Co-Regulation and Co-Dysregulation: Relearning Safety and Connection

Introduction

Across modern societies and workplaces, autonomy and control are held in high esteem. We praise independence and emotional restraint, often mistaking them for strength. Yet beneath this ideal lies an exhausted and disconnected nervous system. When cultures glorify self-sufficiency, they perpetuate chronic co-dysregulation, systems in which people subtly amplify each other’s stress, shame, and vigilance. What appears as professionalism or composure is often the nervous system’s quiet attempt to survive disconnection.

Relational neuroscience reveals that our bodies are not built for such isolation. Safety and resilience emerge through mutual regulation, not control. As Stephen Porges (2011) demonstrates, our social nervous system is designed for collaboration. Its primary goal is not dominance but connection. When this need is suppressed by cultural norms of competition or self-mastery, the body enters defensive states that undermine trust, empathy, and cooperation.

Patriarchal Culture and the Biology of Control

Patriarchal societies have long equated strength with invulnerability. Sylvia Walby (1989) describes patriarchy as a system sustained by interrelated structures—paid labor, the household, the state, and culture—that together preserve male dominance. Gerda Lerner (1986) traces this dominance back to its historical origins, showing how patriarchy arose not from nature but through centuries of institutionalized hierarchy and the objectification of women. Over time, these external systems became internalized psychological templates.

Janet Sayers (1986) explores this internalization, noting that patriarchy embeds itself within identity, shaping how all genders relate to power, emotion, and care. Its psychological manifestation pressures men toward emotional suppression and women toward relational self-effacement. Both dynamics fracture the body’s innate capacity for co-regulation. Marion Woodman (1982) called this the “inner patriarch”—the internalized voice that seeks to control, rather than be with, our vulnerability.

From a neurobiological perspective, this inner patriarch manifests as chronic sympathetic activation: the body braced against emotion. Bonnie Badenoch (2018) explains that when relational fields become unsafe, the nervous system contracts into defense, shutting down curiosity and empathy. Patriarchal conditioning thus translates into physiological rigidity. Emotional dominance becomes both a social ideal and a biological reflex.

Individualism and the Myth of Self-Sufficiency

Western individualism reinforces this pattern. It idealizes the autonomous self—self-made, self-controlled, self-sufficient. Yet as Sbarra and Hazan (2008) emphasize, regulation is inherently relational. Even our capacity to self-soothe originates in early experiences of co-regulation. When society denies this interdependence, it leaves individuals physiologically and emotionally under-resourced.

Stephen Porges (2017) describes how such isolation affects the vagal system. When we lose cues of safety (e.g., facial warmth, tone of voice, and attuned eye contact), the social engagement system goes offline. The nervous system shifts from connection to protection. In workplaces, this creates a chain reaction of co-dysregulation: leaders’ stress signals trigger tension in their teams, teams mirror one another’s hypervigilance, and collaboration gives way to guardedness. Emotional contagion under threat replaces mutual regulation under safety.

Co-Dysregulation as a Collective Condition

Co-dysregulation is not confined to individual relationships. It is a mirror of cultural trauma. Patriarchal and individualistic systems condition us to prioritize “power over” rather than “power with” (Real, 1994). When this becomes the relational norm, organizations, families, and societies operate within a chronic state of physiological defense. Hierarchy becomes a form of emotional armor.

Badenoch (2018) observes that in such conditions, no single individual can restore safety alone. Healing requires the re-creation of relational fields, environments where the nervous system can rest, listen, and entrain to calm. This involves cultivating empathy not as sentiment but as regulation. When empathy and attunement are present, the body re-learns safety. Trust, creativity, and moral reasoning can then re-emerge.

The Hero’s Journey Reimagined

The cultural myth of the Hero’s Journey, so deeply embedded in Western imagination, reflects and reinforces patriarchal ideals. The hero sets out alone, conquers the unknown, and returns triumphant through will and endurance (Campbell, 1949). This model mirrors the nervous system’s flight into autonomy: a story of separation and control. Yet when seen through a relational lens, a more profound truth emerges.

Healing follows a different path. It is not the solitary hero’s victory but the return from isolation to connection. The actual transformation occurs not through conquest but through surrender to interdependence, the recognition that no one heals alone. The relational equivalent of the Hero’s Journey is the Return to the Village: a movement from defensive autonomy toward embodied belonging.

This reimagined journey echoes what Porges (2011) and Badenoch (2018) describe as the physiological trajectory of healing. After defense, the nervous system must find safe co-regulation before it can re-enter the world with openness. The hero, therefore, is not the one who conquers, but the one who allows themselves to be touched, regulated, and changed by relationship. It is a journey from power over to power with.

Image via Unsplash by Rochelle Leader, @rochelleleaderphotography

Restoring Dignity through Relational Competence

Relearning co-regulation in a patriarchal and individualistic world is an act of cultural repair. It demands that we cultivate what could be called relational competence, the ability to hold ourselves and others in states of dignity, curiosity, and calm. This involves developing embodied awareness of our own nervous system responses and recognizing how they interact with those around us.

Leadership grounded in relational safety requires what Badenoch (2018) terms “being a regulating presence.” Through grounded tone, slower pace, and genuine attunement, leaders can transform group physiology. Teams begin to synchronize, not around fear or control, but around shared trust. This biological shift is the essence of psychological safety. It replaces domination with mutual respect and restores integrity to human connection.

Conclusion: Returning to the We

Patriarchy and individualism are not merely social systems. They are patterns of collective nervous system dysregulation, habits of bracing against life. Healing them begins in the body, through the courage to feel and the willingness to co-regulate.

As we move from separation to connection, from the myth of self-sufficiency to the truth of interdependence, we participate in a quiet revolution. The task is not to become invulnerable but to rediscover our shared vulnerability as the ground of trust. This return to the “We” is the true hero’s journey of our time: not conquest, but restoration. Not dominance, but belonging.

References

Badenoch, B. (2018). The heart of trauma: Healing the embodied brain in the context of relationships. W. W. Norton & Company.

Campbell, J. (1949). The hero with a thousand faces. Princeton University Press.

Lerner, G. (1986). The creation of patriarchy. Oxford University Press.

Porges, S. W. (2011). The polyvagal theory: Neurophysiological foundations of emotions, attachment, communication, and self-regulation. W. W. Norton & Company.

Porges, S. W. (2017). The pocket guide to the polyvagal theory: The transformative power of feeling safe. W. W. Norton & Company.

Real, T. (1994). I don’t want to talk about it: Overcoming the secret legacy of male depression. Scribner.

Sbarra, D. A., & Hazan, C. (2008). Coregulation, dysregulation, and self-regulation: An integrative framework for understanding attachment, separation, loss, and recovery. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 12(2), 141-167. https://doi.org/10.1177/1088868308315702

Sayers, J. (1986). Sexual contradictions: Psychology, psychoanalysis and feminism. Routledge.

Walby, S. (1989). Theorizing patriarchy. Basil Blackwell.

Woodman, M. (1982). The pregnant virgin: A process of psychological transformation. Inner City Books.