social-baseline

The brain's default setting is not alone-and-regulating but beside-a-trusted-other-and-running-lighter — the partner's presence is the ecology the brain was built to regulate within, not an intervention added to a solo baseline.

A child who falls down alone cries harder than a child who falls down while a parent's hand is there — not because the parent did anything, but because the brain reads the social presence as a resource and does less threat-work on its own. Social Baseline Theory (Coan) reframes co-regulation: the partner is not doing something to you, your brain is borrowing the social baseline the way a body borrows warmth from a shared fire. The question the castle asks is whether therapy builds self-regulation on top of this baseline, or only builds co-regulation that collapses when the partner leaves the room.

The castle's room that leans on it: alone-or-accompanied — the three-condition design (alone, partner-silent, partner-interacting) that would separate co-regulation from self-regulation, framed by the handholding study and Social Baseline Theory.