Auto-regulation: the reflexive habits we don’t always notice
Auto-regulation is what our body does on autopilot to try to manage stress or discomfort, often without us being fully aware of it. It refers to the automatic, often unconscious processes the nervous system uses to maintain balance or survive perceived threat. This includes fight, flight, freeze, and fawn responses. These responses are not choices—they happen quickly and instinctively, rooted in survival mechanisms developed early in life. Sometimes it’s helpful and although it can be protective in moments of real or perceived danger, it is not always adaptive in the long term. It often bypasses conscious choice and can lead to patterns that keep us stuck.
As I finished writing this paragraph, I got up to close my curtains to the night. As I did so, I slipped on a smooth spot on my floorboards, and began to fall. Instantly my breath held, my heartrate sped up, my eyes became wide and staring, my body braced. For some of us that live in chronic freeze, this is a constant state. Yet for me, in this moment, I could notice what happened, and as I righted myself, I stopped to allow my body’s equilibrium to come back to my baseline, my breath and heartrate to return to normal, the adrenalin to subside.
Auto-regulation can look like:
Numbing out on screens
People-pleasing
Withdrawing from contact
Laughing to deflect
Dissociating when overwhelmed
Shutting down or going numb in response to emotional pain
Overworking or distracting oneself to avoid discomfort
Addictive behaviours or compulsions as a way to "numb out"
Though we all long to feel well in ourselves, we live in a world that constantly tells us to do more, to measure our worth against ideals of the perfect job, the perfect relationship or the endless list of things we believe we should have or should be doing. It brings us relentless and KPIs or mind-numbing meetings, the pressures of juggling family life, grief that inhibits our sense of vitality and security, not to mention injuries, pain, loneliness. And of course - it also brings us immeasurable richness and joy should we be able to access that in ourselves.
When our autonomic nervous system was not given the optimal conditions to develop in a way that it was designed, or when tremendous shock gets stuck in our bodies, we become trapped in cycles of self-criticism, anxiety or despair. It’s no surprise that stress follows as we learn to override our need for rest and safety, and in doing so, we miss the very life that is unfolding in front of us leaving us frequently overwhelmed, losing our innate capacity to function in a way that restores wholeness, wellbeing and vitality.
Autoregulation is built into the architecture of the nervous system and held in the body’s implicit memory. These patterns can fragment our sense of self, narrow our world, and keep us bracing against life, locked in mistrust, disconnection, or collapse. Recent research in epigenetics shows how our physiology is shaped not just by our own experiences, but by the imprints of our family, culture, and environment—rippling through generations.
As Pema Chödrön writes, “When we protect ourselves so we won’t feel pain, that protection becomes a prison.”
With the right conditions, our body knows how to re-orient to balance, coherence and wholeness.
My intention is to support your body’s natural innate ability to find its way back into balance—to autoregulation- so the patterns shaped by the necessity of survival physiology can soften, integrate, and make space for more ease, allowing you to reconnect to the deeper flow of life.