Attunement, Co-Regulation, and Self-Regulation--Demystified

The capacities within us that cultivate secure attachment (as well as good human connection) in a way that parents and partners can utilize

In my first post, I named a few of the psychological underpinnings of what secure attachment is built on within a parent-child relationship: a secure parent child attachment relationship is a strong and stable psychological bond where the child experiences the parent’s care as attuned, responsive, and consistent. This quality of care, provided by a parent who can self reflect, co-regulate, repair with, and attune to their child, is the foundation upon which the child’s trust in the relationship is established. Secure primary attachment relationships from childhood support a child’s self esteem, their capacity to explore and take risks, and supports the development of optimal social and emotional growth. As you can see, children in securely attached caregiving relationships have their inner resources freed up for growth and development, because they don’t expend energy and resources worrying about their sense of safety and security in their attachment relationship.

In this second post, I’m going to dive into what attunement and co-regulation mean in a parent-child relationship, because they are essential qualities in secure attachment relationships. Having this foundational understanding of how secure attachment gets laid down will really help you understand adult attachment (which we will be exploring soon enough), and how to cope with suboptimal attachment experiences, too. Co-regulation and attunement are important aspects of being able to develop security with our children, and later with our adult partners, and understanding how this works can empower you to consciously utilize your inner capacities and willingness to support your most important relationships.

I remember one of my instructors in graduate school saying that if a child has even just one adult they can depend on, who is reliable and really there for them emotionally, that child will be ok. Now “ok” could mean a lot of things, but I take this statement as a nod to the power of having even one adult who you know you can count on and that is there for you—physically and psychologically. A relationship that provides a sense of safety and security for a child is essential for their growth and development, and even if we go through a lot of difficult things in life (which may of us will) having a base of relational support for the social creatures we are can make all the difference.

But how do we communicate and convey to a child this sense of “I’m here for you, no matter what?” What is it that allows a child to trust that they are safe and secure in the relationship with us? As you will see, it isn’t so much what we do, but how we do it, that matters.

Attunement is an important relational experience, practice, and orientation point in our primary attachment relationships. It is a subjective experience, yet can also be seen from without (if we are paying enough attention to the nonverbal cues that are in fact more than 80% of communication. We will go into nonverbal communication as we go, as it is such an important part of communication that is sorely overlooked by most communication advice). Attunement, in my words, is about having the capacity and willingness to be aware of another’s state (this includes mind, emotions, and body) and respond effectively. So let’s break this down.

Humans are highly, highly social creatures, and the majority of us are born with the structures within to facilitate attunement, however these capacities are not always nurtured in us (but most of us can learn). Capacity is about having the skills (brain and body, mentally and emotionally) to participate in being aware of another’s state. Willingness is about simply wanting to be aware.

Some of us have one, and not the other. Some of us are capable, but maybe we don’t think attunement is important, or we might have negative associations with emotions on any level, and just want others to figure out (or get rid of or get over) their own feelings, on their own. Additionally, some of us really want to attune (we have the willingness) but we struggle with the capacity to do so, though we try. Our loved ones feel like we aren’t getting them, maybe they tell us they feel dismissed, or they become more angry or withdrawn the more we talk.

And what about “responding effectively,” what does that mean? An effective response is one that resonates for the recipient—which means the response “lands” in some way that is meaningful to them. Effectiveness is all about the outcome—how the recipient feels and resonates with the response we offer them. While resonance is subjective, an outsider can usually see (by paying attention to someone’s face and body language, for instance) if something felt good to them, or not.

If I want to give my child a hug, and they push me away, what then? Should I storm off and sulk, or tell them angrily, “That was rude!,”? What if I said, “Ok, you don’t want a hug. I see that you’re upset and I’m here, I’ll sit next to you instead.” And then I see how that goes, because I’m looking for what is supportive, and usually little kids don’t hand out clear instructions for every emotional upheaval they go through. We keep working to find what is supportive to this child, what is effective. In other words, an effective response is one that has the effect we were intending, and allows the recipient to start to feel safe, understood, and cared about in our presence.

For some of us attunement is so intuitive and natural, we can’t even explain what we are doing. We just get it, and are comfortable working on all the subtle corrections and misattunements that forge the path into attunement. We are comfortable with “getting it wrong” and can stay with the process of finding a place of resonance with the person we are wanting to attune to.

For others, attunement is a frustrating sequence of moves with another person that we never seem to get quite right. We have little stamina or confidence in this area, or maybe don’t even have a conscious experience of being attuned with another person.

But for most of us, we know when we feel attuned to, and when we don’t. Attunement allows for feelings move through us, they may even intensify for a bit initially, as being attuned to can have us be even more in touch with how we really feel. Eventually the tension and pain softens as we start to feel cared about, understood, less alone, and safe. As attunement unfolds between us, we begin to co-regulate.

Co-regulation is also an important part of what happens relationally when we attune to one another. Co-regulation with other humans, especially those depending on us as in attachment relationships, is something we are wired to do through our brain, body, and senses. Our intensely social nature and highly sophisticated nervous systems evolved to co-regulate each other. Co-regulation is one of the most important ways we feel safe, which for social mammals involves feeling understood, safe, and connected. The biochemistry of co-regulation is essential in supporting us in recovering from stress responses, and so important for the physiological balance—and thus overall health—of our brain and body on every measure of functioning, especially over the lifespan.

Let’s say your child was scared by something, and you went to them and put your arms around them and said, in a calm voice, “Oh that really scared you, I’m here now,” and the child cried and melted into your arms. The child’s response tells you that what you’re doing is working, they are taking it in. Attunement is underway. Now you are able to co-regulate. Because you were calm and reassuring as you noticed how your child was feeling, named and allowed space for it, and moved closer (you can imagine how if you said this from across the room the effect would probably not occur) your child felt relief. Now, your presence (your attention, senses, nervous system, body, and being—more on presence will be coming) helps your child manage the fear and upset they felt, and recover ) as long as the danger or moment of fear is over. As you do this with your child, you also feel more calm, centered, and tuned into your self and your child. You feel the benefits of being synced up with someone you love and care for. Within moments or minutes, your child is out exploring and playing again, and you both feel connected, reset, and able to move on.

So what was that? A super common parenting experience, one that we might completely take for granted. But before we take this for granted, know that the child gets the physiological benefit of recovering from a stress response, as well as the development of relational, neural, and nervous system capacities, and even social emotional intelligence are all being built out for the child in this everyday experience.

In the example I used, and also in the above example of a child shoving their parent away, there is another element revealed about co-regulation and attunement in a parent-child relationship: the parent’s capacity to self-regulate. Self-regulation is a pro-social internal set of capacities that allow us to modulate our responses (to our inner and/or outer experience) so that we can stay in relationship to others. This means we can’t just react, we need to be able to be aware of ourselves—more or less attuning to our own experience—as we attempt to respond effectively to another. We have to be able to work with our own thoughts, feelings, and reactions to another in a way that allows us to respond effectively. From this lens, attunement is something that emerges out of our own self-regulation capacities.

So how do we develop good self-regulation? The main way is through the co-regulation we received growing up throughout our childhoods. When our attachment figures attuned to us and responded effectively, through their own self-regulation capacities throughout the many months and years of our development, we were then able to incorporate these skills through our body, brain, and emotional experience. We learn how to self-regulate through our early attachment figures responses to us. Sometimes, the more reactive we are, the less co-regulation we may have gotten throughout childhood when this capacity was meant to be forming. Of course, many of us didn’t experience optimal co-regulation, for many reasons, but we can still learn how to self and co-regulate later in life, too.

I hope you can see the cycle here. Self regulation is the capacity that allows us to begin to work with our own reactions to another’s state, so that we can willingly respond in a way that is effective for them. We can pause, or slow down and take a breath when we feel angry, hurt, or upset by our child in some way (again, we don’t need to be perfect at this, but we need to respond effectively enough that our child can count on it most of the time). We learn how to self-regulate through having been co-regulated well by more developed nervous systems, our attachment figures who were committed to our sense of safety, to understanding us, and caring for us and our development. (Partners co-regulating each other well is a HUGE support in parenting children together, more on that soon). Attunement is having the capacity and willingness to respond effectively to another, and we need to be able to self-regulate to attune, and to co-regulate, with another person.

Of course, let’s acknowledge that a lot of people reading this did not have ideal, let alone even good enough, attunement and co-regulation enough of the time to really hone good self-regulation, attunement, and co-regulation skills. A lot of us don’t even know this about ourselves until we are grown up and in partnerships and parents ourselves. There are a lot of valid reasons why so many of us had parents and caregivers that were not able or willing to attune to us, including their own traumas and suboptimal attachment formations, cultural values around parenting and raising children, a lack of understanding of child development, societal devaluing of dependency, emotions, tenderness, and relational qualities. For now, I want to focus on educating you, so that you can start to orient towards your own inherent relational capacities, which may not have been cultivated or nurtured but are most likely there.

To me, it is not important than you remember the difference between or definition of any of the above terms. I want you to leave with a “sense” of these relational experiences.  Maybe you just start to pay more attention to nonverbal communication, or maybe you begin to point your resources towards this idea of attuning to those you love, and get more engaged in and accepting of the natural process of attuning, misattuning, and reattuning that we are all in day in and day out with others.

What matters ultimately is that we get back into connecting, back into attunement and co-regulation, with the people we depend on and who depend on us. It is ok to make mistakes, to get it wrong, but it is not ok to leave it there, especially when it comes to our kids and partners. We create more stress when we don’t address our missteps. We all benefit from others being curious, interested, and willing to repair and reconnect with us. Our bodies, minds, and spirits crave being in connection with the people we belong to—it is healthy, human, and natural, and our relationships deserve our attention and support in this way.