07/24/2026
The Three Hierarchies of Emotional Mastery & Healer Burn Out
"First Level" is Co-regulation, which is important in the first years of life but continues throughout life, even in adults. Co-regulation is essentially "borrowing someone else's calm". If a child/person co-regulates with someone who has a dysregulated nervous system, they will mirror their co-regulator and adopt a dysregulated nervous system.
"Second Level" is self-regulation; it requires higher-level cortical functioning of the PFC. This is the ability to independently monitor, redirect, and manage one's own energy, attention, and emotional responses. It also requires that the child/person has good body awareness and good proprioception, and they understand where their body ends and where they are in relation to their environment. This initially happens when infants move through proper progressive neuro-motor patterns. In the older child or adult, it may present as poor postural stability/poor dynamic core control.
The "Highest Level" is where one is able to examine their own thoughts, motives, and internal sensations and ask themselves, "Why am I feeling this way, and what exactly does this feeling mean?" This is built on interoceptive awareness. Interoception comes from internal sensations derived from the vestibular and proprioceptive systems, but also from hormones, immune cells/cytokines, viscera, the microbiome, mast cells, and more. This is where the brain-body connection has its roots! This is where chiropractic care is so powerful!!
If you are a practitioner (especially if you are an empath) and you are helping co-regulate kiddos/adults every day who have poor emotional mastery due to mirroring someone with a maladaptive nervous system, you are spending so much self-energy and falling into burnout!
Stay tuned for ways to help others achieve healthy emotional mastery so that you don't have to continually lend them your calm! The first step: claim your own emotional mastery! 💃🕺
