Here’s my initial description of the “Sexy Werewolf Loop,” which is my nickname for the agency-expansion feedback loop I identified in my prior post.

In the “Sexy Werewolf Loop,” I am suggesting that it might be the case that autonomy-supportive environments don’t just restore agency but have the ability to expand it. When hypervigilance drops, people don’t simply go back to baseline; they gain surplus capacity. That surplus is what allows deeper participation and smoother cooperation, and as cooperation stabilizes the environment, it loops back into the sense of safety and amplifies the whole cycle.

Threat doesn’t just reduce agency, it also costs energy to manage: monitoring the environment, predicting negative outcomes, inhibiting expression, preparing for conflict, being defensive. All of that takes up working memory, attention, and executive function.

So when hypervigilance decreases, the system doesn’t just return those resources to zero; it releases everything that was previously being spent on defensive processing. The baseline wasn’t the real maximum, but their capacity minus the cost of fear.

I think it’s possible that autonomy isn’t just a natural human default, but a capacity that grows recursively through co-created relational safety. 

Autonomy Support
→ ↓ Hypervigilance
→ ↓ Resource Drain
→ ↑ Surplus Agency
→ ↑ Cooperation
→ ↑ Stability
→ ↓ Threat
→ ↓ Hypervigilance
🔄
(reinforcing positive feedback loop)

Because the whole system is a feedback loop, the math naturally tends toward sigmoid-shaped behavior — the variables have saturation points, thresholds, and diminishing returns that create those curves. Neuroscience often models neural activation using nonlinear, threshold-based functions (frequently sigmoids) to represent how systems like the amygdala shift from low activation to high activation once certain inputs cross a threshold.

The equations will let us predict how different interventions might shift vigilance, agency, and cooperation over time. Instead of saying something vague like “we believe in community health and ACAB,” we can show how the system stabilizes, where it breaks, and how to track the metrics.

There are also built-in constraints: a natural cap to agency (because of cognitive limits) and a floor to vigilance (because people can never reach zero threat in a capitalist environment). For groups that are actively targeted by the state — like full-service sex workers — that vigilance floor is even higher.

In those conditions, the Sexy Werewolf Loop doesn’t become agency-expanding at all; it collapses into a predation loop. The same feedback cycle that would normally amplify autonomy instead amplifies threat, drains agency, and destabilizes the environment further. 

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I’ve also noted that cooperation and co-regulation act differently, which is my first update:

The loop already accounts for cooperation reducing vigilance through structure — things like predictable goals, symmetry of agency, visible costs, and clear exits. Those make initiative safe in a durable way. But co-regulation works differently: it lowers vigilance through responsiveness and attunement rather than structure, which makes it effective in the moment but not durable on its own. Safety determines which regime is possible (agency-expanding vs collapse), but co-regulation determines how easily the system can move between regimes by lowering baseline reactivity.

My own PTSD residue could be considered having high sensitivity due to past learning. In that case, co-regulation wouldn’t just be a temporary buffer, but also a context for relearning baseline sensitivity.

In the model, co-regulation is represented by changes in system gain — how strongly threat and safety signals are weighted — rather than by changes in safety, agency, or cooperation itself.