co-regulation

Calming down with someone's help instead of all by yourself.

When two people interact warmly, each one's feelings — and even heartbeat and breath — lean on the other's, the way two people carrying a table each bear half the weight. Development runs through it: a child borrows a caregiver's steadiness until enough of it is built inside, and the borrowing is meant to taper. The risk the castle found is the borrowing that never ends — synchrony that feels good while the self-regulating muscle goes unexercised (fading-the-other).