Who's in Charge Here?

Who’s in Charge? On External Regulation, Internal Authority, and the Conditions for Safety.

In some developmental environments, safety is absorbed early, held in tone, timing, and the felt sense of being understood. Over time, that safety becomes internal, a quiet centre that can navigate tension, withstand difference, and remain coherent in the presence of another.

But when early life is marked by unpredictability, dislocation, or emotional overwhelm, the nervous system adapts. Safety is no longer something felt, it becomes something that must be located. Not assumed, but confirmed.

The psyche learns to scan, to test, to ask, silently or otherwise: who’s in charge? Is someone holding this? Am I safe here, or do I need to manage it myself?

This is the foundation of external regulation, where internal equilibrium depends on the stability of the other, where emotional safety is outsourced, and the self orients around what is happening out there.

This structure is often adaptive, even brilliant. It allows people to function, sometimes exceptionally, in environments that are psychically unsafe. But it comes at a cost, the erosion of internal authority. The sense of what’s real, what’s felt, what matters, independent of feedback or reassurance, can become difficult to access.

People in this position often appear strong, competent, flexible. But beneath that flexibility can be a kind of fragility. They may yield quickly, not because they’ve changed their mind, but because the firmness of the other settles them. Or they may challenge, not because they disagree, but because they need to feel the structure push back. Until something holds, the world doesn’t feel real.

Eventually, this dynamic becomes unsustainable. The constant attunement to others, who’s steady, who’s in charge, who’s okay, can obscure the deeper question: what do I believe? What do I want? What do I know to be true, even if no one agrees?

This is the beginning of internal authority, not a rigid insistence, but a grounded clarity. The ability to stay with one’s position, even when the external structure doesn’t move, even when it creates tension, even when no one mirrors it back.

Because the deepest authority doesn’t come from being in charge, it comes from knowing what you carry, and staying with it, quietly, steadily, without demand.

From that place, safety is no longer something that must be confirmed,

it is something that can be inhabited.

And when this process unfolds, when safety no longer depends on who’s holding you, but on what you’ve come to hold within, something quietly extraordinary happens. You begin to move through the world with a different gravity. Not grasping, not proving, just anchored. This kind of self-possession draws others not through performance, but through presence. It’s not about power. It’s about being whole. And wholeness, when inhabited fully, is magnetic.