Co-regulation is a term used for mutual nervous system regulation between a consenting two or more beings.
Does co-regulation exist in nature?
Observe a mixed flock of chickadees and nuthatches or a group of deer, quail, prairie dogs, etc.
Can co-regulation exist across species?
Ask your cat, dog, parrot, snake, etc.
I formally studied ecopsychology and quickly realized it is Indigenous wisdom repackaged and coined by a white cishet settler (Theodore Roszak). Even had several Native aunties ask me what I was studying and respond, “oh, so what we’ve been trying to say to white folks since 1492?”.
Through my studies in ecopsychology, I was also trained in deep ecology and somatic & depth psychology (all fields founded by white cishet men). Studying the process of colonization, whiteness and industrialization meant intensively studying trauma work through the white gaze of academia alongside with the land. This led me to studying attachment theory which is a humancentric theory focusing on how our relationship with our primary caregivers informs all our relationships as adults. When we feel insecure, we must find ways to self-regulate as adults if/when we had neglectful primary caregivers.
Psychology + psychiatry are rooted in colonial thought processes. It enforces dominant realities of white supremacy and negates/pathologizes all others. This is why it stays cisheterocentric focusing on our relationships with our nuclear human family rather than our multi-species family. Settler colonialism requires us to severe our relations to our ecological kin or else it could not run.
Ecological co-regulation is the process in which we regulate across species. It is a restoration of our ecological body. We live in a species-isolated dominant culture that reinforced human supremacy. How can we be intersectional environmentalists if we are systemically severed from multi-species kinship?
This is a practice for multi-species futurism. In order to build conditions for anti-racist, multi-species futures, we must develop our ability to ecologically co-regulate and tend to our primary attachment with Pachamama. Pachamama is a sovereign ecological regulatory system.