self-regulation Archives – Marty Cooper, PhD, MFT

December 1, 2020August 27, 2022 by Marty L. Cooper, PhD, MFT

December 2020 – Self-Regulation: The Whats and Hows (Depression Primer #4)

I hope that your Thanksgiving went well (all things about these times considered), and that in an incredibly difficult year, you have been able to keep, more or less, your footing. Which is a thought that is apropos to the topic for this newsletter, continuing on with the theme of basic issues regarding depression (following on from the previous ones on gratitude, experimentation, and futility), this article will focus on the nature of “self-regulation,” and its centrality to depression and depression’s healing. It’s a big topic, arguably the most important in understanding, but I’m hoping this gives you a sense of the terrain.

Here’s to wishing an entry into the new year characterized by poise and equanimity.

Self-Regulation: The Inner Tube on the River of Life

So, here’s the starting point for this article, a contention about overwhelm: It’s impossible to feel safe in our lives if we cannot manage overwhelm. If we are either often experiencing overwhelm, or we feel that if we let our guard down, we’ll get overwhelmed, we will adopt one of the primal and rigid defenses to guard, in an overgeneralized way, against this terrible experience.

Which then, of course, begs the questions, “What is safety?” and, “What is overwhelm?”