Regulate, Relate and Create: Balancing in a World that is Off-Balance

Neuroscience is demonstrating that some of society’s most vexing challenges and the most difficult behaviors are actually biologically based fear responses connected with toxic levels of stress more related to fear-based dysregulation than intractable behavior. As Maureen Walker reminds, “Strategies for disconnection are an intense yearning for connection in an atmosphere of fear.” In this interactive presentation, we will examine how adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) and compounding adverse toxic stressors (CATS) create repeated fear responses and disrupt the feeling of safety in our bodies needed for our brains to allow us to calm (regulate), work cooperatively with others (relate) and learn (create). This makes embodied safety, the ability to feel safe as well as be safe, as important to those of us who work with families experiencing toxic stress as it is for the youth and families we serve. Setting power struggles aside, we will explore every day, brain-based interventions to help all of us replace challenging, fear-based interactions with the ability to regulate, relate and create.