Please Hold
On stress, touch, and supportive interdependence
Whenever I have a hard day, I can’t wait to get home and collapse into my partner’s arms. Simply being held, my face pressed to his chest, soothes and comforts me, and helps me feel like everything really will be okay.
When we’re stressed, our first line of defense is social: we look for cues of safety in other people (Porges, 2022). If we’re lucky, we have a loved one we can turn to, to hug, cry, and/or vent. Touch and connection are healing. Our bodies are programmed to turn to others and to lean on one another to help us return to a feeling of safety.
Co-regulation is how people mutually influence each other’s emotions and physiology. It’s often used to describe how one person—usually someone in a regulated or calm state—helps another calm down through their presence, tone of voice, and touch (Sbarra & Hazan, 2008). It’s kind of like “catching” someone else’s calm.
Co-regulation through touch
As babies, we turn to our caregivers for co-regulation (Tronick, 1989). Babies depend on others to meet our needs, and they seek stable caregivers as attachment figures they can rely on.
Social cues of safety activate the parasympathetic nervous system via the vagus nerve, slowing our breath and heart rate, and moving us into a calmer state where emotions are easier to manage.
Babies crave physical touch, which reduces cortisol and prompts a flood of feel-good oxytocin in both child and caregiver (Scatliffe et al., 2019). An attuned caregiver can model calm and use cues like tone and touch to help children manage their distress. This creates a bond between caregiver and child and forms the foundation for developing self-regulation skills.
And even as we grow and learn to manage our own emotions, we continue to rely on others. We are built for connection. In adulthood, touch reduces pain, depression, and anxiety (Packheiser et al., 2024). Co-regulation helps create emotional stability (Butler & Randall, 2013). Relying on others for feelings of safety and security isn’t weakness or enmeshment. It’s part of how our nervous systems are wired.
Co-regulation through really listening
We need social connections in our lives. We need significant others we can turn to when we’re feeling sad or stressed or lonely (Cohen, 2024). We need people we can talk to who will truly listen to us and validate our experiences — who won’t judge us or simply be waiting for their turn to speak.
We don’t need others to solve our problems for us, or to tell us we’re overreacting, or to blandly reassure us everything will be okay. We just need them to listen.
Most of the time, when we seek someone to confide in, we want empathy, not advice.
Listening means being present as a witness to someone else’s experience without judgment or inserting your own opinion. When we feel truly seen and held by another person, their warm presence gives us a feeling of safety that helps us access and trust our own intuitive wisdom (Baum, 2025).
Owning our feelings
I’ve long leaned on co-regulation with my partner to comfort me when I’m feeling dysregulated. Sometimes, my dysregulation is caused by something out there in the world. Other times, dysregulation comes from within, when we have conflict. In both cases, though, I’ve relied on him to help me feel better.
But there’s an important difference between asking others for help in restoring a regulated state and blaming others for our feelings. Making our sadness or anger someone else’s fault, their problem to fix.
We are still, ultimately, the ones responsible for our own emotions.
So as I have begun examining enmeshment in my relationships, I have learned this:
I don’t need to learn to manage my emotions entirely independently. I don’t have to stop relying on others for a feeling of safety and security. We all need each other. But I do need to own my feelings first.
Unfortunately, it’s not fair to expect my partner (or anyone) to read my mind, or to pursue me when I flee. Instead, I have to learn to share specific requests for help and allow “no” (or “not right now”) to be an okay answer. And I have to trust my body when it tells me I need space.
There are lots of nonsocial ways to complete our stress response cycle (Nagoski & Nagoski, 2019). Some of my faves: running, journaling, and a good cry. We always have options.
The more people I have to turn to, the better. It puts more pressure on each of my relationships when I rely entirely on a small number of people for support. Allowing more people into my inner circle gives me more chance of support and lets each person support me in their own way. Sometimes I need unconditional validation and love. Sometimes I need hard truths. Sometimes I need a belly laugh. Every relationship is valuable.
And this is partly why I write — to be known. To widen the circle. So thank you for being here.
References
Baum, J. (2025). Safe: An attachment-informed guide to building more secure relationships. Broadway Books.
Butler, E. A., & Randall, A. K. (2013). Emotional coregulation in close relationships. Emotion Review, 5(2), 202–210. https://doi.org/10.1177/1754073912451630
Cohen, R. (2024). The other significant others: Reimagining life with friendship at the center. Macmillan. [An excellent book about how friendships can serve many of the roles we have traditionally reserved in our society for intimate partners.]
Nagoski, E., & Nagoski, A. (2019). Burnout: The secret to unlocking the stress cycle. Book Moon Books.
Packheiser, J., Hartmann, H., Fredriksen, K., et al. (2024). A systematic review and multivariate meta-analysis of the physical and mental health benefits of touch interventions. Nature Human Behavior, 8, 1088–1107. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-024-01841-8
Porges, S. (2022). Polyvagal theory: A science of safety. Frontiers in Integrative Neuroscience, 16. https://doi.org/10.3389/fnint.2022.871227
Sbarra, D. A., & Hazan, C. (2008). Coregulation, dysregulation, self-regulation: An integrative analysis and empirical agenda for understanding adult attachment, separation, loss, and recovery. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 2(1), 264–285.
Scatliffe, N., Casavant, S., Vittner, D., & Cong, X. (2019). Oxytocin and early parent-infant interactions: A systematic review. International Journal of Nursing Sciences, 6(4), 445–453. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijnss.2019.09.009
Tronick, E. Z. (1989). Emotions and emotional communication in infants. American Psychologist, 44(2), 112–119.