Regulated Bonds Are A Thing!

rfbreilly
21 hours ago
7 min read

It took me some time and many do overs, to write this blog because I wanted it to be an honest place to begin with a discussion about regulated bonds as opposed to maybe trauma bonds or highly dysregulated bonds. I feel that if we are really truthful… very few of us were explicitly taught how to regulate our nervous systems or emotionally regulate in a clear, embodied, practical, day to day way.

Most of us were taught behavioral control, not attunement or emotional regulation. We were taught to get on with it, be quiet, be good, don’t overreact, don’t be dramatic, don’t need to much, don’t be angry, don’t cry too much, don’t make a fuss.

But being told to suppress expression is not the same as being taught how to feel your emotions and metabolize them safely in the body and within relationships.

So we grow up with adult-sized feelings and child-sized regulatory tools.

In fairness, many regulated bonds do begin inside intimate relationships. At first, it can feel like a powerful love bond — electric, meaningful, deeply connecting. For some people, it’s the first time they feel truly seen, chosen, or emotionally met. That alone can feel profoundly regulating. The nervous system experiences relief: finally, someone feels safe… finally, I can soften.

But then, inevitably, things seem to get complicated.

Because intimacy does something nothing else quite does — it exposes the nervous system’s unfinished work and unresolved emotional stress. It brings our attachment patterns, unmet needs, old fears and patterns of predictable outcomes and core beliefs right to the surface. Suddenly the very person who feels like safety can also trigger threat and it can be really confusing. As you slide along a scale of survival love and back to safety. The bond that once soothed now also activates. Love and survival stress begin to tangle and so to the dynamic tango begins. Two nervous systems enter a dance and depending on the commitment and awareness level along with the skills to navigate the many changing rhythms as to whether this love evolves, dissolves or stays stuck in survival cycles.

This is often where people panic and assume something is wrong with the relationship itself. The longer the relationship lasts the more dance offs there are. Sometimes there is something very unhealthy about the duo's dynamic. But often, what’s actually happening is that the relationship has reached the depth where regulation skills are truly required to feel your way through the contraction to invite clarity, maturity and growth.

If both people are committed to the relationship, to maturing as partners, to self-reflection, to doing their inner work rather than weaponizing their wounds, it can work out. Not perfectly. Not smoothly. But meaningfully. There can be amazing growth and love can enter higher qualities of life giving sustenance. There is repair, accountability, curiosity, and a shared willingness to grow rather than control or collapse, blame or shame or to belittle or degrade worth.

However, ideally — and this is the nuance — a regulated bond begins before we enter an intimate relationship. It begins with the quality of the relationship we have with ourselves. It begins in moments when no one else is present and we are faced with our own emotions, our own thoughts, our own nervous system activations and desire to mature.

Can I stay with myself when I am anxious?

Can I soothe myself when I feel rejected?

Can I pause when I am triggered rather than react instantly in automatic ways?

Can I recognize my internal states as they shift across different environments and relationships?

That capacity forms the groundwork of a regulated bond and its a capacity we can work on building if we choose.

For many of us, we didn’t learn that at home. A child can only mature to the level of their parents capacity and emotional maturity, unless — and this is the pivotal turning point — they later choose to consciously do that work for themselves. Parents who were themselves chronically dysregulated, alone, isolated, overwhelmed, emotionally unavailable, or inconsistently present could only model what they knew. So many people don't even know that nervous system attunement and emotional regulation is a thing. Many homes unknowingly live on constant fumes of survival mode. Again, that is not always about blame; often it is about limitation and lack of resources. You cannot model a skill you were never taught or never had the support to develop.

So we enter adulthood with templates of love that mirror our childhood understanding: love feels intense, love feels uncertain, love feels conditional, love requires pleasing, love requires silence, love requires endurance. These templates and various others like these are powerful neural pathways and the brain naturally seeks predictability and familiarity, even if familiarity is painful, dysfunctional and physically, mentally and emotionally unhealthy.

That is why people can end up in relationships that replay childhood survival stress coupled with limiting core beliefs such as, but not limited to:

I’m not good enough.

I’m unlovable.

I’m too much.

I’m not enough.

It is not because they consciously want pain. It is because the nervous system recognizes the pattern as “known,” and known often feels safer than the unfamiliar, even when the unfamiliar would actually be healthier.

This is also why spending time around emotionally mature adults can be very supportive to personal growth. We learn regulation not only through instruction but through the experience of it. A quality of attunement, empathy, the ability to co-regulate, observe and align action with a larger awareness. Observing someone stay steady during conflict, expressing needs clearly without aggression, apologizing without collapsing into shame, or setting boundaries without withdrawing love — these experiences update the nervous system’s map of what is possible.

We begin to internalize a new reference point: Oh… this is what steadiness feels like on the inside and looks like on the outside. This is what repair feels like on the inside and looks like. This is what love without survival panic feels like.

Over time, that becomes an internalized embodied regulator. That no matter what, you can rely on your experience and standard of love to be your guiding light. You learn that you don't need to fear or suppress your experience of love, you just need to choose who can meet you there and grow together. Love is a conscious choice to sustain and maintain.

To be clear, when we talk about regulated bonds, we are not talking about perfect people entering perfect relationships, or being perfect all the time. We are talking about two very human beings with nervous systems, histories and desires for their future. Who can be increasingly aware of their changing internal states and their triggers. When stored stress or unresolved emotions and associated memories, bubble up, both take responsibility to care for each other in those moment. Learning how to attune and uncouple those survival strategies to invite clarity and growth. It means recognizing when you are activated, when you are withdrawing, when you are fawning, when you are fighting for control, and having the capacity — even imperfectly — to pause and choose a different response.

A regulated bond is not static harmony, it's a dance of attunement, capacity, boundaries and being able to listen differently. It is the ability to move through ruptures and repairs without losing connection to yourself or to each other. It is knowing that conflict does not need to be confrontational or automatically mean abandonment. Space is different to distance and space does not automatically mean rejection, it could be time for healthy reflection with the intention to circle back to what you stabilized from to seek collective clarity. This is all possible when there is enough capacity within the nervous system to support internal stability, to stay present with discomfort. This increased stress tolerance breaks the 'neuro link' to the often automatic and immediate over-reactions being fed by well practiced survival patterns. Which can sometimes fulfill short term coherence with longer term costs.

Perhaps most compassionately though, we must acknowledge this: many people only begin learning this language of the body, nervous system and emotional literacy because of a relationship they care deeply about forces them to. Maybe because they fear the loss of love and this is a delicate time, a time that can really trigger the arrival of survival love. Love often becomes the mirror that reveals where we are stuck, where we over give, where we shut down, where we control, where we avoid or abandon ourselves to preserve connection. What we do with this information is more important than the information.

It can feel unfair that we were not taught these skills earlier. But it is also deeply empowering to realize we can still learn them now. The moment we begin reconnecting in wiser more informed ways the more accessible self-regulation is — even in small ways — we change the quality of every bond we enter. We become less over-reactive, less dependent on external reassurance, less likely to collapse or escalate. We start to meet others from a place of embodied presence rather than survival urgency or self-suppression.

From there, love has a different chance. Not a guaranteed one. But a truer, more honest clearer one.

Important note..

Sometimes you are having a very healthy reaction to a very unhealthy relationship. We don't learn how to self-regulate to tolerate physically, mentally or emotionally dangerous dynamics and abuse. We learn these skills to discern in more clear ways whether you are tolerating survival love and reinforcing trauma bonds or living life with a commitment to healthier more regulated maturing bonds.

To truly feel beneath the surface layers of love, take time to get to know your standards or you might end up settling for someone else's. Some covert personality types are really sleek at selling you their love as they slowly chip away at your worth and genuine love.

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