An Adventure in Dysregulation

Recently I had a chance to work through a situation that really challenged me.

It involved navigating my sense of belonging in a group amidst difficult emotions. But more interesting than the situation that prompted it was the intensity of my reaction and how dysregulating it was for me.

I was feeling alternately nauseous, constricted in my solar plexus, and close to tears. I also ruminated on the situation, lost some sleep over it, wrote pages and pages in my journal, worked with my coach, and shared aspects of it with several other people.

Wow, this was having quite an impact.

And inevitably some self-judgment came in: Why am I allowing this to take up so much energy when there are other more important things to do?

It’s not uncommon for me to support clients through similar situations, the contours of which may be familiar to you: You find ourselves unsettled by something. It takes a surprising amount of mental, emotional, even physical energy. You wonder: Am I doing something wrong? Is it a waste of time and energy to feel so affected?

Here I explore what it might be like to trust and stand with our whole selves during such times. As always, I hope that you’ll find resonance with your own experiences and strands of inquiry you can build forward on.

What is Dysregulation?

Next to me, as I type, lies the official Polyvagal Theory poster I bought a few weeks ago.

Polyvagal Theory poster by Applied Mindfulness, Inc., in collaboration with Dr. Stephen Porges

This body of work has made a big difference to how I relate to other people’s experiences of dysregulation as well as my own.

It has helped turn around judgmental self-talk (about me being weak, misguided, overly sensitive, to name but a few examples). It’s done so mainly by reminding me that I am not in charge of how often, how profoundly, or by what sorts of things, I get dysregulated.

“Why am I allowing this to affect me so much?

That question holds the assumption that “I” am in charge.

But I’m not. And that is just as well, because if I had to be responsible for (paraphrased from the poster) “regulating my internal milieu and assessing safety or threat internally, in my relationships, and in my environment“, I wouldn’t be doing much else!

My autonomic nervous system is doing the assessing and the regulation for me, and it is doing this by itself, without me being conscious of it. The Polyvagal Theory has taught me that while I can befriend this part of my being, I’m not the boss of it.

Dysregulation is my system calling in its resources for defending the whole organism that is me.

“I” may not agree that this is necessary. I may say to myself that something shouldn’t be this big a deal. But at the end of the day, dysregulation just is. My autonomic nervous system assesses safety or threat, and these assessments underpin how I experience my life in every moment.

Dysregulation is then also a place where I meet myself.

Which brings me to the story of what happened recently.

Dysregulated by Disappointment

Last month, I completed a training journey together with a group of around 20 other people. As we approached the end, there naturally came time to celebrate and express gratitude for what we had each gained from the experience.

The problem was: I wasn’t feeling either celebratory or grateful.

What I felt was: disappointed. Even a little heartbroken. I had come in with hopes and expectations, and some of these – important ones for me – had gone unfulfilled.

Feeling those negative feelings in a situation that invited celebration and gratitude was very uncomfortable.

It was messing with my self-image as someone who, as well as having high expectations, is also generous, and really notices the good things that are going on.

It was also anxiety-provoking in terms of my standing in this group of fellow-students and trainers.

But even those were afterthoughts. In the moment, all I noticed was:

  1. sh*t what I’m feeling is so negative; and
  2. sh*t it doesn’t match what is wanted here, now what the hell do I do?

With my body reacting strongly (tears, tight solar plexus, stirred-up belly), I went on to speak honestly about my disappointment.

It was very uncomfortable, but I could stand it. I could stand it, but it was very uncomfortable. It took a lot of strength to stay in my seat and express what was up for me. Afterwards I felt sick. The day after I still felt out of sorts.

And I knew I wasn’t done, because there was still one final group meeting left and I wasn’t sure how to manage that.

​Engaging the Body in Dialogue

With negative feelings such as disappointment, it’s very tempting to focus on who carries what share of the blame. I certainly found myself drawn into that:

Is it me? Is it them? What was reasonable for me to expect? What is a reasonable expression of unhappiness?

But from the first moment, I was also tracking my physical state:

What am I noticing in my body? How can I tell that I’m dysregulated, what are the physical signs? What feels impossible right now, given how I am feeling? What am I drawn towards to bring myself some ease?

It makes sense to me that Deb Dana and others who work with the Polyvagal Theory speak of such tracking as “befriending” the nervous system. In that word, befriending, there are echos of respectingthe system’s autonomy and gently wanting to hear where it is coming from. Physical state tracking is thus like engaging the body in dialogue: I ask the abovementioned questions not to “myself” but to my nervous system.

I look at blame-analysis and physical tracking as two different strategies for helping ourselves settle down. If you haven’t experienced them in action side by side, I recommend you try this the next time you find yourself dysregulated. With two strategies, you have the makings of an experiment. Curiosity switches on. You can compare and contrast.

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In my own case, I noticed two things:

First, compared to reasoning out and arguing my case in front of imaginary judges, the dialogue with my body felt much less complicated. There was effort involved, but a simpler kind of effort. I felt this as a real relief.

Second, the dialogue with my body gave me clearer feedback on imagined next steps. After that first intense experience of feeling and expressing disappointment, I wasn’t sure I could go back for the final group meeting, where celebration and gratitude would again be the norm. As soon as I gave myself permission not to go, it became easier to breathe. My belly and shoulders relaxed.

I felt a lot better – so much so that something surprising happened: the next day, I saw a way forward that allowed me to go to the meeting after all. Both the initial No and later Yes from my body felt clear and reliable (in a way the provisional conclusions from my blame-analysis did not).

But isn’t it Still a Waste of Time?

Engaging my body in dialogue got me somewhere.

But there’s another part to that initial question of “Why I am allowing this to take up so much energy when there are other more important things to do?” not yet addressed.

That is the wish to have avoided the whole adventure in the first place. The wish that I could anticipate, and avoid, situations that draw such a reaction from my nervous system that I then have to deal with. The wish for a calm, centred, collected way of being from which I can navigate my daily life.

I have that wish. You probably do too. And I have a lot of empathy for us having it: being dysregulated does not feel good at all. In figuring out how best to care for ourselves, it’s often helpful to steer away from situations that we know will cause stress or put us on an emotional rollercoaster. And it’s helpful to cultivate calm.

But that does not mean that when you do find yourself dysregulated, you are doing something wrong.

In the big picture of things, it can even mean you are doing something right.

The Twin Gremlins of Fear and Lethargy

This, at least, is suggested by the Jungian psychoanalyst James Hollis via the evocative image of Fear and Lethargy – archetypal monsters, both; one intimidating, the other seductive – sitting at the foot of the bed:

“Can you see them sitting there?” Image by Somnox Sleep at Unsplash

“Each morning the twin gremlins of fear and lethargy sit at the foot of our bed and smirk. Fear of departure, fear of the unknown, fear of the challenge of largeness intimidates us back into our convenient rituals, conventional thinking, and familiar surroundings. To be recurrently intimidated by the task of life is a form of spiritual annihilation.”

“Yet to move into unfamiliar territory activates anxiety as our constant comrade. Clearly, psychological or spiritual development always requires a greater capacity in us for the toleration of anxiety and ambiguity.”

“The daily confrontation with these gremlins of fear and lethargy obliges us to choose between anxiety and depression, for each is aroused by the dilemma of daily choice.”

James Hollis, PhD, Finding Meaning in the Second Half of Life: How to Finally, Really Grow Up, pp 38-40.

There’s genius in the image of Fear and Lethargy smirking at the foot of the bed, because if it’s unavoidable that one or the other monster will get its claws in me every day – multiple times a day – then I can both understand and tolerate why I haven’t arrived at a place of permanent calm confidence and ease.

It’s not strange that I often don’t move, don’t act, don’t step up – and that when I do, my stomach plays up and my breath shortens.

But the real uplift in Hollis’s words comes from his suggestion that anxiety is the price to pay for confronting “the challenge of largeness”.

The challenge of largeness: doing things you didn’t think you could. Being more unapologetically yourself. Stepping into leadership, generosity, and contribution in all its varieties.

“Is this enlarging me or diminishing me?” Hollis suggests we ask every time we need to choose between confronting and withdrawing from what’s right in front of us.

I like that a lot as a companion question to the one of whether to feel so affected is a waste of time.

Happily Dysregulated?

To say that I’m happy about what transpired at the end of my training is a bridge too far. But I can certainly see some redeeming features in my recent experience with dysregulation.

Speaking truthfully about my disappointment was an enlarging, not a diminishing, thing for me to do.

I didn’t know beforehand that doing this would be so dysregulating. But of course it is just the kind of thing that would get my Fear gremlin all up in arms. There was a challenge of largeness here for me.

And I took it on.

It makes me happy to rediscover that I can do such things from time to time. That I have the capacity to tolerate the discomfort of feeling fear and vulnerability. That I have tools and support to keep nurturing that capacity.

I’m also happy to rediscover that I don’t have to reason everything out or analyse a situation from every angle beforeI can trust or stand with myself. That I can trust, in a way that feels real and empowering, even dysregulation itself.

Prompts for Your Own Investigation

Have you ever found yourself judging that something is affecting you too much? What are examples of things that dysregulated you beyond your own sense of how big a deal it was, or should be? Is there anything like that present in your life right now?

What do you know about your strategies for dealing with dysregulation: are they similar to mine, different?

What happens when you remind yourself that you can experiment and have an adventure in this space?

What does the image of the twin gremlins offer you and your nervous system?

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I hope there is something in this for you. If you are navigating something very challenging right now, I hope you can feel the support of my solidarity.

We can trust ourselves more than we think. Even the reactivity of our nervous systems.

I’d be happy to hear anything you want to share in response to reading this.

Warm wishes,

Catelijne

Picture of Catelijne Coopmans

Catelijne Coopmans

is an academic life coach who helps her clients with personal sustainability, pursuing what they truly want, navigating transitions, and reclaiming writing. Her coaching is based on cultivating personal approaches to academic life and considering the whole body as a fundamental aspect of thinking, writing, decision-making, and collaborating.

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