Regulate yourself first. Then regulate alongside.
Use it when
- Somebody has gone from nought to everything in front of you
- It is a child, or somebody you are responsible for, and other people are watching
- Your instinct is to raise your voice or to leave the room
- Whatever you do next will either settle it or double it
The steps
- Regulate yourself first. Your nervous system is the primary intervention. One exhale. Drop your shoulders.
- Get to their physical level. Crouch, sit, or kneel. Eyes level with eyes.
- Signal safety — calm voice, open body, available presence. Not hovering. Available.
- Name what you see without judgement — "You're having a really hard time right now."
- Offer one simple choice — "Water or walk?"
- Breathe visibly and slowly. Invite without demanding.
- When the peak passes: reconnect warmly — before any conversation about what happened.
What to expect
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.
If this isn't the one
- They are not safe → The Crisis Response Sequence
- They are shut down rather than escalated → Shutdown Protocol
- It is over and you are still carrying it → The Self-Compassion Break
Where it comes from
- Session 12 — the full handout
- Session 12 — Co-Regulation Scripts
- Practice-based
Prefer it one step at a time? The same protocol as a guided runner in the app, which also keeps a private record if you want one.
This is one of the tools a seventeen-session series teaches, ninety minutes at a time, in a room of six to twelve people. It is peer-facilitated, free to host, and every handout and worksheet it uses is free to take.
Where this one comes from
You have just run one protocol. Behind it is one idea: everything you do is paid for out of a single account, and almost nothing is charged at the moment you do it — which is why the fifth repetition is worse than five times the first, and why a bad night does not present its bill until the following afternoon. Shoulder the Bill is that argument as one continuous read, written out of a workplace injury and the four years afterwards. The manual is the one you open at a page. The Workbook is the one you write in.
three books, one system →Check what stayed 3 questions
Answer in your own words, out loud or on paper. Nothing is scored, nothing is marked, and nothing is stored — this is for noticing what you have, not for anybody to grade.
Who is this sequence for, and what is it you need from it in that moment?
What the material says
Somebody in front of you has lost their footing and you need the order.
After regulating yourself, what do you do with your own body?
What is the anchor phrase, and what order does it put the two halves in?
What the material says
Regulate yourself first. Then regulate alongside.