Ep 62. Trauma Bonding Vs Authentic Connection - Solo Episode

Understanding Emotional and Nervous System Regulation: Co-Regulation vs. Co-Disregulation

Lisa Dawn delves into the critical topic of emotional regulation and the impact of our nervous system on our relationships. She discusses the concepts of co-regulation and co-disregulation, shedding light on how our upbringing shapes our ability to connect and communicate. Lisa also touches on the importance of self-regulation, the challenges of people-pleasing, and how to build healthier, more authentic relationships.

The episode includes personal anecdotes, practical advice, and a calming exercise to help reconnect with the present moment. Tune in to explore how to create internal security and genuine connections in your life.

Work with Lisa 

00:00 Introduction and Personal Updates

01:16 Diving into Emotional Regulation

02:41 Understanding Nervous System Regulation

04:44 Co-Regulation vs. Co-Dysregulation

11:50 The Impact of Childhood on Emotional Health

16:34 Practical Exercise for Reconnection

20:06 Closing Thoughts and Poetry

21:14 Outro and Podcast Updates

Transcript

Lisa: 0:11

Hey guys, Lisa Dawn here. Welcome. Welcome. Coming at you a day late with this episode. Last night I was having internet problems. So. Instead of staying up late, getting frustrated and irritated, I decided to just throw in the towel, light some candles, read, and settle into a good night's sleep, which didn't really happen anyway, but the intention was there. Anyone else having very strange and vivid dreams lately? I'd get into that, but it would probably take an entire episode. Also, it's my wedding anniversary today. So I decided to record myself singing a mostly inaudible song while playing my ukulele, and I'm still learning, so my voice and my fingers don't always match up, but I sent that little imperfect piece of love off to my hubby at 630 a. m. this morning, and he loved it. I just wanted to share all of those things with you. So today we are diving into a topic that is at the heart of so many of our experiences. We're talking about emotional regulation and the ways we connect or disconnect with the people around us. We're talking about nervous system regulation, co regulation versus co disregulation and how the patterns we learned growing up shape how we bond, communicate and even handle conflict. You know. Those moments where you leave a conversation either feeling grounded and seen or completely spun out and drained. Yeah, we're going to unpack some of that. We'll also explore why some relationships feel like a calm, steady rhythm, while others feel like a chaotic dance of venting and wound bonding. We'll also get into how our need for belonging, validation, and connection can sometimes lead us to abandon our own truth. And we'll also talk about how to start shifting these patterns so we can show up with more security, authenticity, and ease. If you've ever found yourself stuck in people pleasing, needing others to validate your feelings, or getting caught up in relationships that feel more draining than fulfilling, this episode is for you. So let's dive in and start untangling some of these patterns together. When we talk about regulating the nervous system, what we're really talking about is its ability to settle after activation, whether that's a fight, disagreement, or hell, even sex. It's definitely not about staying calm all of the time, because life most certainly is not calm all the time. Regulation means you can feel scared, angry, or ecstatic, and your body can rise to meet those emotions and then settle back down again. So think of it like a well tuned car. It can speed up when necessary, excuse me, and ease back into a smooth idle afterward. That's a flexible, regulated nervous system. It's about being able to handle big emotional waves and returning to a balanced state, what we call homeostasis. Short little story. Speaking of regulation, if you've been tuning in for a while, um, well, actually last week I shared how we've been doing a new training protocol with our dog Merlin. Turns out he has really big feelings. We call him our little emo dog. And he tends to get overwhelmed easily, whether that is in a play situation or when he's scared. So those two things are coupled together. So my husband and I are having to help him contain his big emotions because we didn't do a great job of it when he was small. He doesn't know how to regulate properly, so we are having to show up differently for him and be the leaders. I wanted to briefly touch on this because sometimes I wish certain words didn't trend. Have you ever noticed that when words start trending, they either lose their impact or suddenly everyone becomes an expert on them? Either way. Regulation is a foundational skill, especially when you've been living in a body that doesn't know how to regulate itself without some kind of intervention. This leads perfectly into the next topic. I'd like to expl explore co-regulation and co dysregulation. If you're around someone or a group of people who are highly activated and unable to settle, and you are also unable to settle. the two people or group of people can often co disregulate. You know the times you're with that friend or that co worker and you both just amp each other up over, could be anything, issues at work, partnerships, mails, mail that didn't get delivered, whatever it is. It just keeps escalating and escalating without adding anything resilient, grounded, or settled into the conversation. Co dysregulation happens when we are in shared spirals of fear and negativity. This is an important topic because it ties into trauma or wound bonding. It can feel connecting and good in the moment, but the bonding is happening over shared pain. And if we grew up in environments where people bonded through pain or chaos, Our nervous systems can misinterpret co dysregulation with closeness. Our minds are like, oh man, this person is awesome, I feel so connected. But usually our bodies are telling a different story. They're just sitting over there waving around red flags. Maybe after the interaction or even during, you may begin to notice that your body is tensing up or feeling exhausted. Think about co dysregulation this way. It's when two nervous systems feed off of each other's stress. Now this doesn't mean that we have to end relationships built on co dysregulation, but it's worth noticing. Am I co regulating with this person or co dysregulating with them? And then you get to choose how you want to interact. You get to choose how you want to feel. Now, in contrast, co regulation happens when one person stays grounded and steady, offering a presence that helps the other settle too. It's a grounded exchange that fosters connection and stability. You know that friend or family member who just feels solid. They hear you out, offer support, but they don't match your intensity. These are all really important things to talk about because for many of us co dysregulation is a default way of connecting. Relationships built on shared complaints or fears can feel intimate at first, but over time they often often leave us feeling drained and not truly connected. And when one person starts to break this pattern by staying calm or offering a new perspective, it can feel destabilizing to the other. When we've been used to looking to others to mirror back to us our beliefs, it can feel like a slap in the face when someone doesn't feel when someone doesn't feed into our fear or drama. People who offer co regulation are offering what somatic experiencing calls a counter vortex, which is essentially pulling someone out of their trauma vortex or pain spiral, or giving them another way to look at the same issue that is more settling to their system. So for instance, Imagine a heated topic like the dreaded vaccines or presidential elections. If I'm deeply fearful and my friend offers a grounded opposing perspective, it can feel like a rupture or a bond is broken. We're no longer bonding over shared fear, which challenges the pattern of connection that we've built. It might even feel like they're rejecting me, but in reality, They're offering me a chance to step out of the co dysregulation cycle by offering a different perspective. And this dynamic also ties into codependence. When we're insecure about something, we often look to others to mirror and validate our fears. If they agree with us, it can feel comforting, but if they don't, it can create tension because we're relying on external validation rather than self connection. And true security means being grounded enough in your own beliefs that you don't need others to mirror them back to you to feel okay. We can be open and flexible to new ideas and concepts, but we don't feel attacked when someone disagrees with us. Now this brings me to the topic of fawning which is a reflexive form of people pleasing. So many of us, myself included, have used our bodies, our eyes, our smiles to signal agreement we didn't truly feel all in the name of belonging. Have you ever found yourself hypnotically nodding your head in agreeance or going somewhere you didn't want to go almost robotically? Only to wonder after, what the hell was that? Where was my backbone? Why did I say yes when I knew that I didn't want to do that? First, give yourself some compassion. This is part of the autonomic nervous system which triggers a parasympathetic response when the body perceives danger or overwhelming stress. So it's automatic. And this can leave us feeling exhausted and disconnected because the relationships we form hinge on conformity rather than authenticity. These are not true relationships because no one truly knows one another. We just fake it so that we can find relief. We fawn. This dynamic isn't limited to personal relationships, it's everywhere, especially online. People often project their beliefs onto others and expect agreement as proof of connection. And then when someone deviates from this expectation, it can provoke anger and resentment because the bond feels ruptured. But genuine relationships are interdependent. They allow for differences in belief while maintaining respect and connection. And interdependence requires security in ourselves and our beliefs. It also means being open minded, able to engage with differing perspectives without losing our sense of self. This is the opposite of co dependence, which stems from unmet developmental needs. Needs for mirroring, validation, and belonging. We learn all of these things if we belong to a functional family system or we had adults around us who learned these things and could model them for us. Yep, you're probably thinking, oh lord, here Lisa goes again. She's gonna go on a rant about healing the inner child, but honestly. 98 percent of our programming comes from these years. And listen, nobody has a perfect childhood. Just last week, I discovered another layer about a part of me that was wounded and hurt in the fifth grade. And I was like, holy shit, that was a real crummy year for little Lisa. But how wonderful that I get to comfort her now. So I'm going to go into it a little bit more. When our needs aren't met in childhood, we may grow up relying on others to show us who we are instead of having one foot firmly rooted in ourselves. And this can lead to dysregulation, emotional numbness, or an inability to set healthy boundaries. And children are naturally innocent, inexperienced, and naive. Like, they tend to believe their caregivers can do no wrong and when caregivers abuse or punish children for exhibiting normal traits of growth, such as being vulnerable, imperfect, dependent, and immature, children begin to lose their sense of value. They often blame themselves because they can't yet see that the fault lies with the caregiver. For instance, caregivers may place undue pressure on children to perform, or yell at them for minor accidents, like spilling something. And the very presence of abuse often signals that caregivers lack boundaries, healthy relational skills, or an intact sense of self. Probably all of those things. As a result, children don't develop these systems properly themselves. This is why we often hear the phrase, it wasn't your fault what happened to you as a child, but it is your responsible to heal as an adult. Because children are by nature immature. Okay, like they pick their noses. They say inappropriate things and speak without understanding the implications Like I used to tell my kindergarten teacher that my dad Liked to look at naked women and that my parents weren't married. They were just living together So kids also they fight in the backseat they spill things and need guidance when they experience big emotions when we feel as adults, surprised, angered, or concerned by children acting like children, we're ignoring something very, very natural. They're not miniature adults, they are children. And this brings us to the importance of learning how to feel our emotions in a healthy, in healthy, functional ways. Every emotion serves a purpose and we all experience them. However, all forms of abuse, neglect, and trauma can lead to extremes. Either overwhelming emotions that feel too big to face or emotional numbness. I truly believe that our collective work as a society is to build a healthier relationship with our emotions and to truly learn how to be with ourselves, even if we didn't learn how to as children. Western society often categorizes emotions as good or bad, which is both false and harmful. It's a distorted way of viewing our internal world. We're all healing from something. This is part of our human experience. Most of us can point to moments in childhood when we weren't allowed to act our age, when we received too little time, attention, or direction from the adults around us. When this happens consistently, It's much more likely that we grow up to be either emotionally chaotic or overly controlling so creating Internal safety and security is key It gives us the strength to let others feel offended by our beliefs without feeling the need to people please our way back into Connection that was huge, especially for me and for so many people True self esteem allows us to stay grounded in who we are while remaining flexible. This means setting boundaries instead of building walls, which when we're struggling it can feel like we're setting boundaries when we're really just building walls. And it also means focusing on the people and things that bring us joy rather than obsessing over others judgments. That was a lot of information in a short amount of time. So, thank you for staying with me. I feel like it would be beneficial to do a simple practice to begin to reconnect with our essential selves, to reconnect with the here and now. Again, if you're driving, maybe coming back to this when you have some space to tune in. So let's just take a moment to sit back and connect with our hands, perhaps even just looking down at them, maybe rubbing your fingers together, thinking about all of the things that your hands do for you in a day, just allowing yourself to really take in your hands. Now, just allow your head to relax. Maybe you take those hands and just allow your face to drop into them, surrendering your head and your face into your hands. You can stay here as long as you like and when you feel a sense of settling which may feel like letting out a yawn, a sigh, relaxing your shoulders or even a softening of your breath, check out your room. Using your head and your neck to look around the room and notice what catches your attention. Maybe it's a plant, some artwork, or some sunlight streaming in through a window. And just observe how your body responds to these things. Where in your body do you feel the plant, the sunlight, the artwork, whatever it is. And just allow yourself to take in those things. And as you do this, notice if you begin to feel a sense of ease. Notice what is happening within you as you take in your surroundings. This is your body's way of coming into contact with the present moment, with your reality, that is completely separate from anything else right now. By focusing on the present, even for a moment, you reconnect with your body and surroundings. Separating yourself from the experiences that are overwhelming so your body can deeply exhale. This creates a counter vortex, pulling you out of stress and into the here and now. And from this grounded place, you can better discern what's true for you. Just take a moment and notice what's different for you now. As we begin to close out. This episode, I just wanted to share some words from one of my favorite poets, Rainier Wilde. Become a person beyond belief. Be here and now and real. Respond to life as it occurs. Flow. Be flexible. Give and take. Learn to trust the experience of your body. What is it saying? Don't let the idea and experiences of others do the thinking for you. In the end, healing is about coming home to ourselves, learning to feel, trust, and honor our emotions even when it's hard. It's about replacing self blame with self compassion and building the kind of internal security that lets us stand firm in who we are while staying open to others, open to connection. Alright, my peeps, thank you as always for joining me. I bid you adieu. Until next time, have a wonderful day. As always, thank you so much for listening. Life is busy. So it means even more that you're carving out time in your day to be here. Listen, we've got so many great episodes coming up, so please make sure you subscribe to follow along on Apple podcasts or Spotify. And for those of you who like to watch your podcasts, we are now uploading them to YouTube. And if you appreciate these episodes, please do us a favor and leave a rating or a review and share it with anyone you think could benefit. See you again next Wednesday.

22:02

outro music