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How Are You Feeling Right Now?
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I get that too. My therapist calls it a “dorsal brake,” which is a reference to the polyvagal theory of emotional regulation. The theory is that, when we get too anxious or otherwise “activated” as in fight /flight response, our nervous system will inject nameless shame as a kind of emergency brake.
This is because shame is readily accessible to the vagal nerve (or something - I am going off of recall here) and it does calm the system despite still being unpleasant. The way a human experiencing it, though, is like, “I feel so bad that I must have f**ked something up pretty badly!”
The way that I have been able to mitigate this is to recognize the shame and that it is trying to be protective. I need to examine the context, too, because maybe it’s healthy shame. This being said, if the shame is about being a horrible person, or the worst <fill in the blank >, then it’s probably not something I did. I can talk back to it by remembering that really bad, horrible people do not care in the slightest whether they are horrible or not, and if I am feeling punchy, I can always think of some worse people out there. I mean, I am not a saint, but I’m not hurting people on purpose for my own entertainment and advantage, which has to put me ahead of quite a few folks out there right away. Hope that helps, but if not, I’m sorry. I am in some sort of pseudo hypomanic phase right now and the words are like pressure inside my skull.
This is because shame is readily accessible to the vagal nerve (or something - I am going off of recall here) and it does calm the system despite still being unpleasant. The way a human experiencing it, though, is like, “I feel so bad that I must have f**ked something up pretty badly!”
The way that I have been able to mitigate this is to recognize the shame and that it is trying to be protective. I need to examine the context, too, because maybe it’s healthy shame. This being said, if the shame is about being a horrible person, or the worst <fill in the blank >, then it’s probably not something I did. I can talk back to it by remembering that really bad, horrible people do not care in the slightest whether they are horrible or not, and if I am feeling punchy, I can always think of some worse people out there. I mean, I am not a saint, but I’m not hurting people on purpose for my own entertainment and advantage, which has to put me ahead of quite a few folks out there right away. Hope that helps, but if not, I’m sorry. I am in some sort of pseudo hypomanic phase right now and the words are like pressure inside my skull.
Yeah so my depression seems to have pulled a Jim Morrison on me and broke on through to the other side. Which is to say I feel like crap, but now it’s with feeling!
I grew up listening to a lot of silly music like Monty Python, Tom Leher (sp?), weird al, and a couple others. Now that I mention this, it might explain a lot of my personality today, but that’s not the issue now.
This was a long time ago, like last century lol, but Weird Al had a song called “Dare to be Stupid.” One of the lines is, “I don’t know if I should study neurosurgery or go to see the Care Bears movie.” As a kid, I thought that was funny because of course you want to see a movie! Studying surgery sounds boring as heck! Now I think a little more deeply, and the level of confusion expressed in Weird Al’s ambivalence between mindless entertainment or embarking on graduate studies is a pretty good description of how I feel right now.
I grew up listening to a lot of silly music like Monty Python, Tom Leher (sp?), weird al, and a couple others. Now that I mention this, it might explain a lot of my personality today, but that’s not the issue now.
This was a long time ago, like last century lol, but Weird Al had a song called “Dare to be Stupid.” One of the lines is, “I don’t know if I should study neurosurgery or go to see the Care Bears movie.” As a kid, I thought that was funny because of course you want to see a movie! Studying surgery sounds boring as heck! Now I think a little more deeply, and the level of confusion expressed in Weird Al’s ambivalence between mindless entertainment or embarking on graduate studies is a pretty good description of how I feel right now.
Rn I feel achy, tired, stressed, anxious, unwanted, incompetent, and stupid. I feel stupid because, on the one hand I have a high IQ. So I can do math in my head faster than most people could pull out the phone and punch it into a calculator. I can remember facts, concepts, and theories and tie them together using my ability to spot patterns. With all that mental horsepower on board, I still can’t seem to do a damn thing to help myself. I am overwhelmed with fear despite having specific practical tools to work with that. It’s like being a physician who can’t stop smoking and eats 2 Big Macs a day. It’s quite painful. 😓