Polyvagal Co-Regulation in the Workplace: When Your People Are Also Your Stressors

I’ve been thinking a lot about co-regulation lately, not the Instagram version where we all breathe together in a circle, but the messy, real-world version that happens whether we’re aware of it or not.

You know the saying: find your people, work with your people, surround yourself with your people. And it’s true, working alongside colleagues you’ve known for decades, people who feel like family, can be one of the greatest gifts of a long nursing career.

But here’s what they don’t tell you: families fight. And when your work family is dysregulated, you feel it in your body whether you want to or not.

The Nervous System Doesn’t Care About Good Intentions

Here’s the thing about polyvagal theory that makes it both beautiful and brutal: your nervous system is constantly scanning for safety cues and threat cues in your environment. It’s called neuroception, and it happens before conscious thought.

When someone you work with is in chronic sympathetic activation, hypervigilant, reactive, finding threats in neutral situations, your nervous system picks up on that. Even if you understand intellectually that they’re struggling. Even if you have compassion for their pain. Even if you’ve known them for 30 years.

Your body still responds to their dysregulation.

I witnessed this recently in a situation that stopped me in my tracks. A surgeon asked a clarifying question in a completely neutral tone, just seeking information. But a nearby colleague heard it as an attack, as a threat, and immediately went into defense. She literally heard different words than what were said because her nervous system was already braced for danger.

From inside her experience, that threat was real. Her neuroception had been scanning, found danger signals (maybe his tone, his posture, the power dynamic), and filtered the entire interaction through a sympathetic lens.

I was able to clarify and de-escalate because in that moment, my nervous system was in a different place. I had access to social engagement, to nuance, to perspective-taking. She didn’t.

The Cost of Chronic Co-Dysregulation

Here’s what makes healthcare particularly brutal: we’re often surrounded by people in chronic sympathetic override (patients with new devastating diagnoses to process or years of chronic illness, as well as coworkers). After decades of codes, moral injury, inadequate staffing, and constant threat, many of our colleagues are living in a state of perpetual hypervigilance.

And when you work alongside someone in that state, especially someone you care about, someone you’ve worked with across multiple units over the years, you absorb their nervous system state through co-regulation.

This is why you can leave a shift feeling absolutely wrung out even when “nothing happened.” You’ve been regulating around someone else’s dysregulation for 12 hours. Your ventral vagal system has been working overtime trying to stay calm, stay compassionate, stay engaged while their sympathetic activation sends ripples through the entire environment.

When Sympathetic Becomes Identity

I’ve watched colleagues who have spent lifetimes managing stress through mobilization - intensity, control, pushing through, staying “strong.” These are often incredibly dedicated nurses, people with decades of experience, people I genuinely respect and care about.

But sometimes sympathetic activation becomes so familiar that it becomes identity. Rest feels like weakness. Regulation feels like giving up. The vagal brake, that beautiful ability to return to calm, stops working because it hasn’t been used in so long.

And from the outside, you can see it. The hypervigilance that finds threats in benign interactions. The rigidity around food, exercise, or control. The inability to let things go. The escalations that seem to come out of nowhere.

The thing is: they can’t see it. Because seeing it would mean facing how much the system has broken them. And when you’re still in that system, still working full-time, still trying to survive, that awareness might be more than the nervous system can tolerate.

The Line Between Compassion and Self-Protection

This is where it gets complicated. Because understanding polyvagal theory doesn’t mean you have to absorb everyone else’s dysregulation in the name of compassion.

You can have empathy for why someone is hypervigilant and still protect yourself from their reactivity.

You can understand that their criticism comes from their own nervous system state and still feel the sting of it.

You can recognize that they’re doing the best they can with a system that’s been in survival mode for decades and still acknowledge that working alongside them is hard.

You cannot regulate someone who doesn’t feel safe enough to be regulated. And you shouldn’t destroy your own nervous system trying.

When You’re the One Who’s Dysregulated

Here’s the part I need to tell you, the part that makes this whole thing harder to write: I’ve been that colleague.

Not in pre-op. But in my husband’s office, after I left healthcare the first time, burned out and broken and convinced that changing my location, simply removing myself from the environment that broke me would be all I needed. 

I found problems with everything. Everything. Especially with his office manager, his long-term, loyal employee, his right hand, the person who gave him peace of mind and made it possible for us to take every vacation we’d ever gone on.

I was hypervigilant. Critical. Couldn’t let anything go. Saw threats in neutral situations. Made everyone around me walk on eggshells.

I was wreaking havoc.

My husband’s business had been functioning fine. His team had a rhythm, a flow that had worked for years. And then I came in, straight from healthcare burnout, seizure at my own hospital, withdrawn from my DNP, walking away from my integrative therapy role, and projected my dysregulation all over their regulated environment.

I was the stressor.

The thing about being in chronic sympathetic activation is that you genuinely cannot see it from the inside. Every threat feels real. Every criticism feels justified. Every correction feels necessary. Your neuroception is so skewed that you’re finding danger everywhere, and you’re convinced you’re the only one seeing clearly.

I wasn’t. I was destroying relationships with people I loved because my nervous system was in survival mode, and I couldn’t access the awareness to see it.

Only I Could Fix It

This is the brutal truth: no one could regulate me out of that state. Not my husband, who was questioning every day whether he made a mistake bringing me in. Not well-meaning friends who suggested I “relax” or “let things go.”

I had to recognize I was dysregulated. I had to do the work to return to regulation. I had to take responsibility for the havoc my nervous system was creating in their lives.

And I almost destroyed those relationships before I could see it.

The Difference Between Then and Now

When I see colleagues in hypervigilance now, part of what makes it so hard is recognizing my own past in their behavior. The rigidity. The need to be right. The criticism that feels protective but is actually destructive. The complete lack of insight into the fact that anything is wrong.

I have compassion for them because I was them. I know what it feels like to be that dysregulated and paralyzed as to how to help yourself.

But I also know this: they have to be the ones to see it. Just like I had to be the one to see it. No amount of someone else’s understanding, offering their story or explaining polyvagal theory will create that awareness if they’re not ready.

And until they are, I have to protect my nervous system from theirs - the same way my husband and his office manager had every right to protect themselves from mine.

The Gift of That Reckoning

Recognizing I was dysregulated, that I was the problem, not everyone around me, was one of the most humbling and necessary reckonings of my life.

It’s also what allows me to teach this work now. Because I’m not standing outside the experience, pointing at other people’s dysregulation. I lived it. I caused harm from it. I had to claw my way back to regulation while taking responsibility for the damage I’d done.

So when I say, you cannot regulate someone who doesn’t feel safe enough to be regulated?

I’m saying it as someone who was that person. Someone who needed to do her own work, who couldn’t be fixed by other people’s compassion or understanding, who had to hit the point where I could see what my dysregulation was costing me.

And when I say: protect your nervous system even from people you care about?

I’m also saying it as someone who hopes my husband and his office manager protected themselves from me when I was in that state. Because I wasn’t safe to be around. I was hurting them. And their self-protection wasn’t a failure of compassion; it was necessary boundary-setting with someone who was dysregulated and unable to see it.

Working With Your People (Even When It’s Hard)

There’s a scene in Bohemian Rhapsody where Miami, Queen’s manager, is talking to Freddie before he comes back to the band. Freddie’s talking about all the conflict, and Miami says, “We’re family. And families fight.”

That landed differently for me after years of working in healthcare. Because yes, your work family fights. You have conflict. People get dysregulated. Tensions run high.

But there’s a difference between healthy conflict (which happens when people are regulated enough to repair) and chronic dysregulation (which just keeps cycling without resolution or safety).

The question isn’t whether your people will stress you out sometimes. They will. That’s co-regulation, we affect each other, for better and worse.

The question is: Can you return to safety together? Or does the dysregulation just keep compounding?

We’re Family. And Families Fight

The Bohemian Rhapsody line hits different when you’ve been both people, the one watching someone you care about spiral, and the one doing the spiraling.

Families fight. And sometimes one member of the family is so dysregulated that they make the environment unsafe for everyone else. Not because they’re bad people, but because their nervous system is in survival mode and they can’t access anything else.

I was that family member once. Maybe some of my colleagues are that family member now.

The difference is: I got out of the triggering environment. I did the work. I took responsibility.

Some are still in it. Still working full-time in environments that dysregulate them. Still convinced they’re fine and everyone else is the problem.

And I can have compassion for that and protect myself from it.

Because I learned the hard way: you can’t regulate someone out of a state they don’t know they’re in.

Not even yourself. Especially not yourself.

You have to see it first. And that seeing? That has to come from within.

What This Means for Your Nervous System: Using AIR

If you’re working alongside someone in chronic sympathetic activation, you need your own regulation practice. This is where the AIR Method becomes essential - not to fix them, but to protect yourself.

ACKNOWLEDGE what’s happening:

 ∙ Name it clearly: “Their reactivity is their nervous system state, not my inadequacy.”

 ∙ Notice your body’s response: Where are you bracing? What are you suppressing? What does your chest feel like when they walk into the room?

 ∙ Recognize the cost: Co-dysregulation is real, and it’s affecting you

INTERRUPT the pattern:

 ∙ Set internal boundaries: You can stay compassionate without taking on their regulation work

 ∙ Limit exposure when possible: You don’t have to absorb 12 hours of someone else’s dysregulation

 ∙ Create physical distance: Sometimes the interrupt is literally walking away

 ∙ Change the environment: Find colleagues who can meet you in ventral vagal for co-regulation

REGULATE your own system:

 ∙ Do your own nervous system work: You can’t pour from an empty cup, and you can’t regulate from a dysregulated state

 ∙ Find your own sources of safety and connection

 ∙ Return to your body and your breath

 ∙ Remember: their dysregulation doesn’t have to become yours

And maybe most importantly: You don’t have to fix them.

You can witness their struggle with compassion. You can offer a connection if they’re available for it. You can understand the polyvagal underpinnings of their behavior.

But you cannot regulate someone else’s nervous system for them - especially if they don’t see the dysregulation as the problem.

AIR is about protecting your own regulation while maintaining compassion for others.

It’s the difference between absorbing their dysregulation (which leads to your burnout) and acknowledging their struggle while regulating your own nervous system (which is sustainable).

The Hard Truth

Some people aren’t ready. Some people are so deep in override that rest feels dangerous. Some people have built their entire identity on pushing through, and a framework of regulation threatens everything they believe about themselves.

And that’s heartbreaking when it’s someone you care about, someone you’ve worked alongside for years, someone you can see is suffering.

But their readiness isn’t your responsibility. Your nervous system regulation is.

The Permission You Need

You are allowed to protect your peace even from people you love.

You are allowed to set boundaries with long-term colleagues.

You are allowed to recognize that someone’s pain doesn’t obligate you to absorb their dysregulation.

You are allowed to prioritize your own nervous system regulation over someone else’s comfort with their dysregulation.

This isn’t selfish. This is survival.

Because if you burn out trying to regulate everyone around you, you become another dysregulated person someone else has to work around. The cycle just continues.

We’re Family. And Families Need Boundaries.

Yes, we’re family. And families fight.

But healthy families also repair. They recognize harm. They take accountability. They do their own work.

And when one family member refuses to see their dysregulation, refuses to take responsibility, refuses to do the work - the healthiest thing the rest of the family can do is protect themselves while holding space for that person’s eventual readiness.

That’s not abandonment. That’s sustainable compassion.

What co-regulation patterns are you noticing in your workplace? Where are you trying to regulate around someone else’s chronic dysregulation? And what would it look like to protect your own nervous system while still showing up with compassion?

And maybe the harder question: Have you ever been the dysregulated one? What helped you see it?

 I go deeper into my dysregulation in my Coming Up For Air weekly personal emails. Make sure you're on the list.  

References & Further Reading on Polyvagal Theory

Porges, S. W. (2011). The Polyvagal Theory: Neurophysiological Foundations of Emotions, Attachment, Communication, and Self-regulation. W.W. Norton & Company.

Porges, S. W. (2017). The Pocket Guide to the Polyvagal Theory: The Transformative Power of Feeling Safe. W.W. Norton & Company.

Dana, D. (2018). The Polyvagal Theory in Therapy: Engaging the Rhythm of Regulation. W.W. Norton & Company.

Dana, D. (2020). Polyvagal Exercises for Safety and Connection: 50 Client-Centered Practices. W.W. Norton & Company.