Last month’s article ended with a question for each of us to consider in our relationships, or when faced with circumstances of a challenging interaction, “Are we Co-regulating or Co-escalating?”

Ideally, we would like to see the other person return to a state of calm and emotional balance.  Yet rarely, if ever, in the entire history of “calming down,” has telling someone to “calm down!” ever worked.  Overactions and/or emotional outbursts are often the result of fatigue (low energy levels) and excessive stress (high tension levels).

Co-regulation is when two people are in sync, allowing each other to up or down regulate the other to be calm and engaged. Your deep understanding of the other person allows you to read cues, and gestures to discern the other’s needs.

As I mentioned in last month’s article, the best we can do is to cue SAFETY. With thanks to The MEHRIT Ctr. (Stuart Shanker/Susan Hopkins) for this acronym.

S – Simplify your language

A – Attune yourself to the other’s emotional state

F – Follow their lead

E – Engage with appropriate tone of voice

T – Take our time

Y – Yield and trust in their intentions

Begin with Simplifying your language.  The last thing we need to do is to overcomplicate things.  We can keep our sentences short, simple, and easy to understand.  It would not be a time to demonstrate how intelligent we may be by talking theoretically.

Attune to the other’s emotional state. There is a time and place to lighten the mood, but if someone is distressed, we have to gage our disposition and keep it somewhat proportionate to the other’s, neither diminishing nor catastrophizing the circumstances.

Follow their lead.  This may occasionally require patience and waiting.  Being too quick to act or jump into action may only further aggravate or worsen things.  Letting them know you are there and patiently waiting for them when THEY are ready will help.

Engage with appropriate tone of voice. Your tone can have either a wonderfully soothing, or a nails-on-a-chalkboard grating affect on someone.

Take your time.  You can’t hurry someone to calm.  It has to occur by their timetable.

Yield & trust in their intentions.  Knowing full well that the relationship you share with this individual is based on a mutual interest and/or respect, you have to believe they were not ill-intentioned.

Cognitive Dynamics can help by introducing you to Shanker Self-Reg© so you can relate differently.