Emotional Regulation
When I first started therapy, I remember being asked how I was feeling and where in the body I was feeling it. There are many difficult questions in counselling, but I struggled to answer this one. I didn’t understand the question. I had existed in a state of duality, experiencing both anger and fear, and then the absence of both. I didn’t know what the gap in between was. I was the black and white television of the seventies, with no knowledge that the full spectrum of colours (emotions) could be experienced.
My therapist explained that people with Complex PTSD often categorise many things in a black and white fashion, all or nothing. The idea that an experience, or environment, or relationship carries nuances is too much for a trauma survivor to cope with. They program their mind to detect threats very quickly, so everything is coded almost instantly. This can often reduce reality into safe or unsafe. Anything in between is of no interest.
In my therapy session, I admitted that I didn’t know how I felt. Maybe okay? My therapist has been one of my saviours, so skilled she is with trauma therapy. She has been able to guide me and teach me how trauma rewires neurons in the brain, often creating a shortcut directly to the fight/flight centre. This resonated with me because I react to experiences based on threat. I can remember nearly all the times in my life when I felt anger, loss, grief, fear, and profound sadness. I started to realise that I had never “coded” the emotions in between.
Emotions are transient, meaning they come and go and constantly change. The challenge for me has been the inability to regulate my emotions. If I am angry, I become overwhelmed, unable to distinguish the emotion from reality. When I experience despair, the feeling overwhelms me, and I struggle to separate this state from my perception of reality. For example, my family and I moved house last year, and because I was (still am) in a state of grief, I haven’t been able to connect with our new home. My therapist explained that the problem isn’t the house; it is my grief. My brain hasn’t been able to separate the two.
Slowly, I am learning new skills to improve life with Complex PTSD. Last night, as I sat “feeling” fear, I engaged one of the exercises learned many times in therapy. I sat with the emotion, labelled it, and allowed it to pass through me. I paid attention to my body, to where I “felt” the emotion. This exercise encourages us to process emotion. There is a temptation, and certainly for many, a tendency, to repress the unpleasant emotion.
Repressing emotions that threaten to overwhelm us can lead to many problems. Often, our subconscious will nudge us via dreams and nightmares, or addictions, dissociation, and avoidant behaviours, making constant attempts to bring our attention to those feelings we have ignored. We can ignore feelings for so long, but eventually, they will manifest. This can be physical and psychological. We store pain and trauma in the body, and what is trauma if not the emotional reactions to life events?
In my experience, I have acted out and acted on my emotions more than I have repressed them. This means that I have tended to be reactive. I hadn’t learned to label emotions and to allow them to flow through me. I had become the emotion. I had seen my external world through the lens of emotion without questioning, without self-awareness. As I continue my journey of healing, I am slowly turning my attention to my internal world. I am developing compassion, understanding, and awareness.
I never understood the phrase, “deciding with your head or heart”. I could never separate the two. Until now. My heart was always worn on my sleeve. Visible and exposed to all the elements. From an early age, these external elements were predominantly unsafe or unpredictable. I didn’t have the early connection with my caregiver, so I developed an innate ability for emotional dysregulation. I had to survive. So I used the biggest emotion I had to seek the attention and care I craved: anger.
With no lessons on emotional regulation, I never realised that this was just an emotion, and instead I identified as it. I became anger. And then I was given a label. The angry child. I talk in another blog about the authentic self, and only recently have I been able to recognise some of the labels, including this one, that I have started to let go of.
I am now learning how to regulate my emotions. It is a slow process, but I am determined. I practice mindfulness to improve my awareness. I sit with unpleasant emotions and observe the physical sensations, ensuring that I make a safe space for myself. It is still frightening, but this in itself is an emotion. My therapist has helped me to understand that some of these bigger emotions actually stem from my inner child. Some are even stored from a time when I was nonverbal, making the emotional sensations even more terrifying. I have a lot of work to do, but I am now on a path to growth and improvement.
I am very lucky to be able to finance my therapy, and to have my website to create information and to share my story. I welcome contact via my website from anyone who wants to be heard. I would love to hear the stories others have about their experiences with emotional regulation. If you need any support, which might include talking therapies, please engage with your GP or ring NHS111. Alternatively, access the internet for online information and resources.
