How do you experience affective dysregulation?

[BeeBeen]

I have read many descriptions of it, but I don't understand it.

[Sasha]

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I get what I am going to describe as 'lingering feelings' ... Something upsets me and I don't know how to process it or resolve it. The feeling carries on inside me for a long while, sometimes days. This could be feelings of sadness/emotional hurt or anger. Sadness and hurt is often accompanied by physical shooting pain, which I understand to also be known as 'cortisol flooding', where I get pangs of electric shock style pain that shoots from my chest down to my fingers. I also get physical tightness and pain in my 'heart' and chest.

When this goes on it normally means I have been triggered, ie. something has hit one of my 'hot spots', or I have been wronged, perhaps a boundary overstepped or someone been mean or harsh with me. Or both. Often both! I often cannot discern between the two for quite some time, and I often find myself confused for days. I struggle to manage various uncomfortable emotions as they swirl around and as I try to piece together what is going on.

It results in a lot of time spent going through this rough process:
- passing through dissociative or numb states
- passing through dysregulated, unplaceable or 'cause-unknown' emotional pain and discomfort.
- through to reading/writing, starting to process externally my internal feelings (sometimes I talk to someone to help me with this bit. My partner is very helpful)
- through to working out the cause, which can often be the combo of actual emotional incident (eg. a meaningless critical remark) triggering previous emotional trauma (eg. relentless criticism from carers in childhood)
- then on to talking more about these causes and the factors, which I guess is my way of further cognitively processing the current situation and possibly grieving and acknowledging past trauma
- and possibly then on to asserting myself regarding the actually present day incident and it's affect on me to others involved (eg. Letting the person who criticised me know that this hurts and possible explaining why).

It takes me AGES!!!!

Something I realised about 5 years ago, when a therapist told me that 'my feelings matter too' (which was a shock to hear, but also a milestone revelation  ) was that in asserting my right to feelings and being treated well, I had to feel my feelings. And I realised I couldn't really feel them.

Affect dysregulation, to me, is often what I experience as a huge space of swirling emotions and sensations that happens between an emotional incident/impact and me working out what that on earth it was, and how I feel and think about it. 

I understand that the cause of this is due to having poor role modelling, a negative emotional environment and lack of encouragement in feeling my emotions, processing them and being allowed/able to express them whilst growing up. It means that now I do feel safe and supported enough to have emotions and to feel pain (what an odd victory!  ), I still struggle to understand my emotions feelings and can struggle to process them, and this can also feel very disorienting, confusing, painful and uncomfortable. It also takes me a long time.

Sadly, I often judge myself harshly during this particular window of extreme discomfort (sending huge hugs to myself and others here  ) where I scorn myself for being 'over-sensitive', having 'emotional issues', 'disproportionately over-reacting'. I also fear that to have explored and then to assert my feelings will lead to punishment/abuse/further pain. Luckily, I am with a partner who is helping me a great deal through encouraging my feelings, understanding this takes time, and acting with love, patience and care when I do reach a conclusion, even when it means reflecting back something in their own behaviour. I feel so grateful to have found someone who helps me with this. It still causes me confusion, discomfort and fear, but I think eventually, as I continue to be supported with this, the time elapsed between impact and conclusion will gradually lessen.

[dreamriver]

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Oh man.

This is how I would describe it (at least for me): the emotions creep up, and almost every time, they feel like something totally new and that I'm equally totally unprepared for, even if I've experienced them many, many times before (whether it's anger, panic, loneliness, hating myself, anxiety, nervousness for an interview or phone conversation).

They can come quickly, or they can seep in slowly, until suddenly, they're there (cue frog in boiling pot of water analogy - by the time you realize the water is hot you're already dead and it's too late, that's how sneaky they are). 

The emotions definitely feel like something I experienced a long time ago/before, but I guess they trigger a whole new round of scenarios, fears, and paranoias with each adrenaline surge that I have to deconstruct and master them anew every time (it feels that way...no matter how "prepared" I feel I might be for the next flashback, I'm....just not. I have to grope my way out of the dark.)

I mean, it's like going to the gym every so often for an intense workout, but instead of any "gains" you're magically "zapped" to the point where you're just barely learning how to walk....every time you exercise and it's even moderately challenging, you also first have to completely learn how to walk again real quick (it gets easier every time, sort of, but it's still painful, vulnerable, and makes you feel like a dumb little kid, and that never changes).

After the emotions subside I feel great about everything again and tell myself that I'll be better prepared the next time this happens. But they'll always find a way to catch me off guard; they sneak back in from a different angle every time and assail me, sparking a new set of scenarios that freak me out (jumping between "I'll always be alone" to "My partner is secretly an abuser and I should have always known" to "my friends all hate me" to yadayadayada you get the picture). I have to learn ways to question my actual emotions sometimes and, no matter how real they feel, remind myself that they're not real even if it's not something I believe.