Trauma & Stress

Three kinds of stress

Harvard's Center on the Developing Child describes a useful distinction between positive, tolerable and toxic stress responses.

• Positive stress — brief, moderate challenge that builds capacity. The first day of practice. A hard test. A tryout.
• Tolerable stress — serious adversity that is time-limited and buffered by supportive relationships, so the stress-response system can recover.
• Toxic stress — strong, frequent or prolonged adversity without adequate adult support, which can disrupt developing systems over time.

Notice what moves an experience from tolerable to toxic in that framework: not the size of the event, but the absence of a supportive relationship around it. That is the whole argument of this book, written in the language of developmental science.

Regulation and co-regulation

Regulation is the ability to manage attention, emotion and behavior. Co-regulation is what happens when a calmer nervous system helps a dysregulated one settle. Practically: your tone, pace, volume, face and body are part of the environment you are asking someone to calm down inside of.

Four questions instead of one reaction

• What might this behavior be communicating?
• What could this person be protecting?
• How can my presence reduce fear rather than increase it?
• How can accountability exist inside relationship?

None of these questions remove a standard or a consequence. They change the order of operations. Regulate. Relate. Then reason.