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By Unyte Editorial Team |
As a clinician, showing up to sessions fully regulated and ready to co-regulate can be just as important as the healing strategies you offer your clients. But for many helping professionals, especially those who are trauma survivors themselves, staying grounded in ventral vagal isn’t always simple.
For Aden Cosgrove, a social worker with more than a decade of experience, practices like breathing exercises, using temperature, and sound-based therapies such as the Safe and Sound Protocol (SSP) and Integrated Listening System (ILS) have been essential tools — not only for their own nervous system, but also for strengthening the therapeutic relationship with their clients.
In our upcoming webinar, Why Self-Regulation Matters for Healing Professionals, Aden will share their perspective on how regulation practices can support clinicians both in and out of sessions, and why building a secure state within yourself can profoundly shape your work with others.
Learn more from Aden Cosgrove, RSW, C.C.C.
Read the Q&A from Aden Cosgrove below, and register for their upcoming webinar, Why Self-Regulation Matters for Healing Professionals:
Reserve your Spot!
September 24 @ 12 p.m. ET
In this Provider Spotlight, Unyte Mentor, Aden Cosgrove, RSW, C.C.C., will share expert insight from their work delivering the SSP, showing how sound-based therapy can support providers and clients alike. You’ll explore why the provider’s state matters in the broader context of healing, and how integrating SSP into your own professional toolkit can benefit therapeutic outcomes.
Together, we’ll explore why your state matters, how to identify and shift it, and ways to weave regulation strategies into your sessions and your own self-care. Through real case examples and practical tools you can use right away, you’ll leave with new ways to enhance therapeutic outcomes — and support a practice that’s as sustainable for you as it is impactful for those you serve.
Q&A with Aden Cosgrove, RSW, C.C.C.
In preparation for this webinar, we asked Aden Cosgrove to share some of the regulation practices they use as a clinician and how these tools have shaped their work with clients. Here’s what they shared:
What are three examples of nervous system-regulating practices you use as a clinician in and out of your practice, and how have they affected your relationship with your clients?
Three of the nervous system-regulating practices that I use that help me in my practice as a clinician are deep breathing practices (specifically box breathing), Unyte Health’s Safe and Sound Protocol (SSP) and Integrated Listening System (ILS), and using temperature, such as cold water on the face.
I am a trauma survivor, so I find myself in trauma states like sympathetic and dorsal vagal more often than ventral vagal. For the sympathetic response, I have found that box breathing helps me calm my anxiety physiologically and also mentally, as my physical anxiety increases anxious thoughts for me. For dorsal vagal, putting cold water on my face has helped me come back to the present and be prepared for my sessions if I am experiencing dissociation. Temperature is a great regulation strategy for the dorsal vagal response. The best part about these strategies is that they can take less than one minute to help you regulate your autonomic nervous system before you see your client.
Every three months, I am guiding myself through the SSP Core pathway, and this has helped me regulate my autonomic nervous system and reduce the trauma states of sympathetic and dorsal vagal. I generally need to utilize fewer coping strategies while I am doing this program and after. I feel calmer, regulated, and secure. I also do the ILS programs in between SSP, and it has benefited me in reducing the impact of my symptoms of neurodivergence. I can focus more, be less distracted, and have more body awareness and proprioception. This helps me in my personal and professional life, as cognitively I am less focused on the barriers that I am experiencing due to being neurodivergent, because those barriers are reduced.
Using regulation strategies like box breathing and temperature are quick strategies that I use before a session with a client. I want to be present for my client, not dissociated, anxious, or too focused on my sensory experience. I am an anxious person and sometimes I still get anxious before a session with a client, even after 10 years of being a social worker. Box breathing helps me calm my system and not be distracted by my anxiety during the session. I also use this technique for areas of my life where I feel anxiety outside of my career.
Putting cold water on my face helps me wake my system up so I can be present in the session, which has a positive impact on the therapeutic relationship. I am someone who likes to dig deep into patterns and themes, relational dynamics and wounds, emotions, and the meaning of events with my client. I miss things if I am not present and cannot fully be there to make those connections. When I am fully present, anchored and grounded in ventral vagal, I am in a mental space where nothing is happening outside of what is happening with my client — I am fully locked into the experience. I enjoy the interactions and fully bring myself to the session.
SSP has made me a better therapist, as I feel I can truly lock into the experience with my clients. A secure attachment with self and others becomes a lot easier because of SSP, and this shows up in my therapeutic relationships. When I am grounded and anchored in ventral vagal, they are also experiencing that state, and we get to a level of security and comfort with one another that is not possible if I am in a trauma state during the session. Our autonomic nervous system state mirrors others’ and if I am in sympathetic, that is the energy that is felt by the client, making them more likely to experience that state themselves. The ILS programs also help me feel more secure in my body and mind, allowing me to be more present in my therapeutic relationships.
About the Speaker
Aden Cosgrove, RSW, C.C.C. (they/them) has been offering Safe and Sound Protocol to regular ongoing clients and remote one-time clients for 3.5 years and Integrated Listening Systems for 2.5 years. Through experience with the programs and Polyvagal Theory as part of treatment, they have seen firsthand how beneficial it can be for trauma survivors and/or neurodivergent people. They continue with their personal journey with these programs for themselves.
They have 10 years of experience in the field of social work and are a Canadian Certified Counsellor. They primarily work with individual adults and couples/relationships as well. They have a group private practice that they run in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada for the past four years. The clients that they tend to work with the most in offering SSP or iLs are 2SLGBTQ+, polyamorous, BIPOC, trauma survivors, people with chronic illnesses and conditions, and neurodivergent people.
They have seen incredible and life-changing results occur through these programs with their clients and their own experience. They have mentored other professionals in setting up these programs in their clinic and are a Unyte-endorsed mentor.
