Core Relational Need Number Five: Your Mother Regulates Your Affect

As a child, you had very limited ability to regulate your own affect. An infant is utterly dependent on their mother's ability to regulate their affect for them. For the mother to soothe and comfort and quiet, a dysregulated or distressed kid needs her mom. If she wasn't attuned to you when you were distressed, then your affect was not regulated. And as a result, you would have been forced to try and regulate it yourself. That's how the brain learns how to do affect regulation - by having it done for them by mom.