- Self-regulation is, first of all, these are things that we all do. But seems to be a much greater challenge for children with neurodevelopmental issues such as autism, learning disabilities, ADHD, and so forth. So for self-regulation we're talking about what a person may do independently to regulate, which can be done on a sensory level by rocking, by pacing. So it could be on a motor level.
However, self-regulation can occur on higher levels in our thinking, when we know things are predictable, when we rehearse in our minds what the schedule is going to be for the day. For example, what we need to say in a difficult job interview. So we look at strategies both at a sensory motor level and at a more language and cognitive level to self-regulate. Mutual regulation is the support we get from others.
So we know this every day, if a person in our life who's important to us, a loved one, needs a little support. We might give them a hug. Mutual regulation can occur at higher levels where we ask a person for help, where we express our emotions to others and we say, "This is really difficult," or, "I'm feeling very anxious, can you help me," or, "I don't know what's going to happen next, "can you help me with that," because you're familiar with the activity. So when we put self and mutual regulation together, it results in a nice balance of skills that we have to deal with the stresses in our lives, whereas if we only are skewed towards self-regulation, what we do independently or skew towards mutual regulation, we're missing out on the full range of strategies that a human being can have to stay well-regulated and deal with the challenges in what we refer to as the stormy sea of life.
