How to Self Regulate

All unwanted behavior comes from unmet needs. If we don’t view it this way, people’s behavior becomes fixed in our minds as labels or unhelpful beliefs about them. Eventually, this prevents us from connecting in relationships—with others, with ourselves, and most importantly, in how we parent our children in a connected, effective way.

We have a brain and a heart. Sometimes, when we process things only with our brain—by intellectualizing or ruminating—we get caught in unhelpful cycles and beliefs. This is often just unprocessed, unregulated emotion. It’s important to get in touch with how we feel about things, to get to the root of a behavior so we can understand it and then change it.

We can think of it like a house with a top floor (the brain) and a bottom floor (the heart).

The Brain-Heart House

When we’re stuck in our heads, looping over a problem, we sleep thinking about it, we wake up thinking about it, we talk to our friends about it. Our top floor becomes foggy. Overthinking, ruminating, pathologizing—these are all behaviors that come from dysregulation. Overthinking is a form of dysregulation. If we only stay on that top floor, thinking about the behavior, we end up creating core beliefs—about the situation, about ourselves, or about someone else.

The solution is to actually acknowledge your emotion. To figure out what’s really going on for you underneath the surface.

I talk more about how to get in touch with unmet needs and feelings in my other post on the BEND method.

Let’s explore what this looks like with an example.

Last night, my one-year-old went to sleep around 7:00 p.m. and woke up around 9:30 p.m. My husband and I split the night shift, and I thought I’d just settle her and put her back to sleep. But that’s not what happened.

I sat there with her, hoping she’d fall back asleep—but an hour passed, and then another. She was still awake.

I noticed myself—my behavior, my reaction. At first, I was okay. I enjoy one-on-one time with her. It was actually nice. I was watching TV, lying in bed, enjoying the snuggles. I wasn’t feeling inconvenienced, and I didn’t have unmet needs in that moment.

But by 10:45… then 11:45… she still wasn’t sleeping. By this point, I was feeling angry and frustrated. She was fussy, crawling over me, and I found myself getting mad at her—thinking angry thoughts about her.

At the same time, I was trying to figure out her behavior. Is she teething? Does she have a stuffy nose? What is she needing? I was in problem-solving mode—something we’re quite good at as parents. We constantly try to meet our kids’ needs. But I noticed that I was spinning: What’s wrong? What’s wrong?

That’s a symptom of my dysregulation.

So I stopped and asked myself: What am I feeling?

I noticed frustration, anger, tiredness, and exhaustion. And that awareness was the shift. I realized my anger wasn’t about her—it was about my own unmet needs.

When we’re dysregulated, we don’t have cognitive access to this kind of insight. So we have to sit with it.

And then it clicked—on a feeling level, from a deeper, wiser place: She’s one year old. She can’t take care of herself. This isn’t about her. This is about me.
 What do I need?

Do I need a snack? Do I need to use the bathroom?

So I shifted focus from her to me and started problem-solving around my needs. I realized I was worried about sleep because I had work in the morning. It all made sense. My husband’s shift was supposed to start at 2:00 a.m., but by then, I’d already been at it for four hours.

I had reached my limit. I needed rest. So, I woke him up. I went to sleep. She fell asleep right after. Problem solved. No harm done.

All was good.

I woke up the next day, had six hours of sleep, and felt happy.

Why did everything turn out okay? Because I looked at my behavior and asked,
 “What am I feeling? What do I need?”

If we don’t view behaviors—our own or our kids’—in this way, they turn into beliefs. In my head, I might have decided, “She’s just difficult,” or “I’m a bad mom.”

Our unprocessed feelings become facts in our minds. But the point of processing them is to create space for problem-solving. That’s what gives us direction. It’s how we stay connected i

instead of disconnecting—from ourselves, from our kids, or from our partners.

Resolution only happens when we allow ourselves to feel. Not just intellectualize.

It’s not about saying, “I’m angry—must be my trauma.” It’s about noticing, “I’m angry. Why? What are my unmet needs?” and then sitting with that.

Moving from intellectualizing to processing means shifting from “Why?” to “What?”
 – Why is intellectualizing.
 – What are my needs? That’s processing.

It takes time and practice. But it’s the most important skill.

Parenting 101: BEND

This is the third post of my Parenting 101 series. We’ve been looking through the lenses of child development and family systems — and in this third part we’ll explore a crucial idea: your kids are not the cause of your behavior.

First, a quick recap of what we’ve covered so far. There are three phases of development: attachment, detachment, and connection. In Part 2 we talked about family roles: parents are always in a leadership role with their kids. The goal of development is to help your child lead themselves in their life while maintaining a connected relationship with themselves and with you. You lead by example: your kids learn by watching how you are with yourself, how you are in your relationships (especially marriage), and how you interact with them.

Kids are never on the same level as their parents. So anything they say or do is not supposed to be taken personally — because, to them, you are always their parent. Their behavior may reflect how you show up: your communication, boundaries, and the life you lead — but it’s not about your worth as a person.

In this post I’ll share my BEND method — a way to help parents understand their own behavior, process their emotions, and lead with clarity and compassion.

BEND

The BEND Method — an overview

Parenting is, at its core, managing yourself. The better relationship you have with yourself, the better relationship you will have with your kid — because it isn’t compartmentalized. When you’re aligned, everything changes.

BEND stands for:

B — Behavior (and yes, B can also stand for Breathe)

E — Emotion

N — Need

D — Desire

We start with your behavior. All unwanted behavior — and in fact all behavior — comes from needs: met or unmet. The type of behavior signals whether those needs are being met. In short: all unwanted behavior comes from unmet needs.

 Step 1 — Behavior (Pause and Breathe)

B: Behavior

If you notice yourself doing things you don’t want to be doing — yelling, contempt, disordered eating, substance use, shutting down — those are behaviors pointing to unmet needs. The first action is to pause. Breathe.

I like to say B can stand for Breathe because pausing gives you a break from reactivity and moves you from one-dimensional behavior into noticing. That noticing is the beginning of self-compassion.

Draw a simple stick figure in your mind — brain, heart, and soul. Our thoughts, emotions, intuition, needs and desires are the core. Behavior (our words and actions) is the expression. Too many parents stop at the expression and only try to fix the behavior. That’s one-dimensional and doesn’t heal the root.

Step 2 — Emotion (Name it)

E: Emotions

Once you’ve paused, ask: What am I feeling? Emotions are not meaningless — they are signals. There are many myths in our culture about emotions, and those myths keep us stuck at the behavior level. Naming the emotion reduces shame and begins to reveal the need underneath.

 Step 3 — Need (Context matters)

N: Needs

Ask: What do I need right now? Context is everything. Behavior rarely appears out of nowhere — it has an adaptive function. It’s doing something for you, even if it’s unhelpful.

Example: You yell at the kids. Underneath you might be thinking:

I haven’t had a shower today.

My partner and I had a fight and it’s unresolved.

I’m exhausted because chores keep getting left undone — again (you did not take out the trash again).

If you hold the thought that your behavior makes sense in context, you can shift from shame (“I’m a bad parent”) to self-compassion (“I have unmet needs, and I can meet them.”). That shift is game changing.

 Step 4 — Desire (Name what you want)

D: Desires

Once you know the need, ask: What do I want? Maybe you want calm. Maybe you want connection. Maybe you want boundaries respected. Naming your desire helps you act from leadership rather than reactivity.

When you meet your needs, you’re able to behave in ways that align with the leader you want to be. That’s self-leadership and self-regulation.

Modeling for your kids

When you practice BEND on yourself, you model the exact process you want your child to learn. If you believe your behavior comes from unmet needs, you can also assume the same for your child. Instead of taking their pushback personally, you can ask:

“What are you feeling?”

“What do you need, sweetheart?”

“I’m here. Let’s figure this out together.”

Example: “You don’t like the food that was cooked?” → “That makes sense. Tell me what you don’t like.”

Lead by example: breathe, name, meet needs where possible, and help your child do the same.

Important boundary: it’s not the child’s job to meet your needs

This is crucial. Your kids are not responsible for your emotional regulation. It is not their job to behave so you can feel okay. If you expect that, you’re reinforcing neglect of yourself. As a parent, your job is to put your oxygen mask on first: meet your needs so you can help your child meet theirs.

When you meet your needs, you remove the pressure from your child to perform emotionally. That frees them to develop without carrying your unresolved attachment issues.

A few real, practical moments

If you find yourself yelling: stop, breathe, name the emotion, ask what you need (maybe a shower, a break, a few minutes alone), and then respond from that grounded place.

If a child pushes away or rejects you during detachment: remind yourself that detachment is part of development and not a personal attack. You can feel the grief — parenthood is full of grief — and still lead with compassion.

If your marriage or a partnership is the source of ongoing stress: that’s work you need to do for your own nervous system so you can parent from presence rather than reactivity. 

Bottom line

Behavior is a signal, not an identity. Your kids are not the cause of your behavior — your unmet needs are. Use the BEND method to notice (Breathe), name (Emotion), discover (Need), and orient (Desire). Do the inner work first; then model it for your child.

You can do this. We can do this together.

💬 Ask me in the comments: which part of the BEND Method do you want help with? Want a stick-figure graphic of the brain/heart/soul and the BEND flow? I can make one for you.