you’re not a lone wolf, you’re a wounded one
Co-regulation, emotional wounds, and the myth of needing nobody
I’m tired of hearing the phrase, “Nobody is coming to save you.”
People love to throw that one around.
Put it on a motivational graphic, why don’t you?! Slap it on a vision board next to someone in athleisure standing on a mountain! As if the highest form of emotional evolution is becoming a person who needs absolutely nothing from anyone else.
And I get it… kind of.
I understand why so many people cling to that mindset. I understand why “I don’t need anybody” became the prize. But I’ve been having conversations surrounding this topic a lot lately, and I just need to say something plainly:
That mindset isn’t healing, nor is it true. It’s a wound that learned how to brand itself.
So How Does That Wound Heal?
Great question! Gilberto Gomes Leal, the founder of Amenti, said something that stayed with me:
“If you cannot name it, you cannot heal it.”
And if you try to do all your healing and shadow work alone?
You may not be healing.
You may just be controlling.
There’s a difference, even though they may feel identical inside.
Because in the United States especially, we swim in hyper-individualism and call it self-sufficiency. We’ve been sold the idea that needing people is a liability. That depending on others means you’re behind, not evolved enough, not healed enough.
It’s the kind of messaging that often mistakes obedience for success and is preached heavily even in the most spiritual of wellness spaces. People stacking crystals, journaling their nervous systems into submission, and announcing their ✨healing era✨… meanwhile, they’ve been alone in the house five days a week, ruminating, and haven’t had a real conversation in months.
That’s not natural.
And I say that with empathy and a loving sense of humor, because I know the trap well. I’ve fallen into it deeply myself and spent enough time there to recognize its patterns. While people don’t always find themselves in that place for the same reasons, many of us share similar reasons for why we stay.
So let me remind you of this:
There is nothing wrong with you, your feelings, or your natural range of expression.
The real issue is what you’re used to having reflected back to you when you try to socialize, connect, give, and receive love—what your body, heart, and mind have learned to label as threats.
But they aren’t threats; they’re just triggers. And when we lose sight of that and start absorbing everyone else’s reactions and comments, we begin to give our power away in a multitude of ways. Sometimes we try to fix and overcompensate. Sometimes we hide or try to shrink. We monitor ourselves and quietly calculate how much of who we are feels safe to bring into each room and to each person, day after day.
That’s exactly how my anxiety began—not from being too much, but from spending the formative years of my life trying not to be. Hiding from a “shadow” that was truly only a projection and assumption I chose to accept.
This Wound Starts Early
Just think about how we treat children…
I was talking with my friend Justin recently about how society literally complains that kids are growing up too fast, while simultaneously demanding that they perform adulthood on command. Seems like mixed signals.
"You should know better." (Applies shame)
"Stop crying, it's not a big deal." (Invalidates feelings and forces emotional toughness)
"You're too old to be acting like this." (Ridicules age-appropriate behavior and demands premature maturity)
"You're in charge when I'm not here, take care of everyone." (Makes oldest children responsible for others/Parentification/Role confusion)
But where’s the explanation??? Where’s the modeling of what to do with all those emotions? The why? You know—every child’s favorite question to ask. It’s for a reason; their brains need it. Not your dismissal.
So try not to treat them as if their questions and feelings are something to be ashamed of. Instead, invite curiosity to help build their critical thinking, creativity, intelligence, and autonomy. Too often, kids are left endlessly waiting for life’s answers because the monitoring adult with them is dysregulated as well. Instead of offering guidance, that adult turns to punishment first. Those children then grow into adults who mirror the same reactions and behaviors as their caregivers, genuinely confused about what they’re feeling half the time—let alone how to express it, move through it, or release it.
That’s why so many of us end up in therapy, trying to reparent ourselves; uncomfortably searching our bodies for emotions we were never allowed to fully experience or understand in the first place.
Enter: Co-Regulation
I deeply wish someone had handed me a pamphlet on this concept in my teen years… or early twenties.
Co-regulation is the natural process of learning emotional balance through safe connection.
When we’re born, we are neurologically and physically helpless; literally wired to depend on another. Because humans aren’t like giraffes or sea turtles—we aren’t precocial animals. No one is born knowing how to process anger, grief, anxiety, disappointment, or joy.
It’s all learned through being around regulated people who say:
“I see what you’re feeling. Let’s move through it together.”
That’s co-regulation. Without it, we’re essentially left like three-year-olds floundering in the deep end of life—constantly prompted to “keep swimming,” but never actually shown how to.
Co-regulation With Children
With children, of course, the process/relationship is naturally uneven because the adult in the situation should be the one with more capacity, more tools, and therefore more responsibility.
Practicing co-regulation with a child looks more like showing empathy and exemplifying calmness.
getting on their level
naming the emotion
keeping your tone calm
offering safe touch when welcome
breathing with them
helping them understand that their emotions and feelings are survivable and will pass
Kids don’t need to learn that a good life means never feeling angry, sad, confused, or anxious. They need to understand that their emotions are just bits of information trying to be acknowledged, not emergencies to suppress. Pretending to feel peace at all times… that’s not realistic, and it only reinforces and promotes habitual masking and people-pleasing tendencies.
And this is why it’s so important to understand your own stress responses: fight, flight, freeze, or fawn. Because if a child’s distress instantly activates your unhealed patterns, you’re no longer just responding to them… subconsciously, you’re also reacting to a past version of yourself.
From Child Mind Institute: LaKisha Hoffman, MSW, a former college basketball player, coaches several youth teams. She recognizes that one of her triggers is when a child bounces a ball while she’s talking. It’s a small thing, but Hoffman knows from experience that it bothers her. “But I can’t just be like, ‘STOP bouncing the basketball,’” she says. “I can’t interact with them like that. I have to be calm in that moment and say, ‘Hey, what’s happening now? Are you supposed to be bouncing the ball?’ I have to build a culture for them to understand why they shouldn’t do that.”
Is your instinct to spank or yell when a child upsets you? (fight)
Or do you tend to walk away? (flight)
Or are their reactions sometimes so overwhelming that you get mentally “stuck” and shut down? (freeze)
What about immediately giving in to their demands just to avoid a tantrum? (fawn | the difference between co-regulation and actual soft-parenting)
Stress responses can become ingrained, but when you understand your “why”—the reason you react the way you do—you can develop healthier coping strategies and, in turn, more effectively guide the child through the same process.
Because for both adults and children, this will always remain fundamentally true:
When our nervous systems are dysregulated, we cannot easily focus on, process, or retain any new information—our brains and bodies are too overwhelmed trying to protect us from the stress.
Okay, But What About Adult Relationships? What If We Didn’t Receive Those Things?
Glad you asked again! : )
This all makes me think about a pattern I’ve started noticing in myself that I’ve really had to confront lately: I was being nurturing, empathetic, and patient—offering what felt like unconditional love—to people who were actively and repeatedly hurting me.
Whether they involved cheating, abuse, toxic fighting, manipulation, or gaslighting, I always faced the same final ultimatum: drop your grudges, let me back in, and put on a show, or I’m abandoning you, going silent, or turning you into the bad guy. So I guess, over time, that’s what my inner child’s nervous system subconsciously came to recognize as her version of normalcy. I didn’t know how to seek out anything else.
This is a classic and painful psychological phenomenon I am only now beginning to actively release—after years of therapy and extended time alone with myself—called repetition compulsion. It’s an unconscious drive to recreate the very environment and relationship patterns that hurt you in an attempt to finally “win”, master them, or change the ending.
And this is where the nuance of this co-regulation message really needs to land:
Sometimes the wisest choice—when a particular connection or pattern isn’t safe—is not to pursue it more (in thought, effort, or running toward replication) but to step back and gently redirect your focus instead.
Not receiving co-regulation as a child means potentially developing weak essential internal skills for managing emotions and stress. This often leads to chronic dysregulation, resulting in severe difficulty managing emotions, anxiety, poor impulse control, and the development of insecure attachment styles (anxious, avoidant, disorganized). So adults may end up struggling with emotional suppression and numbness, or have intense, reactive, and explosive outbursts (stuck in freeze, fight, flight, or fawn).
I definitely recognized this, believing it to have had a major effect on my self-esteem, perfectionistic tendencies, and sensitivity to rejection. My stress responses tend to be flight or fawn, so I naturally leaned into being more hypervigilant and anxiously attached.
This isn’t to say you have to heal alone; it simply means you’re now responsible for using your awareness wisely and practicing better discernment.
In adult relationships, co-regulation becomes a reciprocal process grounded in mutual safety and security. It’s neither fair nor sustainable for anyone to unload all of their struggles onto one person and expect that person to resolve their core issues for them. Even if you didn’t receive this kind of care from your caregivers, the responsibility still ultimately falls on you to decide how you want to move through the rest of your life and what that will actually require.
But if seeking co-regulation from home doesn’t feel safe, or you keep choosing emotionally unavailable partners, then your first regulation anchors may need to come from elsewhere: a trauma-informed therapist, a trusted friend, a support group, a healthier environment—any place where people use their own steadiness to support one another through stress.
So yes, you are deserving of consideration, comfort, and care.
And also of:
reassurance
accountability
emotional presence
calm after conflict
consistency
empathy without condescension
It isn’t neediness. It’s just biology.
Because what co-regulation is not—is an excuse to keep repeating a cycle you already recognize. Awareness is one thing, but change is another.
True change often requires you to fight the very urges that feel most natural to you. It means consciously interrupting your own loop and building a steadier foundation before asking someone else to help carry what you haven’t yet learned to hold.
I remember when my body became exhausted by the cycle… Anxiety turned into anxiety attacks. Frustration became migraines, vomiting, crying spells, irritation, and shutdown. And what I came to realize was that I kept trying to “push through” and ignore what was often my body saying: do not cross this line again.
It wasn’t an overreaction. It was information.
Sometimes our bodies don’t want to be rushed to the next lesson. Sometimes they just need rest. Rest and space long enough to internalize a different story.
Because you’re not asking for the world, sweetie. You’re just asking not to be left alone with your pain, whether the people in front of you caused it or not. That’s fair.
And to internalize a different story.
Because you’re not asking for the world sweetie. you’re just asking to not be left alone with your pain, whether the people in front of you caused it or not. And that’s fair.
But I also had to learn that no partner, friendship, or constant stream of connection could save me from abandoning myself. Sometimes seeking co-regulation can become another way of escaping your own feelings and the inner work that still belongs to you.
Sometimes the healing season is time to just breathe. Slowing down. Learning to self-soothe with the available support and research. Letting grief move through you without chasing distractions.
Both sides are true:
Healing through others is real, and so is healing before them, without them, and in preparation for them.
You can guide a horse to water, but you can’t make them drink. I’ve spent enough of my life trying to force people to hear me and heal with me. My responsibility was learning when to stop.
Because self-regulation is often internalized co-regulation. Someone modeled it first. Which means choosing your circle matters. You can regulate with people, but you can also just as easily dysregulate with them. Some rooms will drain you because they keep your nervous system in survival mode. And some dynamics will feel attractive and potentially “safe” only because they familiarly match old pain.
And that’s why hyper-independence isn’t a strength either—it’s usually protection. It’s what happens when the need for connection gets met with pain enough times that your nervous system says, never again.
That adaptation may keep you alive. But survival and living are not the same thing.
Real healing is relational, yes, but it’s also selective. You do not owe toxic people access to your healing process. Selective is different from closed—remember getting comfortable with the nuance, grey areas, and finding a middle ground is the goal here. Because there are people out there who will not make you fight to earn the right to feel love and validated. People who won’t require perfection before supporting you. People who run toward you when life hurts instead of away.
But you won’t know that until you’re actively and genuinely connecting with others. Not in a situationship, not a surface-level friendship where nobody brings anything real to the table—but a mutually vulnerable connection that can reach the depth of the wound site. Because your deepest wounds are relational. And the only way to heal a relational wound is by experiencing a better relationship.
The gym can’t do it.
The solo sound bath cannot do it.
The $400 retreat or therapy session can’t even fully do it if you just come home and put your walls back up the second it’s over.
Because what they offer is a pathway to grounding, not necessarily healing—though it is something you want to practice and carry with you into the connections where you’re seeking reciprocity and intimacy.
Which brings up one last thing…
If chaos has been your norm for a long time, healthy love and connection may feel strange. Maybe boring. Maybe even scary. Because when someone simply shows up consistently, without drama, hot and cold games, or passive-aggressive punishment, your body may not know what to do at first.
That doesn’t mean something is wrong. But it may mean something is finally going right! Allow yourself to be shown, as consistently as you were once triggered, that the rooms you were in were simply too small for you.
Because you can find bigger ones—entire stadiums. In fact, there’s already a crowd out there FULL of people just waiting for the opportunity to connect with you and experience a healthier kind of relationship with you. Now go out and find them!
Much love to my community!
Jordan | The Divine Vitality💛
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I enjoyed this and made me consider some things for sure