How I Learn Humility Through Dysregulation
“I am the type of person who holds on to my resentment really tight. I would be like ‘I am so right!’.”
The memory of Anna Runkle tightening up her fists as she talked about what her Daily Practice was for — wiping off leaves on our mind’s windshield — vividly played in my head. It’s undoubtedly a godsend for people like me. I just never realized exactly how much resentment I could still feel after all this progress I had made in my healing journey. Most of the time, I was only full of fear, but not resentment. I thought I had fear-induced dysregulations under control. As a result, when I was caught off guard by this flooding feeling of loath and desire to punish, I had an extremely hard time keeping my head above water.
People with childhood PTSD can get flooded and dysregulated at work from all sorts of sources: unfairness, authority, politics, and criticisms, just to name a few. While some of those circumstances are not healthy to begin with, our trauma brain exacerbates the negativity by creating stress hormones over an excessive period — we become hyper-vigilant and our fight or flight mode is on steroids. When people who don’t live with a trauma brain simply brush off the feelings and move on, we become prisoners to our cortisol-filled bodies.
What can we do?
Finally, after a week, crawling out from yet another debilitating dysregulation — sleep-deprived, depressed, hyper-vigilant, with increased heart-palpation, self-loathing, having destructive thoughts — I concluded some practical things and thoughts I could do to help myself crawl out of this pitfall hopefully faster the next time. (I wish there will be no next time, but I know life isn’t that easy.)
I am going to use first-person narrative in the following points for greater intimacy to my emotions, but please feel free to adopt the points for yourself.
1. Allow myself to be the stupid one — to regain the space in my mind
In other words: let go of my ego. Let go of the desire to stand tall and declare my rights, my opinions, my correctness. IT DOES NOT MATTER how justified my thoughts, feelings, and opinions are and how wrong the system is. If I am so dysregulated to a point that I burn myself out before I can do anything substantial and meaningful about the situation, my agony unfortunately becomes a pure waste of my energy and light.
Let go, stoop low, crawl. Do whatever is needed to put off my sense of righteousness FIRST when standing tall becomes shaky and dangerous. There is no shame in admitting my limits and powerlessness toward my circumstances. In fact, it would be true stupidity not to. Use the lower position to gain time and space to restore my calmness and safety. Now, that’s real wisdom.
2. Surrender to my body’s needs
My body is my inner child. Children don’t like to put in effort and endure pain. Children do it because the adults ask them to. Dysregulation is a signal that my logical mind has put too much pain and pressure on my body. The plate is overflowing with unresolved problems and confusion. No more. Stop.
It’s time to step away from the stressors, no matter how important they are to my career, other people’s perception of me, or whatever. IT DOES NOT MATTER if there isn’t a “me” to do the work, let alone ripe the fruits afterward. It’s time for me to slow down, enjoy the present moments, and tend to my body. It’s time to release the cortisol instead of filling up more.
Go jog, run, shake, dance, move. or do thorough full-body scan in meditation. Do all of the above until I eventually feel the flooding cortisol subside. I will know it because my chest would stop feeling like being constantly gnawed by a thousand ants from the inside. I would be able to have longer and fuller breaths again. I can sit still.
Humility means surrendering to my needs for nourishment
In conclusion: there is no need to stand tall and be proud while stooping low can give me more breathing room. It’s not that I will have lower self-esteem. On contrary, it is because I hold myself in such higher regard than the demands from my environment that I am going to ignore those demands for some time, and give that time and space back to myself. I would rather use that time and space to nourish my inner peace and tend to my body than chase after yet another win in arguments or discussions.
Wins, regardless of how just and deserving they are, become nothing to me when I have to peril with them.
(You can see that I will not make a good activist of any sort and I am fine with that for now.)
