A skills group, not therapy. Your facilitator is a peer, not a clinician.
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Chapter 12 of the audiobook, Co-Regulation Scripts. This audiobook is narrated by a synthetic voice, cloned from a recording of the author's own voice. The words and the voice are his; the reading is synthesised rather than performed. Download this chapter.
Before anything else:
Where it stops. Before you apply any of this to another person, check whose norms you are applying. All of it varies, and none of your defaults arrived neutrally. The question is not are they doing this correctly. It is: correctly by whose measure, and have I asked?
Step 2 — standing over someone dysregulated is a threat posture whether or not you intend it. Getting to their level changes the physiology before you say anything. It works on adults too.
Step 5 — "what do you need?" demands executive function from someone who currently hasn't got any. Two concrete options is a decision they can actually make, and making one small decision restores a bit of agency.
Step 7 — every instinct says have the conversation while it's fresh. That instinct is wrong. At the end of a peak the capacity for a useful conversation hasn't returned, and what you're really doing is attaching the repair to the distress. Warmth first. The conversation keeps.
They may not visibly respond to any of it, and that is not the sequence failing. Your own steadiness is the intervention, and the conversation about what happened belongs after the peak rather than during it.
Regulate yourself — one exhale. Level — get to their height. Name — "you're having a hard time." Offer — "water or walk?" Stay.
"Regulate yourself first. Then regulate alongside."
| State | What to say | What not to say |
|---|---|---|
| Overwhelm / panic | "I'm here. Let's breathe together, longer out. What do you see in the room right now?" | "Calm down." "It's not that bad." "Think positive." |
| Shutdown / numbness | "I'm sitting with you. You don't have to talk. I'm here." | "What's wrong? Talk to me. Tell me what happened." |
| Anger escalating | "I can see this is really important. I'm not going anywhere. Let's slow down." | "You're overreacting." "Stop being dramatic." |
| Grief | "I'm here. You don't need to be okay right now." | "At least…" "Everything happens for a reason." |
| Shame | "What you did doesn't define who you are. Let's figure out the next step." | "You should have known better." "What were you thinking?" |
| Not yet ready to talk | "You don't have to talk. I'm here whenever you are." | "You'll feel better if you talk about it." |
Shutdown is the one people get most wrong. Every instinct says "talk to me." That's a demand for language from someone whose language systems have gone offline. Sit there and say almost nothing.
Shame is the most surgical. "What you did doesn't define who you are" separates the behaviour from the person — exactly what shame refuses to do.
And every entry in the right-hand column is something a person who cares says. None of it is cruelty. They are the reflexes of people who can't bear to watch and want it to stop.
Box processor: "Come into this one box with me. Just this issue — nothing else. We will close it together when we are done."
String processor: "I see the thread you just pulled. Let's follow it together for thirty seconds, then we will drop it back into the present moment with a slow exhale."
Co-regulation is not metaphorical. Holding the hand of a trusted person reduces the brain's threat response (Coan & Sbarra, 2015). A calm helper's breathing rate, muscle tension and vocal tone provide direct physiological cues of safety — processed below conscious awareness, and faster than language.
Naming does two jobs at once. "You're having a really hard time right now" validates the experience and engages their language centres through affect labelling, which reduces amygdala activation.
The replacement for two failure modes. Over-functioning (solving, advising, lecturing) and under-functioning (withdrawing, avoiding). The sequence replaces guesswork with structure: regulate, ask, match, witness, offer one concrete thing, check back.
Special play time — thirty minutes of undivided, child-led, fully present play — is the core of child-led play therapy (Axline, 1964; Landreth, 2002).
In practice — the default is over-functioning—fixing before the other person feels heard. The replacement is to sit with them first and ask what they need before offering anything. The opening line for a brother: ‘I’m here. You don’t have to explain anything.’
| Don't | Why it fails |
|---|---|
| "Calm down." | Escalates activation |
| "Stop crying." | Suppresses instead of regulating |
| "You're overreacting." | Shames |
| "What is wrong with you?" | Labels |
| "I told you this would happen." | Punishes rather than supports |
WB 2.12c — Self-Disclosure Planning. Sharing your own experience is one of the strongest things you
can offer, and the easiest place for support to become about you. Four checks: Does this serve them or me? Scar, not open wound? How little would do? How do I hand the floor back?
"Enough that they are not alone. Not so much that they are managing mine."
WB 2.12d — Cultural Fit Check. Every tool in this book carries assumptions about how people should
express feeling, who counts as family, and whether asking for help is relief or exposure. Those
assumptions are not neutral and not universal.
"Who do you usually go to with this? Where do I fit, if at all?"
Regulate alongside. Then teach. Never in reverse.
A child does not need a perfect parent.
They need a parent who is present often enough, warm enough often enough, and willing to repair when something goes wrong.
That is the complete job description.
Not the tools. Not the scripts. Those help. But present enough, warm enough, and willing to repair — that's the whole thing.
Use one script, once. And work through WB 2.12c before you next support someone through something
hard.
In the workbook: WB 2.12b helper self-assessment · WB 2.12c self-disclosure planning ·
WB 2.12d cultural fit check · WB 8.4 blank co-regulation script.
If you need next: Repair after a co-regulation failure → Session 9. The person is in crisis beyond co-regulation → Session 17. You need your own team to sustain your helper capacity → Session 10.
Equipped With Agency · Session 12 of 17 · Next week: School and Work Scenarios
The full entries for the research named on this page. Every one of them is also in the reference list at the back of the manual.