I am rewiring my nervous system to become the man I want to be.
By Matthew F. Stevens
An abnormal reaction to an abnormal situation is normal behavior. – Viktor Frankl I love this quote because it helped me understand myself on a level that escaped me for many years prior to reading it. Over the course of that time, I knew I made a lot of progress. Repressed memories of childhood abuse resurfaced, I faced domestic violence from my ex-wife, and lost connection with a child who was 14 at the time. And that’s when I noticed my life spiraling out of control.
However, as time passed, I looked back at my behaviors and realized I wasn’t crazy or even lost; I was trying to overcome situations that I should have never had to endure. I was using the tools I had at the time to manage feelings I didn’t know how to cope with. I would overreact if I missed a call from my biological daughter for a few days in a row. I would be on the phone with the police, asking them to do a welfare check.
Why Emotional Dysregulation Isn’t Being Broken (And Why It Isn’t)
I would find myself shutting down whenever relationships came into play. I would find myself drinking whenever a custody hearing came up for my biological daughter. I wasn’t broken, I was dysregulated. What about you? Do you ever find yourself making poor choices, not because you don’t know better, but rather because you don’t know any other way to cope? I felt broken.
As a man, I felt emasculated. I reasoned to myself, how could I ever let this woman beat me as she did? How could I ever be a good father if I couldn’t even manage to finish being her father for the last 4 years of her childhood life? This led to continuous states of dysregulation, because what I didn’t know at the time was ever time my mind would replay those moments of my life, my nervous system didn’t know the difference between the distant past and the present.
I was stuck in fight or flight mode
I was stuck in fight or flight mode. What I didn’t realize is that broken is a state of permanence where beings dysregulated were simply a state of being. Another factor that had escaped my attention was that chaos, inconsistency, and trauma shaped my upbringing. My nervous system had learned that the way to keep safe was hypervigilance, people pleasing, and numbness. At one time, these responses worked; they did their job, but as I eventually learned, they were simply outdated tools.
My nervous system learned how to protect me before I learned how to understand myself. This came to light in a very real way while I was working with kids who had behavioral issues. Once they began to trust me, they began to feel safe. There was no amount of “calm downs,” physical restraint’s or fear that could impact the kids the way I could once we developed a trusting relationship.
No matter how “disciplined” they were when certain staff were there, they inevitably would act out until they learned how to regulate themselves. Quite the contrary, regulation created the capacity for self-discipline. Overtime what I came to learn was that regulation was a skill rather than a trait. Given the right opportunities and tools, anyone can develop regulation. Regulation is awareness of an internal state; it’s slowing down enough to be able to make decisions calmly with a clear mind. It’s choosing how to respond rather than reacting.
Conclusion
In its infancy stages, it’s pausing for 3 seconds before responding, it’s noticing the fact that you are getting amped up before you act up, and it’s creating structure once emotions spike. Regulation doesn’t mean you don’t feel-it means your feelings don’t run the show. That one simple act of knowing that we’re not broken, we’re simply dysregulated, opens the door to curiosity. And that curiosity, piece by piece, changes the outcome.
It creates responsibility without self-attack, and that, my friends, is something sustainable. So the next time you find yourself dysregulated, remember you’re not at all broken, you’re simply learning how to regulate. Since I learned about these things for myself down to this, the ability to shift the internal narrative has been one of my greatest tools. At times, I feel the old version of me creeps in to check on me.
The fearful version, the hypervigilant version, the hurt version of me, by simply acknowledging it and saying my affirmation for that given emotion, I am rewiring my nervous system to become the man I want to be, rather than the man I once was. The beautiful part is you can do the same!
Thank you for taking the time to read this, and a special thanks to https://emotionalintelligencedeveloper.com/ for allowing me to share this message. For more tools, visit https://matthewfstevens.com/. I would appreciate you checking out https://eq.matthewfstevens.com/ A podcast dedicated to helping people develop Emotional Intelligence through day-by-day interactions.
