Regulation - The Enemy of Authenticity

The peace we seek comes from surrendering into feelings, not controlling them.

How strange that we’ve landed in this place where our own feelings seem threatening to our wellbeing. We stack them up inside and try to manage them objectively, then wonder why our life feels difficult.

There’s a completely counterintuitive approach that is very useful.

Actively inviting overwhelm is a strategy I’ve long embraced and encourage others to experiment with. Despite it seeming somehow dangerous, it’s usually the fastest way to peace.

Dampening down emotions imprisons us. The very best relief, and the only lasting cure, is to properly feel them all the way through. Children do it naturally. (Until they’re trained out of it). Choosing overwhelm is to willingly align with the fastest, childlike release. It’s built of trust and courage – a trust that we cannot be harmed by feeling our emotions, and the courage to surrender to the wise record keeper knowing of the body.

Overwhelm wouldn’t need to be a strategy if we allowed ourselves to respond naturally to upsets. But there’s such an enormous backlog in us from suppressing so much. When we reach our limit to contain it, something has to give. It can spill over in many ways; causing us to have exaggerated reactions, setting the scene for depression, anxiety and PTSD, it can blur our thinking and in the long term it can cause disease. This all grows from an unhealthy tendency to control ourselves.

We’re conditioned to snuff out bad feelings as soon as we possibly can. Stop crying, breathe through the anger, don’t be afraid. But when we give ourselves over to the emergence of the whole feeling, rather than clipping it short, we allow its complete release. It will make its exit rather than continuing to lurk behind the scenes.

Dysregulation is the body’s natural response as it tries to throw off old burdens. We mess with the process when we try to intervene to subdue bad feelings. This is where it’s so useful to employ the counterintuitive orientation to practice overwhelm instead. Set the mind completely aside and employ no other technique than simply honouring the emotions. Feel and express and the path to stability will naturally reveal itself.

Freedom comes from relaxing into the many uncertainties of life and the many unpredictable feelings that we touch into along the way.

Choose the most wonderful liberation of living un-regulated.