The third spiral is toleration. In our last spiral, we practiced staying with ourselves. We learned to create enough distance from dysregulation so that we could begin to find ourselves within it—not distance to abandon what was arising, but enough distance to remain curious about it.
But finding ourselves within dysregulation does not necessarily make the dysregulation go away.
And perhaps, for now, it doesn’t have to.
This is where toleration begins.
Toleration requires us to continue making room for the dysregulation, while starting to become more aware of what the dysregulation represents. Inherent to this Spiral is the learning to build capacity for what we are accessing. We may not necessarily be ready to explore what is arising, to sense into it all the way, to make peace with it, to grieve it, release it, or to accept it. But we can continue to allow it to show up in the way that it needs. What this Spiral requires of us is to resist the impulse to fix, solve, resolve, or release what continues to emerge inside of us.
So the question then becomes…Can something remain unresolved inside of us without requiring us to resolve ourselves around it?
We found enough distance to locate Self and remain alongside dysregulation—but perhaps expected that doing so would make us feel better. Sometimes it doesn't…so what happens next?
Part of toleration indicates that our time spent with dysregulation can create more capacity to be with it. However, this does not necessarily guarantee that we will feel better. One of the most common misconceptions within the traditional narrative of healing—and of moving toward the most actualized versions of ourselves—is that we will necessarily feel better once we have enough capacity to be with something uncomfortable. Sometimes the feeling better is incremental, a careful titration of holding our pain. And sometimes feeling better is different than feeling good or quite ourselves. Sometimes it means continuing to hold discomfort so that it just becomes less unfamiliar. Toleration is not endurance. It is not meant to continue suppression or create a feeling of white-knuckling the experience before it ends. Endurance suggests that we continue to survive until it stops. Although toleration may feel like a reenactment, it is not meant to be a re-traumatization of what has always been. Rather, toleration is the acceptance that this can be here, and I can still be here too; that from the past and me from the present can both be here without psychologically relocating myself there. These variances of Self can co-exist. The more that we learn to tolerate and co-exist with them, the more they can integrate. That is ultimately what will lead to feeling better. Yes, as I’ve said before trauma and healing are similar. They are both processes of immense pain. One moves us away from it; the other moves us toward it. One is a spiral away from ourselves; the other is a Spiral into ourselves. This Spiral may, in fact, be the one that more closely resembles the trauma as a result of re-enacting it—the feeling of needing to tolerate something uncomfortable and survive it. When rather, it is teaching us something very different—that we no longer need to survive. To walk alongside it gets us further away from the trauma and closer to being with/in ourselves. Yes, the paradox will largely feel like re-experiencing something that was once locked away; but contrary to popular theory, existing with it is a much more freeing process when we begin to move closer to just experiencing it, for the first time. Because now we can. That is different than the grasp of trauma and threat that kept us from the experience all along.
In the midst of tolerating the dysregulation, its continued presence can feel like evidence that we're failing to heal. But perhaps the goal at this stage isn't absence. Our relationship to its presence must change before the presence itself can change. I am hoping that the message within the Spirals of Healing and the practice of surrendering into each Spiral is a practice, not of increasing our tolerance so that we can tolerate more suffering, but rather to increase our capacity so that suffering no longer requires us to leave ourselves. In my next blog, I will discuss how to create more expansion around this experience of dysregulation that asks us to tolerate—how to make space around the discomfort: something like noticing where dysregulation is felt in our beings while noticing everything that exists around it and creating more space there—in what can continue to evolve around the discomfort, like just the right container for it.
Much of what we explored in the previous blog was how to begin identifying what was showing up within our dysregulation—not for the purpose of creating rigidity and meaning around it, but to create enough differentiation that we could begin to find Self alongside it. For the purpose of Toleration, I want you to imagine assigning meaning to what is showing up for a moment, not for the purpose of preventing further curiosity, exploration, and evolution, but for the purpose of accepting that, which is showing up without necessarily feeling forced to see something that is trying to be shown. We can allow an experience without knowing what it is showing/telling us or agreeing with everything it tells us. I can tolerate the feeling that I am unsafe without deciding that I am unsafe now. I can make room for shame without accepting shame's story about me. This is what will make more room in the future to understand what parts of us are holding and are so bravely trying to share with us.
What can feel particularly heavy about Toleration is the not fully knowing the dysregulation we’re meeting, not being ready to hear its story, and not yet being ready to process and release that, which needs releasing. To be in this phase of healing is to increase our capacity for more healing. We must develop ongoing experiences of sitting with and inside of ourselves before understanding what has been repressed, and certainly before unburdening the parts of us that have protected us from finding what’s been held for so long. We don’t want healing to become another mechanism for rejecting dysregulation. We find this already quite a lot in our lives—re-enacting the past, coping as opposed to sitting with, denying, dissociating, moving away from what we have not yet had the capacity or safety to hold. The Spiral of Toleration may continue to feel just as difficult as the inception of the Dysregulation, but equally so, it is crucial for us to be able to surrender to it, as somewhere along the way, our desire to heal can quietly become another source of urgency. We begin to approach each uncomfortable experience with the question of what we need to do to make it stop. We regulate, ground, analyze, intellectualize, search for the right intervention, or look for evidence that what we are doing is “working.” And while each of these practices can be deeply supportive, they can also begin to communicate something familiar to the parts of us we are trying so hard to heal: you are still not allowed to be here like this.
And so, this becomes a vital bridge to cross in healing. Perhaps this is the very bridge that wounded parts of us were once unable to cross—or were left alone to cross. Some may still be standing there, frozen in time. And perhaps some of what we now experience as dysregulation is their way of letting us know that they are still there. To stand beside what is trying to cross is not to drag it toward the other side. It is to let that part discover that this time, it does not have to cross alone. To continually remain beside that which is trying to cross is to create the conditions in which those parts may eventually cross the bridge with us. This bridge is one of support, attunement, and permission. That which is showing up once lacked the permission, the ability, and/or the safety it needed to show up. To let it show up and to be beside it is that which teaches the dysregulated parts of ourselves that it is now safe to be and that there is a safe presence to be with while also teaching us that because they have now shown up, it must be that it is now safe enough for us to be with them too.
Perhaps Toleration asks us to notice the difference between using our tools to make the dysregulation leave and using our tools to help ourselves remain while it is here and to help them remain with us rather than retreating again into deep hiding. In my last blog, I emphasized this strongly—creating more Self as a way to differentiate from the dysregulation. The premise of Toleration suggests that doing this over a period of time, while helping the dysregulated parts of ourselves remain with us, is the path forward. Creating this reciprocal relationship is the premise of healing and that which increases our capacity to be with discomfort, while guiding our readiness to release that, which has needed to be released. And so this idea of picturing a frozen part that is dysregulated on a bridge that they have yet to cross may come across as an important visual that helps in the conveying that, you are allowed to be here like this. This will diminish the urgency that something needs to be done, minimized, tamed, fixed, and/or resolved right away. Rather, just the opposite must happen: the permission to take up space as they are is the message that they may need to hear for both of you to begin crossing the bridge—to allow their story to emerge while allowing your story to continue moving forward.
You may continue to feel intolerant of that part at the start of the bridge. Another piece of this Spiral is to remain tolerant of your intolerance. Remaining tolerant of our own intolerance in this time can help with expecting resolution, clarity, permanency, and promised comfort in this phase of healing. This is not the phase of resolution. This is the phase of preparation.
There is an incompleteness inherent to this Spiral. We are making room for something whose meaning we may not fully understand yet. We are learning to hold what we cannot yet explain, grieve what we cannot yet fully access, and remain alongside what we are not yet ready to see and release.
To be in this phase of healing is to increase our capacity for more healing.
We do not need to know why something is here in order to begin making room for its presence. We do not need to hear its entire story in order to let it know that, eventually, we may be willing to listen. Once there is trust and knowing that we can remain there with it, its story will unfold and, inevitably, ours will continue. Perhaps we must begin to know the little person inside of us in order to more fully become the person we are.
Before we ask our dysregulation to tell us where it came from, perhaps it first needs to learn that we will not leave when it answers.
In my next blog, I will walk you through another exercise that will help you to embody the answer to—How do we actually create enough internal space for this and me to co-exist consistently; and how do I arrive where they are without departing from where I am now?
Food for thought…
Kindly,
—Sarah
I read your post on the third Spiral - the Spiral of Toleration and I found it incredibly helpful and insightful. It gave me a lot to reflect on and put some things into perspective for me.