Episode #3: The Regulation Equation - Mastering the Mind with Self-Regulation Expert Brad Chapin
SUMMARY:
In this episode, I sit down with Brad Chapin, M.S., LCP, MLP, who is an author, internationally recognized speaker, and one of the foremost experts in Self-Regulation Training, for a conversation that will fundamentally change how you think about your own mind, your behavior, and your potential for growth.
Brad has spent his career at the intersection of psychology, education, and human development. He is the creator of the Self-Regulation Training System, a research-grounded, cognitive-behavioral framework now used by thousands of educators, clinicians, and mental health professionals across the country.
In this conversation, you'll hear:
🧠 What self-regulation actually is - and why most people confuse it with willpower, discipline, or compliance. Brad breaks down the three core domains ( physical, emotional, and cognitive regulation) and explains how mastering each one unlocks success in every area of life.
⚡ The fight-or-flight trap — why your body's stress response system is the #1 saboteur of your decisions, your relationships, and your mental health, and the two critical skills that allow you to shut it down before it shuts you down.
🎓 Self-regulation and academic performance — the surprising data on how developing regulation skills dramatically improves not just behavior, but learning outcomes, social skills, and long-term life success , and why this is the missing variable in most educational reform conversations.
😰 The anxiety connection — how dysregulation fuels anxiety, why most anxiety interventions miss the root cause, and what Brad's evidence-based framework offers as a real alternative.
💬 Labeling emotions and cognitive regulation — how something as simple as naming what you feel can interrupt the neurological chain reaction of reactivity, and how to train the cognitive system to stop unhealthy thought patterns before they derail you.
👩🏫 A message for every educator, parent, and clinician — why self-regulation is the universal skillset that cuts across every presenting problem (e.g., anger, anxiety, academic failure, relationship conflict) and how to start teaching it tomorrow.
And in our Pulse Check rapid-fire segment: Brad discusses his full-circle moment when he walked the halls of the same inpatient psychiatric facility where, at 17 years old, he was a patient, only to return 25 years later as its Director of Clinical Services. What Stranger Things (and a Broadway stage) has to do with proving that people labeled as problems can do a complete 180 when someone actually believes in them. And the one sentence that captures his entire life's philosophy: "Self is the first word in self-regulation, it has to start here."
This is a conversation that will challenge how you think about human behavior, whether you're a clinician, educator, parent, coach, biomedical data scientist, or simply someone who wants to understand the importance of self-regulation in all of our lives.
LINKS TO BRAD'S WORK:
Books by Brad Chapin, M.S., LCP, MLP mentioned or referenced in this episode:
1. Helping Young People Learn Self-Regulation [https://www.researchpress.com/product/helping-young-people-learn-self-regulation/]
2. Helping Teens Learn Self-Regulation [https://www.researchpress.com/product/helping-teens-learn-self-regulation/]
3. Self-Regulation Skillset for Educators [https://youthlight.com/product.php?id=3998]
4. The Legend of The Regulators and The Secret List [https://www.thriftbooks.com/a/brad-chapin/2701128/]
Self-Regulation Training Videos with Brad Chapin [https://accutrain.com/self-regulation-2]
DATA WITH A PULSE: THE HUMAN DIMENSION PODCAST
This podcast is about data, humanity, technology and the ideas that can improve how we care for people. The podcasted is hosted by Dr. Guy Hembroff, PhD - a faculty researcher at Michigan Technological University and Director of the Biomedical Data Science (BDS) Research Lab [https://sites.google.com/mtu.edu/bdslab].
Subscribe, leave a review, and send questions to hembroff.podcast@gmail.com [hembroff.podcast@gmail.com].
Keywords: self-regulation, emotional regulation, cognitive regulation, physical regulation, fight-or-flight response, self-control, cognitive-behavioral psychology, anxiety management, anger management, academic performance, artificial intelligence, biomedical data science, AI [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EGbrl3yrRCs]
