Blog written by Shauna Whiteside, a Self-Reg Foundations Certificate Program alumni.

I recently got a puppy and she taught me something vital: overwhelm can make us believe that the difficult feelings of the present are permanent, when in fact they are not.

When I first brought her home, it was the biting and endless energy that got to me. The feeling that I could not get a break. I had watched the videos and made the plans, but none of it seemed to work. Overwhelmed, I tipped into a stress cycle.

I felt regret.

My anxiety spiked.

I started to worry about everything. I thought, ‘This is my life now.’

I grieved my earlier peace and freedom.

When Stress Makes the Present Feel Permanent

Looking back, I can better understand what was happening in those early days. I was functioning from my red brain, the survival brain. I could not access the part of me that knows things change. I was stuck.

What I needed at that time was not advice about the future, or for someone to try to fit it. I needed co-regulation. Someone calm. Someone steady. Someone to help my nervous system settle so I could reconnect with myself and return to my thinking brain.

Thankfully, I had that and as I calmed, I saw that this was not forever. Soon, I began to enjoy her and my “new” life.

What Co-Regulation Really Offers

As often happens, I found myself thinking about my kindergarten classroom. A child gets tagged in the gym and breaks down.

From the outside, it is easy to say, “You will get another turn.” But for them, it might not feel that way.

What if it feels over? Final? Unfair?

A friend knocks over a carefully built structure, and it is devastating. A transition can feel like a loss.

When overwhelmed, many children, cannot think about the future. Everything feels fixed and final.

This is where co-regulation becomes the tool.

When I become their co-regulator, it shifts something in me as well.

I stop trying to fix or control and I just focus on being with them in it. Helping their nervous system settle so they can re-engage.

Why Children Struggle to See Beyond the Moment

And eventually, they play again. They move on. They repair.

Not because I convinced them with words, but because they experienced the shift into calm for themselves.

Even when a moment feels final, it is almost never permanent. Change always comes.

Catching Our Own “Forever Thinking”

Of course, there are still times in my classroom when a child stays dysregulated longer than I expect, want or have time for. In those moments, I notice that familiar thought creep in: “This is not working; maybe this is just how it is going to be. This is just who they are.”

But now I can catch it.

This is my overwhelmed brain slipping into “forever” thinking.

When I name it, I soften. I regulate. I stay a little longer, calmer, steadier.

Calm Helps Us Reconnect and Repair

It is a shift that has changed how I move through hard moments with myself and others. And the puppy?

She is great.

We’re all doing well.

Even in the tough moments, I remind myself: this too shall pass.

This year’s Self-Reg Summer Symposium explores Co-Regulation & The Five Domains of Stress – a timely conversation about overwhelm, connection, and restoring calm in ourselves and others. Join us July 6–9, 2026, online or in person at Trent University.