Co-Regulation and the Window of Tolerance
The human central nervous system evolved over an unimaginably long time, largely to help protect us from threats. It operates in a way that was ideal for our ancient ancestors, but isn’t suited quite so well for how we live today.
Thousands of years ago, when a saber-toothed tiger leapt from the bush, the human central nervous system automatically triggered the flight response. In other threatening situations, it set off the impulse to fight, flee or freeze — always with the purpose of keeping us alive.
But saber-toothed tigers went extinct about 10,000 years ago, so they no longer disturb us. In fact, on a day-to-day level, most of us rarely encounter immediate threats to life and limb like our ancient ancestors did. Rather, the events that trigger our nervous systems nowadays are subtler – and far more numerous and varied.
In prehistoric times, on a bad day, you might stroll out of your cave and get devoured by some predator. But if you escaped the predator, or you managed to kill it before it ate you, you could relax again for a while. That is, your nervous system would return to homeostasis, or equilibrium. Maybe not immediately, but probably before the day was over.
Modern life, by contrast, is a constant assault of tiny-to-medium-sized stressors, from being cut off in traffic, to a random snide remark, to financial insecurity, to an impending medical diagnosis. The hits keep coming; it’s death by a thousand little cuts, and as a result our nervous systems are continually agitated – or, as we say, dysregulated. Homeostasis – ease – becomes ever more elusive the more “plugged in” we are to our phones, our work, our schedules, etc.
And of course our relationships have the potential to stress us out too. (Quite a lot of potential!)
Today, it’s far more difficult to achieve homeostasis than it was in the Stone Age. Our nervous systems rarely get a complete break. But certain physiological signs — such as a clenching in the gut or reflexive muscle tightness or a pounding heart — can at least alert us to when we’re becoming dysregulated. Another common symptom is derealization, which is a feeling of being “spaced out” or distant from everything, like nothing is real.
It’s important to be sensitive to these internal cues so that we can take steps to bring ourselves back into balance. And it’s also critical, in intimate relationships, to perceive when our partners are starting to “lose it” – especially when we’re in the midst of a dispute with them!
Sometimes it’s hard to notice what’s happening in a relational conflict until you’ve already crossed the threshold into mutual dysregulation. In many cases, dysregulation becomes a chronic state between two people. According to marriage experts, Drs. John and Julie Gottman, couples will, on average enter counseling roughly six years after they can really start to use it! And the longer they wait to begin therapy, the more entrenched their problems become, and the harder they are to “unpack.” (So chances are, if you’re reading this and you’re trying to decide about couple counseling, there’s a chance you would have benefitted from couple therapy some time ago!)
Here’s a tip though – and it’s something all couples should know. Research also shows that, when you’re in a fight with your partner, it’s best to simply separate for a while. The Gottmans recommend at least 30 minutes (but not more than 24 hours) to give your nervous systems time to re-regulate. Otherwise, someone is likely to say something they’ll regret. We have found over and over again that the majority of what people need to “process” in therapy has to do with words that were said in an escalated (i.e. dysregulated) state – offensive, hurtful, piercing words that linger long after they’re spoken. Partners often say, in retrospect, “Well, at the time I was really mad, but I didn’t really mean what I said, at least not the way I said it.” But by then it’s too late; the damage is done, and it takes deep work to undo it. (Sticks and stones may break our bones – and words can break our hearts!)
However, by regulating ourselves, not only can we avoid regrettable utterances, we can also help to regulate our partners. Our central nervous systems actually “sync up,” and this phenomenon – also physiologically based – is what we call co-regulation. For example, looking again at prehistoric human life, if a saber-toothed tiger jumped out of a bush and the people who saw it started to flee, the other people in the village or tribe would flee too, even if they hadn’t seen the tiger, because they would simply “catch the fear.” This is co-regulation in action, and it has an obvious survival benefit for our species.
And, fortunately, co-regulation works in the other direction too. If someone nearby is breathing deeply and calming themselves, we are likely to calm down too. Peaceful feelings are as physiologically contagious as tension and anxiety. Therefore, we do both ourselves and our partners a favor when we know how to soothe ourselves and avoid dysregulation.
It’s not easy to catch dysregulation as it’s happening. If the person next to me is yelling and screaming, my body will automatically start producing adrenaline and cortisol and those brain chemicals will flood my system well before I realize, “Oops, I’m dysregulated!” So when one partner in a couple is agitated, the other partner will likely just get agitated too, as opposed to saying, “Hey, I think we’re both getting riled up here. Let’s try to calm down. Why don’t we lie down and just breathe together for a little while?”
Part of what we often do in couples counseling is find ways to recognize conflict escalation before it goes too far. This is an art as well as a science, because different people show their stress in different ways. We also work to come up with workable agreements for how to de-escalate before arguments hit the red zone. (And again, although there are certain basic techniques that nearly all people can apply, there is no one-size-fits-all prescription.)
The inconvenient truth here is that not only do all relationships have “issues” – problem areas, disagreements, and differing priorities that give rise to conflict – but also that most of these issues can never be completely resolved because they are based in partners’ divergent needs and natures. Therefore, conflict will arise; it’s inevitable. The question is, how can we address conflict in more productive, empathetic, less damaging and disruptive ways that do not result in long-term hurts and resentments?
One key is to try to remain as often as possible within what we call our window of tolerance. Every human being – from infants to elders – has a “window” of how much stress, stimulation, fatigue, charged emotion, etc. they can tolerate in any given moment. Within the window of tolerance, our nervous systems are regulated. When we fall out (or get pushed out) of that window, we become enraged, anxious, burned out, depressed; our nervous systems default to fight, flight, or freeze. This is what we want to avoid, in life and in our relationships.
Each of us has a different window of tolerance, and each of us is sensitive to different triggers that can eject us from our windows. Moreover, our windows contract and expand, depending on a variety of factors, like how much sleep we’ve gotten, what we’ve eaten or drunk, how loved and secure and satisfied we feel, our fluctuating self-esteem, how our day went, and so on.
In couples counseling, we develop self-care routines to widen our windows of tolerance. We also figure out effective strategies for coping with dysregulation when it happens – because it will certainly happen from time to time – so that we can reclaim homeostasis quickly.
And of course we focus on positive, proactive co-regulation. We help partners learn to notice each other’s “danger signals” and to support each other’s ability to stay within their windows of tolerance. On the one hand, everyone is responsible for themselves. And yet, paradoxically, we also depend on each other. So we work on building healthy interdependence.
Co-regulation is unavoidable; it’s an embedded response mechanism within the human central nervous system. But co-regulation can be directedby our conscious choices to impact our partners and ourselves (and others) in nourishing and wholesome ways.
