When you are dysregulated…

It’s not uncommon for a dysregulated sensitive to become so overwhelmed that they shutdown. Before shutdown however, overwhelm can lead to hyper-emotions like anger, outbursts and crying, and/or physical sensations like anxiety, pain and fatigue, and/or mental expression like a scattered mind, forgetfulness and difficulty focusing.

These overwhelm symptoms can often be crippling, making normal day to day activities and social events something to be feared in case your brain stops working or you collapse into fatigue.

Highly sensitive people become overwhelmed much quicker than other people because they process information within the brain at a much deeper level. Imagine everyone having a certain capacity or limit for input (light, sound, information, somatic/touch, smell etc). For most people, input comes in and it is filed or discarded quickly by the brain. A highly sensitive brain however, will take that piece of input and process it from multiple angles and depths. This is an incredible skill, and often translates into the level of creativity and problem solving that is responsible for world changing advances. But in a world where stimulus (aka input) is constant and difficult to avoid, the ‘limit’ is reached quickly within a ‘normal’ day, as the input keeps coming in at a much quicker rate than what the sensitive brain can compute. “Overwhelm’ is the point where you start getting symptoms due to the inability of the brain to keep up with the input. It’s sad to say that many highly sensitive people have never experienced the beautiful gift their brain (and nervous system) is.

The experience of overwhelm is hard enough but unfortunately we often push ourselves past the symptoms of overwhelm into shutdown. This is your mind trying to protect you from the pain and fear you are experiencing. In essence, when you are shut down, you are dissociated with your body and you can end up completely cut off from your own emotions and somatic input (bodily sensations). It is also possible that if you have been in shutdown for a long while (perhaps even since childhood) you may not identify with being sensitive at all!

If you have experienced the pain and overwhelm of being highly sensitive then closing off your awareness may sound like a good thing. However the truth is that even if you cut off conscious awareness of your emotions and sensory input (light sound etc) your body IS still registering it and it WILL still go into overwhelm. The difference between someone being aware of their sensitivity and someone who is cut off from it is that the sensitive person will have warning of what is coming, whereas the dissociated sensitive will suddenly crash, feeling like the nervous system overwhelm (and subsequent symptoms) has come from nowhere. So dissociating from sensitivity is helpful to an extent because you might be able to push through for longer but it’s definitely not a solution because without your sensitivity you won’t know when to stop and allow yourself the space you require.

What we all want as highly sensitive beings is to be aligned and regulated! Alignment means to be working with the flow of your life purpose. As a sensitive being, you have an incredible gift where your body speaks loudly in response to the direction you are headed. When you are going in a direction that aligns with your true self you will feel clear, bright, energetic and full of love. And on the flip side, when your ego or a false self is directing you, your body will give signs much sooner than external signs will manifest. This sensitive ability is worth cultivating, but you will find it difficult to access if you are experiencing dysregulation from overwhelm (too much input).

Everyone cycles between dysregulated and regulated. However you can cultivate and tone your nervous system and sensitivity so you are MORE OFTEN regulated than dysregulated. AND by building self awareness, in the moments you find yourself dysregulated, you will recognise it and can take appropriate action to help come back into regulation. PLUS, as you cultivate and tone, you will find that your dysregulated state(s) changes in how it expresses itself (i.e. becomes less extreme).

It’s important to note that we want to both cultivate sensitivity (to increase our awareness and thus live in alignment) while also toning the nervous system and releasing tension and programming. If you cultivate sensitivity without toning and regulation then you will find that your nervous system runs amok and you become dysregulated.

Toning your sensitivity is when you work to create both a connection with the nervous system (and body) as well as a sense of control with it. You can liken the nervous system to a muscle. If you do not work a muscle and give it the nutrients it requires, it is flaccid and/or spasms and does not serve you well. On the flip side, if you tone your muscles through exercise and eat a nutritionally rich diet, your muscles will do what you ask them to. The nervous system behaves in the same way. It requires toning through nervous system training, nutrition and the right environment for it to function smoothly without glitches. The nervous system is also reactive to energy and thoughts, so cleansing the mind and energy around you is as important as keeping physical toxins away that can damage the nervous system.

An example of nervous system toning is to hold your arms out to the side for 3 minutes. Unless you have trained in this way before you will likely want to put your arms down before a minute is up. But what if I told you that you can hold your arms out to the side for much longer than the physical pain (nervous system feedback) is telling you? Your nervous system is sending you pain signals but this doesn’t mean that you can’t keep holding up your arms. Continual training in this way will not only tone and strengthen your arm muscles but it will also retrain your nervous system. Your physical body is always more capable than what you think. This is a fact that many people know but they see it as a mindset thing, which is true, it’s just not the whole truth. The whole truth is that much of the control you seek is within your nervous system programming. The nervous system underpins all the physical functioning and subtle energy holds and directs the nervous system. Therefore you can affect and tone your nervous system and sensitivities by working with your physical and energetic bodies through movement, various breathing techniques, creativity, sound and even diet and lifestyle choices. How incredible is that?!

Through Aromanosis coaching we work in a bottom up approach by beginning the process through connection with the body (and its environment) to strengthen, tone and cultivate your sensitivity and nervous system. Through creative therapy, movement, breath and lifestyle changes you will feel a great connection with your inner world and as you release, tone and cultivate you become an embodied sensitive being living in joyful alignment.

Email me at connect@aromanosis.com.au to book a free alignment call. This is NOT a sales call. Within the call I will get to know you and will give you some suggestions of what might work for your next steps. These steps may include a combination of things you can implement straight away without help, a referral to another practitioner or mentor or how I can help. At the end, if it is feeling in alignment for both of us, I will offer to create an Aromanosis Medicine Plan.