When Healing Feels like Dysregulation

Understanding why the very thing that is helping you heal...feels like it's hurting you.

There are moments in healing that feel indistinguishable from falling apart…

When we begin to heal, we start moving through spirals. These spirals can feel chaotic—even as they are moving you back into connection. We can circle the same space, but not as the same person anymore. The feeling of spiraling may feel familiar, but it may feel softer now, shifting and grounding us into a new context. As I mentioned last month, healing can be explained through three phases: building safety, resolution of unprocessed emotions, and post-traumatic growth/integration of emotions.

The first building block for all healing is building safety. This can feel like a complex task because it requires us to move toward something that is not always familiar, especially when having experienced enduring chronic trauma (i.e., developmental, physical, emotional, sexual, and/or relational). Embodying emotional, somatic, physical, and spiritual safety requires moving along such spirals. Without an adequate amount of safety, we cannot heal and move into deeper realms of healing. One of the most fundamental paradoxes of building safety is that it requires us to move through dysregulation. In fact, our first two spirals are, retreat and dysregulation.

Retreat is a form of safety. This happens when we inch away from the comfortable ways of coping. Dysregulation is what happens when we find that the coping is no longer comfortable, but there is nothing that feels more comfortable to step into…only the discomfort of not knowing what is next or how to exactly get there. Retreat can also mean stepping away from the trauma you are actively enduring—moving toward safety simply by leaving what or who is unsafe. Unfortunately, leaving the traumatic world around us does not mean that we are escaping the traumatic world that has been created inside of us, as a result—cue our next spiral—dysregulation; it is the longest spiral that awaits us. It can last months or years. Not all dysregulation is bad. Even coping can exist within dysregulation—just in a way that once felt more manageable.

Leaving what is outside of you does not mean escaping what has been created within…Some of the most common and complex experiences of such dysregulation are, depression, anxiety, panic, and chronic and complex dissociation—almost like you have taken a step back from yourself, like you have lost the ability to access the internal resources that have kept you in-tact all of these years. In this post, I am not using complex dissociation synonymously to structural dissociation (dissociated identity states within a person; however, keep tuning as there will be many posts on structural dissociation in the future). This is the moment that a realization of suppression and repression occurs, when our protective defenses can no longer protect us because of how much is being carried. Mind you, this realization does not always occur consciously; more often than not, it occurs implicitly—when our minds and nervous systems spiral us into the depths of truth. And sometimes truth can lead us to feeling broken and confused, when really this is the starting point of healing and re-integration. These kinds of dysregulation may occur when our systems are finally processing what they couldn’t before. More often than not, this processing occurs without our permission. It is like our systems know they are meeting safety while we are still catching up to it. And so often of the time the building of safety and processing of unresolved internal experiences intersect within this spiral.

You may be thinking…"do anxiety, panic, or dissociation describe the depths of what I am experiencing?” / “Could it be more?” / “This feels more severe.” These experiences could very well define what is happening in your internal world. When you are in the experience, it is very difficult to actually describe it. The severity and disruption in what are usually automated experiences cannot be put into words. Even as a complex trauma therapist, I sometimes struggle to precisely describe the altered experiences that can occur within this spiral. But I will try—it feels like you are getting worse. It feels like you have been released from the protective defenses that have kept you feeling “normal,” only the experience of this feels untethering…very untethering. Like there is nothing there to hold you but your fear, anxiety, and your panic (i.e., the fear of the fear). I invite you to remember, that it would be abnormal if this wasn’t happening. Dysregulation is often the first step toward reconnecting with your emotions. And re-connecting to your emotions is the first step toward regulation.

What once had to stay outside of our awareness can move closer now. So close that it feels like threat to you. Like the trauma is happening all over again, only this time you are feeling it all. Why now? Why when I am safe?—Because when we are safe, our bodies can finally feel, assimilate, and integrate the chronic feelings of unsafety that had lived underneath. Learning to stay with yourself in what feels threatening is what allows you to move through this spiral—and eventually land within yourself. The difference between now and then is that you can feel it all. If you can feel it, it must be safe enough to now. It must be very uncomfortable, excruciating, a feeling of departure from yourself, it must feel like something is structurally or even neurologically wrong. It will feel perpetually uncomfortable; but is is no longer a threat to you. In my next post, I will discuss what the experiences of depression, anxiety, panic, and complex dissociation may feel like within the dysregulation spiral. I will also discuss some of the therapeutic frameworks that I utilize when having met myself and my clients in this spiral.

Food for thought…

Kindly,

—Sarah