How to Build a Lighthouse

Shira Preiser, LMSW

© 2025. This work is openly licensed via CC BY-NC-ND

Picture a lighthouse and a boat in a storm.  The winds are howling, the rain is driving, the clouds make it too dark for anyone to see.  The boat is lost, alone, and vulnerable.  The lighthouse stands on the shore.  The same winds beat against its walls, the same rain pounds on the glass— but the lighthouse is steady.  It shines its light into the chaos threatening to engulf the little boat.  Because the lighthouse can offer itself as a point of stillness in the upheaval, the boat can find its way home.

Co-regulation is the art of being a lighthouse to someone lost in an emotional storm.  It’s the gift of a still and steady place in the middle of intense emotions.  From the outside, it can look passive— after all, the boat is the one riding the waves and battling the gale.  Yet on the inside, we know there’s a great deal of effort needed to keep the foundation sound.

Much of my work as a therapist lies in helping people develop co-regulation skills.  Often, this takes the form of parents learning to co-regulate with children, but there are plenty of people looking to better support partners or friends.  With most clients, I’ll talk about the neuroscience behind co-regulation (discussed in more detail in my previous post), and the steps to co-regulation (which we’ll cover here), but we rarely have the time to fully discuss how difficult co-regulation skills can be to learn.  So to begin, let’s explore some of the factors that can make it difficult to put these skills into practice.

Ironically, one of the biggest roadblocks to co-regulation is also one of its most important elements.   Co-regulation occurs in the context of a strong, attuned relationship.  Yet, it is painful to see someone you care about suffer.  Often, would-be co-regulators are overcome with the desire to “make it better” by fixing the problem, soothing the feelings, or distracting the dysregulated person until their difficult emotions go away.  Sometimes these strategies work in the short term, but they can make things worse over time.

This urge to “fix” is rooted in two key elements of co-regulating relationships: empathy and compassion.  In order to understand the ways they both relate to co-regulation, we need to understand how they’re similar and different.  Let’s start with some definitions.

Psychology breaks empathy down into two types: cognitive and affective. Cognitive empathy is the skill of understanding another person’s perspective.  It’s the process in our brains that takes into account the differences in the information you and another person have.  For example, cognitive empathy allows your brain to quickly grasp the idea that someone just coming into the room mid-conversation may need to be brought up to speed in order to understand what you’re talking about.  

Affective empathy, on the other hand, is the experience of feeling what another person is feeling.  If you’ve ever had the experience of crying simply because someone else was, or “catching” a good mood from another person, you’ve experienced affective empathy.

Empathy can be such a powerful force, it can allow you to “feel” the feelings of inanimate objects.  A 1998 study by Botvinick and Cohen dubbed this proprioceptive drift.  In the initial study that discovered the phenomenon, participants viewed a rubber hand being stroked gently by a paint brush while their own fingers got the same treatment outside their field of vision.  When scientists crushed the rubber hand with a mallet, many participants flinched as if their own hand had been smashed.  Once attuned, their brains actually felt the pain they saw— even when they knew it wasn’t real.

Of course, like any skill, some people will find empathy easier than others.  People with lower empathetic skills may need extra time to learn what behaviors indicate their loved one’s feelings or to understand their perspective.  However, these skills can be cultivated like any that help build healthy relationships.

Whatever your base skill level with empathy, co-regulation relies even more heavily on another factor: compassion.  Compassion comes from the Latin roots com- (together) and pati- (suffer).  Taken together, Compassion literally means to suffer with.  Affective empathy is the raw data, but compassion is the conclusion.  It’s an active choice to care about the suffering of another person.

Like affective empathy, compassion can make it incredibly painful to hold space for another person’s pain.  Your brain is presenting you with the feelings of the dysregulated person, and your heart is urging you to fix it because you care about them.  That reflex is deeply human, but also makes it difficult to offer your support to a dysregulated loved one.  To return to our lighthouse analogy, it’s hard to resist the forces urging us to get swept up in the storm, too.

So how do we build a lighthouse?

The first thing to understand is that co-regulation isn’t control.  You cannot fix another person’s feelings or control their actions.  Even young children will find ways to express their autonomy and will test the boundaries set by their caregivers.  Instead, co-regulation asks you to focus on what’s actually under your control: your mind and your actions.

The next step is to turn your attention inwards.  Notice what you’re thinking, feeling, and what’s happening inside your body.  It may be difficult.  As we discussed earlier, it’s upsetting to see someone you care about hurt— and since that upset feeling is an automatic one, it may not stand out to you as a reaction at all.  Give it time and you’ll begin to notice little “tells” in your brain and body that can signal when you’re teetering on the edge of becoming dysregulated, too.

Once you’re comfortable identifying your own emotions, you can start building a set of coping strategies that work for you.  While social media paints coping mechanisms as one-size-fits-all, every person’s mind and body actually need different things to stay regulated.  For example, I don’t find box breathing personally helpful, but I can often keep my head above water by using my sense of touch with a worry stone.  Also keep in mind that your needs won’t be static; what works on one day may not be effective on another.

After you feel solidly regulated, you can begin to name your loved one’s emotions out loud.  For example, “you’re feeling really upset.”  If you know the circumstances, you can add them in as well, such as “that test is really worrying you.”  Don’t try offering reassurance or advice, just factual statements with no commentary.  It often feels unnatural at first, but you would be surprised how effective it can be when someone is dysregulated.  That said, some people prefer quiet when overwhelmed.  If the person you are trying to help responds negatively to your statements, don’t force it.

The same can be said for touch.  For some, a hand on the shoulder or a hug can be grounding— for others, it can be overstimulating or trigger a trauma response.  You also may not have a relationship where touch is how you express closeness.  If you’re not sure (and the person can still talk while dysregulated) you can offer.  You can also ask while the person is regulated.  However, if you haven’t established what the person wants beforehand or if you aren’t sure, don't try it.

If neither words nor touch are appropriate, just focus on being present and regulated.  It may not feel effective, but remember that empathy is a two-way street.  Their nervous system is sensing yours and picking up your calm, bit by bit.

It’s also important to prepare for a long haul.  Co-regulation is not a quick fix.  Often, the process feels repetitive and circular.  It’s easy to wonder if the time it takes means you’re doing something wrong.  Don’t watch the clock.  Keep your focus on staying regulated instead of trying to speed up the process.  It may take time, but eventually your loved one will come back to you.

It’s also worth noting that your lighthouse needs to stand on solid ground in order to hold up against the wind and rain.  Your mental health is the greatest resource you can draw on as a co-regulator.  Our nervous system is deeply entwined with the nervous systems of those around us, so strengthening yours will also help reinforce those of your loved ones.  Simply put, emotional wellness is communal.

To be clear, this absolutely does not mean that you are a bad friend, or partner, or parent if you struggle with your own mental health.  Far from it.  It means that the love you show yourself also flows outwards to your loved ones, and vice versa.  It’s often said that “you can’t pour from an empty cup,” but this phrase is too limited.  Self care isn’t stockpiling a resource to distribute at appropriate moments.  It’s contributing to the flourishing of an ecosystem.  I always recommend parents of children in therapy seriously consider getting their own mental health support, but it applies to so many other relationships as well.

Self-regulation is the art of focusing on what you can control— your responses to your thoughts and feelings, and the actions you take.  It also allows you to let go of the idea that you can control those things for others.  You can’t fix a feeling, however painful.  Yet, you can offer a suffering loved one a truly precious gift: the knowledge that they’re not alone.  While it’s small, that single point of light can become the path that will allow others to find their way home.