Advancing a Contemporary Understanding of Human Regulation and Sentience
Writing, research, and public scholarship on how modern life overwhelms the nervous system, constrains pleasure and reshapes the way humans feel, relate, and connect.
Founded by Beverly Simmons, PhD, The Regulation Project integrates psychoanalysis, attachment theory, neuroscience and somatic research to examine how cultural acceleration impacts emotional presence, coherence and the architecture of human regulation.
The Regulation Project
Beverly Simmons, PhD
Beverly Simmons, PhD, LCSW, is a scholar-practitioner whose work integrates psychoanalysis, attachment theory, neuroscience and somatic research. She studies how stress, digital saturation, and contemporary cultural conditions reshape defensive development and constrict pleasure, leading to new forms of emotional numbness, reactivity, and disconnection.
Her writing and teaching examine what it takes to restore sentience, coherence, and embodied presence in a world that chronically overwhelms the nervous system.
In addition to her clinical practice, she has served as faculty with the Psychoanalytic Center of the Carolinas since 2013. Since becoming a mother, she has shifted her focus from teaching traditional courses to developing seminars that reflect her unique research interests.
Central question
How does a human being remain sentient, internally organized and emotionally present in a culture that chronically overactivates and overwhelms the nervous system?
This project explores:
How pressure and pace shape defensive structure
Why pleasure is collapsing across populations
The rising crisis of emotional numbness and reactivity
How trauma and chronic overwhelm differ
What humans need to restore coherence in contemporary life
Research and writing
Beverly Simmons, PhD, is currently writing a book that reframes dysregulation as more than trauma. Her work examines how modern cultural demands diminish pleasure, fragment attention, and erode sentience. She translates complex neuroscience, attachment and psychoanalytic theory into accessible insights for clinicians, leaders and the general public.
Read selected essays and emerging work through the research letter.
Speaking and teaching
Dr. Simmons teaches nationally on:
The neuroscience of regulation and overwhelm
The collapse of pleasure as a regulatory force
Trauma, defensive development, and emotional coherence
Sentience in modern culture
Attachment and the ecology of internal experience
Female sensuality, sexual subjectivity and their interrelationship to individual, child, familial and community health outcomes
Her research-driven theory detailing the evolutionary purpose of female orgasmic experience
Join the research
Receive essays, research notes, and updates on the forthcoming book exploring sentience, regulation, and the modern nervous system.