Regulation 101

If you’re just getting started with the Learning Forum and not familiar with the terms I use for supporting your nervous system, here’s your primer. Are there terms you’d like to see explained here? Send me an email and we will put it on the list.

1. Window of Tolerance

2. Activation

3. Management Strategies

4. Outside the Window of Tolerance: Hyper and Hypo Arousal

Here’s how I define trauma differently:

• Shock Trauma is a hard event that overwhelmed your nervous system
• Developmental trauma is ongoing stress during childhood
• When there was stress or trauma very early, the template in the body was disregulation
• Regulation can be learned by your system now!

Here’s what most people don’t know (but should) about developmental trauma and the nervous system

• Chronic stress means the nervous system gets stuck on “on”
• Regulation means there is easy flow between “on” and “off”

The First step to healing is building your capacity for regulation

• Learn to recognize regulation in yourself and others
• Also known as Window of Tolerance

Are you a parent?  To help your child, it helps to start with your system

• When a parent is calm, children respond to their calm

Learn to identify when you are going outside of your ability to regulate

• Signs of Window of Tolerance
• Outside the Window of Tolerance, we go into hyper arousal or hyper arousal
• Spotting our state is the first step to helping us master our self-regulation, reduce symptoms and improve relationships