As humans, we all need some level of predictability, and perception of control, in our lives. 

Even though none of us really have control over the way life plays out for us, there are choices we can make, and experiences others can give us, that maximize our chances of certain outcomes, or of feelings of security. 

When our world is ordered enough that we perceive things around us to be stable and consistent, and that cause and effect relationships we’ve come to expect are reliable overall, we feel secure- and don’t have to spend too much time thinking about patterns or associations that we’ve learned to take for granted. This allows us mental space for other things. Imagine if every interaction, or stimulus and response, in our lives needed to be approached as if experiencing it for the first time, as a totally new experience? We wouldn’t really be able to function under such conditions. 

Trauma disrupts our expectations of how things are supposed to go. It can make us question everything we believed we knew about the world, as well as everything that felt safe in the past.  We may have come to feel that we have to be vigilant about approaching any situation we enter with caution. Our fundamental sense of the world being a safe and predictable place no longer exists, and we may have lost trust in ourselves, our relationships, or places and things in our lives.

At the same time as trauma can shatter our sense of predictability, when our expectations are jarringly and consistently not met (meaning when we don’t have predictability in our lives), we may find that traumatic as well. It goes both ways. 

Some children and adults will provoke certain reactions in others, sometimes by pushing their buttons (or by pushing and pushing the person until they can’t help but react) just to feel a sense of predictability and to feel that they can elicit an expectable response (even if negative) that is under their control to some degree. 

As caregivers or attachment figures, it’s important for us to be regulated enough in our own emotions and reactions to be able to interact with our children in ways that are responsive to what they are bringing to us. The social biofeedback theory of affect regulation shows us how the feedback a parent gives a child in response to the child’s behaviors, emotions, or communications should be able to be distinguished from reactions the parent is having to their own emotions or distress. If a parent acts angry or frightened when a child is upset, the child doesn’t feel mirrored regarding their own experience, but rather can be confused about whether what they’re experiencing was generated inside of them or was created by the parent’s own feelings which speak more about the parent than about the child. 

Saying yes to others (and especially our children) when they make a direct request, at least much of the time, can help others feel they have enough effectiveness over their environment to be able to handle an occasional “no”, or violation of expectations, without their sense of stability becoming disrupted. Helping our children to feel some sense of control over being able to make things happen for themselves out in the world, and getting their needs met when they signal others regarding them, helps them feel comfortable to take risks and to go after what they want in life with a sense of agency and initiative. At the same time, over-giving to our children or to others that is not in response to their signals or cues, when it happens too much of the time, can also stop a person from knowing their own desires as separate from what others project onto them. Teaching our children to show us what they want by responsiveness when they do (as much of the time as is safe or possible) leads to them developing direct communication abilities, rather that getting lost in what others want, or expecting others to offer things all the time, or to read their minds. 

We all feel good when it feels like we can make things happen for ourselves and have some perception of control over outcomes at least a good amount of the time. Being able to communicate with others and to get responses that are reciprocal and affirming is regulating and helps a person learn to live comfortably in the spaces between the environment and the self.