Written by Cindy Hovington, Ph.D. Founder of Curious Neuron, Host of the Curious Neuron Podcast and Co-Founder of Wondergrade

Do you assess your level of stress and emotions several times per day? If not, keep reading!

Self-care, here at @curious_neuron is about working on our mental health, inner dialogue, confidence and emotional regulation skills so that we can parent our child the way we always envisioned.

As parents, it is easy to have a challenging day. I think there is a misconception that just because we go to bed and wake up to a new day that it is a “fresh start” to parenting. It isn’t a clean slate; our worries or emotions from the previous day carry over to the next day. Not being aware of this means we can wake up with the idea that we “are fine” without being attuned to our internal conflicts. Fast forward to your child spilling milk and cue the yelling from a dysregulated parent that was unaware they were dysregulated.

What is dysregulation?

I really want this word to become more common when describing our state of emotions or stress. Becoming more mindful of our state of mind, including our emotions and stress levels can help us understand why we are reacting or behaving a certain way (for both adults and children). If our child spills milk a morning when we are stressed about a project deadline at work, we might yell at them, even if that was not our intention. That same morning, we might also disregard their own emotional state if we are dysregulated. Dr. Bruce Perry explains dysregulation well in his book What Happened to You? Stay tuned for the Curious Neuron Podcasts’ 100th episode on January 23rd with my interview with Dr. Perry. Dr. Perry also discusses how our childhood can leave us in a state of consistent dysregulation. There is a workshop about this at the Curious Neuron Academy called “How does our childhood influence how we parent"?” HERE.

What does being “regulated” mean?

Your brain/nervous system and body are calm and at equilibrium when you are regulated. Your heart rate and breathing rate are at a normal and relaxed state. Your stress hormones are down as well. Now, let’s say you wake up one morning thinking about a deadline you have at work that day. A deadline that you are not sure you will be able to make. Your brain will not be regulated because odds are, you will have some level of stress hormones being released. You are dysregulated. Dr. Perry describes this as the bottom layer of a 3 layer cake. If that bottom layer is dysregulated and not in equilibrium, you will more easily trigger the middle layer, emotions. Lastly, dysregulated blocks communication to the top layer of that cake. The top later us our prefrontal cortex or the thinking part of the brain. This is why it is more difficult to have a rational discussion when you are angry or to think of a solution to a problem if you are stressed, you are dysregulated.

Start your day by rating your level of regulation:

When you wake up tomorrow morning ask yourself, “Am I regulated?”. Keep it simple. Rate it on a scale of 1-5. One being fully regulated and calm and 3 being totally dysregulated (you can feel your heart racing). In my workshop called “The link between our child’s emotions and behaviour", HERE, I discuss a green, yellow, and red visual scale to help parents rate their emotions.

If you score yourself between 3-5, remind yourself before responding to something your child says or does. If, for instance, your child does want to put their shoes on to leave the house in the morning. Say to yourself, “Am I not fully regulated and this is causing me more stress. My children aren’t intentionally trying to trigger me, I am already triggered by my own state of emotions”.

Building compassion for your emotional state and the people around you:

As parents, it can be easy to lose control of our emotions and yell at our kids. We then fall into a spiral of guilt and might even feel like we are often failing as a parent. Now that you know this is usually due to dysregulation, I hope it can help you build more self-compassion. Learning about dysregulation also helps us realize when someone else is dysregulated (mostly our kids!) and helps us feel more compassionate towards them when they lose control of their own emotions and behaviour.

Dysregulated parents have also been shown to invalidate their child’s emotional expressions more often, which in turn relates to higher levels of adolescent emotion dysregulation (Buckholdt et al. 2014). I will summarize this scientific publication in a future blog post and on Instagram. Stay tuned!

Try it out!

This week, rate your level of stress and emotions every morning and throughout the day (especially before your child’s bedtime). See if this small change has an impact on how you respond to your child’s behaviour and emotions and whether you feel more compassionate towards yourself when you do overreact a little.

Join the @curious_neuron and @curiousneuronpodcast community here on Instagram or on Facebook to work on your emotional learning and your child’s.