Self-regulation is the ability to flexibly shift your emotional or physical state, especially in moments of stress, anxiety, or overwhelm. Learning how to regulate your nervous system in healthy, sustainable ways is key to managing daily challenges—and building long-term resilience and well-being.

In this post, we’ll explore two key pathways of self-regulation: regulating through your own inner resources and through relationships with others. We’ll also look at how mindfulness meditation can be a powerful tool to support both.

What is Self-Regulation?

Self-regulation refers to the capacity to manage your emotions, behaviour and physical state. It's about being able to soothe yourself when you're anxious or upset - and to re-energise when you feel low or disengaged.

When you are stressed or distressed there are two main ways through which you can regulate your nervous system and your feelings so that you can calm down and get some relief.

The two main types of self-regulation are:

1. Self-regulation through inner strategies
2. Self-regulation through connection with others

Each has its strengths, and most of us have a natural tendency to rely more heavily on one than the other.

1. Self-Regulation Through Attending to Yourself

This means helping yourself by doing things inside your own skin. This can be done through:

• Paying attention
• Meditating
• Eating a lot or a little
• Drinking alcohol, taking drugs
• Doing exercise
• Hitting something
• Going for a walk
• Doing some work
• Cooking etc. 

Notice how some of the these actions we can take up inside ourselves might get the job done. Drinking three glasses of wine a night in the short term can help us feel less stressed in the moment but maybe not be the best solution to look after our lives. Taking drugs or hitting someone can really help sedate us or help us let off steam, but might have some serious consequences in our social lives!

While some of these tools can soothe you temporarily, they’re not all equally supportive of your well-being in the long run. That’s where mindful awareness can help—by making your responses more conscious and intentional. 

2. Self-Regulation Through Interaction with Others

This means helping yourself calm down through interacting with other people. 

Examples of self-regulation through interaction with others:

• Sharing your day with a partner or friend
• Discussing a problem or difficulty,
• Exploring states with a therapist
• Picking a fight
• Having sex etc.  

Again, these actions can be really skilful, or they can be draining or damaging to relationships and one’s life.   

Understanding Your Regulation Style

Some of these ways we can use to calm down and relieve our distress are obviously going to be more productive or helpful to your life than others.

And of course, some of us are naturally more inclined to self-regulate without the help of others, and some of us are more inclined to always bring other people in early to help ourselves.  (It is interesting to see that research on babies makes clear that these patterns are partly biological and genetic.)  

I think it is wise to get good at both ways of calming ourselves down. Always relying on oneself can lead to a little too much isolation; always relying on others can develop a sense of helplessness without them and can be demanding for others too.

A Story from Practice: Building Self-Regulation with Mindfulness

Mindfulness practice can be seen as a way of self-regulation using our own resources in the moment. Someone who trained in the Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction course with me was a young professional woman who started to realise that she mainly relied on her stress regulation at the end of the day by talking relentlessly with her partner – giving him a blow-by-blow description of all the difficult moments. She realised that this was really shaping their interaction – with him being called on every evening to listen quite passively to her litany of events. She started to feel the how this was kind of deadening for both of them.  

She happened to ride a scooter to and from work and made the decision to deliberately let all those stories, insults, injuries and successes of the day float out of her head, as she rode home. She was doing her own listening, rather than insisting that he do it. She reported a greater sense of intimacy and aliveness between them, when she took her own authority to process some of the day by herself. Connecting with him in other ways became possible when she wasn’t using him for this complaining session each day.

How Does Mindfulness Help us Cam Down and Self-Regulate?

Rather than pressuring yourself to directly and immediately change any state, you are encouraged to bring an attitude of gentle and non-judgmental curiosity to every experience, no matter what it is. The goal is acceptance of the whole of you, during any experience. 

In this way, mindfulness practice builds the capacity to accept, tolerate and transform painful mind and body states without reacting so intensely to them. It interrupts the spiral of distress, which can sometimes occur when you react strongly against pain or difficulty in your life. 

It is paradoxical. By allowing and accepting and getting to know yourself, you’ll become much more skilled at managing unruly and disruptive feelings and thought processes— therefore learning how to respond creatively to stressful situations and relationships rather than reacting habitually. 

Through regular practice, mindfulness helps you:

• Accept and tolerate difficult emotional states
•  Interrupt reactive spirals of anxiety or stress
•  Reduce emotional overwhelm
• Build inner stability and self-trust
• Cultivate more creative, skilful responses to challenges

Mindfulness: A Practice of Empowered Self-Regulation

The beauty of mindfulness is that it invites you to return to your own resources. The breath. The body. The capacity to pause and notice. These inner tools are always with you, and learning to use them skilfully is a powerful act of self-care.

By strengthening your ability to sit with discomfort, make space for what’s happening, and choose your response, mindfulness becomes a foundational skill for emotional resilience and well-being.

⟶ Interested in learning these tools? Explore our upcoming MBSR courses and discover how mindfulness can support your journey toward greater calm, clarity and connection.

—Timothea Goddard