Learning to Listen to My Body:
Moving From Self-Regulation to Self-Advocacy
By Michelle Labine, PhD
December 2025
For years, I talked about self-regulation with my kids, with the people I teach, and with my clients. It was the language I was trained in, the one that felt familiar and “correct”: regulate your emotions, regulate your behaviour, regulate your reactions so you can function in the world. It sounded supportive and responsible. But the truth is, I went along with this messaging for most of my life through my teens and well into adulthood. I learned strategies, tools, and techniques to regulate all of these parts of myself; to manage every internal impulse so I could fit into the environments around me. And in learning and practicing all of these things, something else happened: I internalized the belief that I was the problem. That I needed to be different, quieter, calmer, less reactive, more tolerant of discomfort. That it was my job to manage myself well enough to be accepted.
And as I carried that belief into post diagnosis, something in me began to tug at the edges of the word “regulation.” Every time I said it, I felt a slight tightening in my own body a subtle sense that I was asking myself, or someone else, to do something that didn’t feel entirely fair or possible. The more I paid attention, the more I began to realize that the term itself carried pressure. It suggested that I should be able to manage myself in any environment, no matter how overwhelming, no matter how mismatched the sensory input, the expectations, or the pace was to my nervous system. And once I noticed that pressure inside myself, I began to see it everywhere.
I noticed how often I used the word “regulation” to push through moments when my nervous system was clearly overstimulated or exhausted. Instead of asking what I needed, I told myself to regulate better. I noticed the same pattern in my kids, the quiet shame that drifted across their faces when they were overwhelmed in situations that genuinely did not fit their bodies or brains. I noticed it in the people I work with, too: clients trying desperately to “regulate” in environments that would challenge anyone with a sensitive or neurodivergent nervous system. The word was supposed to be supportive, but instead it became a reminder of an impossible standard that asked us to control ourselves into compliance with spaces, tasks, and expectations that were never created with us in mind.
More recently, I’ve been reflecting on this, and I found myself asking questions I had never asked before. What does regulation actually mean? Regulating to what? Whose standard of calm, whose version of “appropriate,” whose tolerance for noise, brightness, unpredictability, or emotional expression? I realized that when most people say “regulate,” what they often mean is “return yourself to a state that is comfortable for the people around you.” That realization landed hard. It suggested that the goal wasn’t necessarily to support the nervous system but to fit into an external norm that often reflects a neurotypical baseline of stillness, quietness, consistency, and emotional neutrality. As a late-diagnosed Autistic and ADHD woman, that expectation felt like yet another invitation to mask rather than to understand myself.
I am beginning to see that so much of what gets labeled as dysregulation is actually an honest response to misalignment. When an environment is too loud, too bright, too fast, too demanding, or too unpredictable, my nervous system isn’t malfunctioning, it’s communicating. And yet the traditional framing of self-regulation implicitly assigns the problem to the person, not the context. For years, I interpreted my overwhelm as a failure to regulate rather than a sign that something around me needed to change. I can look back now and see how many times I tried to “regulate” instead of acknowledging that the environment was simply not designed for my sensory system. That’s not regulation; that’s self-abandonment.
As I’m shifting my lens everything is softening. Instead of striving to regulate myself into someone else’s expectations, I am beginning to listen to what my body is actually trying to tell me. Instead of expecting my kids to adapt to anything at any time, I am starting to help them understand their own sensory worlds so they can notice their limits and express what they need. And with my clients, the conversations are changing from “How do you regulate?” to “What helps your nervous system feel supported, safe, and grounded?” The more I lean into this perspective, the clearer it becomes that real regulation has nothing to do with forcing yourself into calmness. It’s about returning to a state of internal safety and connection even if that looks different for everyone.
What I know now is that genuine regulation is deeply personal. It isn’t about stillness, politeness, quietness, compliance, or achieving a socially sanctioned version of calm. Real regulation is about alignment: understanding your body, honouring its signals, and advocating for what you need so your nervous system isn’t operating in survival mode. Regulation is an internal shift toward safety which becomes possible through self-advocacy; by acknowledging the truth of what your body is experiencing and giving yourself permission to ask for the space, support, sensory changes, or boundaries that help you genuinely feel okay.
The shift from regulation as control to regulation as understanding and advocacy, has been transformative. It has removed shame, created more compassion, and invited a level of honesty I didn’t know I needed. And perhaps most importantly, it has allowed me, my kids, my clients, and those I teach to view our nervous systems as sources of information, wisdom, and truth.
