachment. Normal child development happens that we nurture, we comfort, we keep our children safe so we meet all of their needs, and our child will learn that their needs will get met consistently. Obviously, there's situations where this doesn't happen and we know that that leads to difficulties in later life. Let's imagine that this has happened. Our child is safe, we nurture our child, typical child development. Our child then gets confident and they start to explore the ...

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