Tag: emotional regulation

hope, a “symptom” of recovery

I love a good paradox!

Regulating an excess of joy and optimism is not something I, a “depressive”, ever thought I’d have to deal with and let’s face it ~ it doesn’t fit the stereotype, but in my experience(s) of recovering from depression, this need to regulate an unfamiliar energy of hope and empowerment has become one of the first hurdles I encounter

to such an extent that when I had “my episodes” they were, largely, a consequence of not being able to manage a rapid ascent out of the depressive spiral ~ something my wife and I came to call “escalation”.

A clinical term? Seems very broad and non-specific, not very sciencey, but might explain why the appointed psychiatrist started wondering whether I would qualify for the bipolar box.

Surprise! You don’t get the grand prize of genuine happiness but here, have this booby prize ~ it’s like the high-fructose corn syrup of happiness: very intense and very bad for your health longterm, and only a synthetic facsimile of genuine happiness.

Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven | Godspeed You! Black Emperor

But I’m getting there, and pleased that I now have healthier ways of responding when this “symptom of recovery” manifests in the middle of the night in the form of All The Things I’d Like To Do With My Life Now That I’m Not Incapacitated by Despair.

Sounds like a post-rock album!

I no longer jump out of bed to drink coffee and smoke cigarettes and attempt to complete a 5000-word essay from scratch. After a profoundly inspiring day at TAFE yesterday, I got myself to sleep last night with some guided yoga nidra and even when I woke through the night, I remembered my tools, directed my attention away from the mind and into the body, got back to sleep.

Success!

Then I woke again, as though by the sheer pace and volume of mental formations.

And after some deliberation, decided, Hey, it’s okay: I’ve been sleeping pretty well lately, I’ll cope with being tired through a day of working bees, I’ve got this.

I backed myself.

Who knew though, that needing to regulate joy would ever be a thing. I learnt that from Filipe Rocha at The Center for Human Flourishing, and will be ever-grateful because now I know what I’m responding to, not some broadly unhelpful term like ‘mania’.

I’m excited about the future! Good for me.

I can highly recommend Filipe’s course by the way, Cultivating Emotional Balance. Emotional balance and fluidity, nervous-system regulation and a general awareness that we are nothing more and nothing less than a spirited collection of environment-sensing cells a few billion years into evolution. Perspective, BOOM! We got this!

the importance of connection in parenting

connection in parenting — obviously important, difficult to achieve

We spoke to a parenting coach today through an organisation called ReachOut, and it was very helpful — she validated and confirmed a lot of what we’ve been learning about some changes we’d like to make in our approach to parenting, as well as gently challenging some of those ideas.

For example, I had started to understand and experiment with using “I” statements if I want to intervene with Zane’s behaviour. Say, “I don’t like it when you swing the cat by her tail,” instead of “Don’t do that!” This is more of a boundary statement than a disciplinary action or a criticism.

We were advised recently by our counsellor that discipline is not my role: I am not his bio-father, Zane is therefore not individuating from me but from Nikki, his bio-mother; and my attempts at discipline without much of a relationship through other interactions were mostly just contributing to conflict.

The coach agreed that using “I” statements is a healthy way to assert a boundary without crossing … well, the boundary between discipline and boundary-setting. But after talking about where my relationship is at with Zane, the coach encouraged me to pull back even from making “I” statements at this stage, until Zane and I have got our relationship into a condition where boundaries will be respected.

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