We all have different parts of us correct? Like the spleen liver brain hands feet ovaries womb consciousness thought senses nose feeling …. we don’t have enough space to write all of the parts that make us but you get the drift right? Ideally, all of our parts will work in harmony and balance. It doesn’t just take a traumatic event or a less than childhood to bring an imbalance. It could be just you carry a gene that would cause imbalance if activated. Maybe it’s simply just being a human that merely exists that might be the cause of the imbalance?
Starting off at the very beginning of the human baby stage (and this is a rather simplified version of existence, although one might want to add the product of your consciousness since the beginning of time, and the forever witnessing spirit in us), we will cry as soon as we are removed from the womb. That was balance for us, perfect bliss and no other world was known to us. Some might say it’s the coming back to life and it’s sufferings that the knowing baby cries.
But we are not here to get philosophical or so lyrical, just real.
A baby will know his mother through smell touch sound and hormones secreted on the skin. Leave a new born baby on a mama without putting them to the breast and they will find their own way there. They have an inbuilt knowing of this. When we don’t or can’t breastfeed, in the absence of a substitute such as a bottle with the warmth of the mamas bosom although there is simply nothing that can replicate this, the baby will be thrown off balance. Anything that is natural to them that is interrupted will affect them. This will create a gap, before which the baby might cry or show signs of stress. The baby will need to be soothed.
Now imagine there is either a delayed soothing, an inappropriate soothing or no soothing at all? A gap a hole is created and at this point for fear of survival the baby will self soothe or switch of shall we say. You might think oh how wonderful baby is already self sufficient, well not really. It’s more or less the same case with bang wants to stay close to mama to sleep. Mama wants to sleep without bubba just because. Bubba won’t understand. Mama gets some sleep advice hires a sleep consultant and follows steps to sleep train the bubba. Job done. Again another move away from natural balance to the baby finding a way of moulding itself to the expectations of the mamas and papas. Another gap.
As time goes on, we meld the infant child and may not always meet the needs of whatever gaps they have and these just grow bigger. Some will stay in hiding while others will be out for us to deal with and help them with. As adults we might face situations that call for support and we might seek a friend to talk to. That friend acts as an emotional regulator.
The emotional regulator is what we seek out to restore our balance. However, the irony is that it is really only possible to restore balance when we do this without the emotional regulation otherwise anything outside of us is just that, outside. The key is to spot when you are calling a friend for a chat and a catch up, and when on the other hand, you do this because something might have disturbed you earlier and you simply need to be distracted. You will very likely not know that it’s emotional regulation that you are looking for. That disturbance or emotional imbalance might actually stem from a button pressed that carried the same flavour of a past event, so that your present imbalance is in fact not so much about what happened today but yesterday.
Some people might suddenly crave for a certain food when out of balance but they might think that their body needs what that particular food has in its nutritional value. And the body might actually need that type of food because it is out of balance and it knows from the past that a particular food will bring the chemicals it needs to get back into balance.
A very similar thing happens to those of us that face trauma and might get therapy or others that get a brilliant proposal from a friend or someone else showing them about the wonders of some product, or find a guru or a spiritual pursuit that is simply irresistible. For the time being or even initially the novelty of all this and having a seriousness of purpose and someone else show you the way offering structure, might really appease you. So much so you might centre your whole life around it because you feel so regulated which brings a sense of calm and peace.
All that is really happening which is why you might find many who are faced with sudden imbalances of life, might suddenly become healers psychotherapists and what have you. Many children who didn’t have enough emotional regulation will seek out a bigger purpose and professions that help others. Really, what they are doing is to help themselves, find a platform to make right their own grieving through the mending of the suffering of others. We are at our core seeking emotional balance.
Some of us might see through spiritual pursuits and decide to go into a different venture such as trading on the stock market. Once again you are simply seeking balance.
We get a sort of chemical reaction inside that will give us a temporary sense of well-being. Perhaps an apt parallel is the alcoholic who forever seeks the first high. But it’s not about the “high”. It is simply how we respond to situations that might take us back to a past in which we didn’t have the means to self regulate.
A career, our work how we work how many hours might all act as the emotional regulator, the gap filler.
Have you noticed how many unfinished projects you might have accumulated in your lifetime? Seriously how many? What do you think makes us stop before we have had a chance to complete these? Boredom? Maybe not getting the high again? Maybe it’s got to the stage that you feel the imbalance creeping up again only you don’t know it comes from a place in you that needs attention, but you think that this task or project simply won’t cut it. We have had brilliant ideas I am sure we all have. We are born creative, yes we all are.
Have you ever noticed how almost every new mama suddenly becomes super creative? Or might have a sudden burst of enthusiasm for art and craft? Even creative cooking. The infant takes us back to our own child self – the child is always creative. It’s the adults or the others around the child that will tell the child otherwise. I remember my art teacher always gave me terrible grades, it took me to now to realise I am very creative and an amazing fluid artist but the teacher never thought maybe what she taught me just wasn’t the sort of creative I was. But my baby, my muse, showed me.
Just the way the creativity takes centre stage, so will all the wounds that we might have endured, that were never explained or shared or integrated or acknowledged. You won’t know or be aware of these wounds being the source of how you might one day find yourself behaving with your child. You will put it down to the lack of sleep or maybe that your other half doesn’t pitch in with the household chores or maybe you haven’t enough money to survive. But even that is not the real issue. These are simply situations that provide the perfect breeding ground for wounds that haven’t healed. The wounds will jump up as soon as the better you takes back stage. These will produce all those feelings inside of you that make you want to talk to someone, get a massage, go out for fresh air, take a walk, have a glass of wine, pray, exercise do some yoga. Some might need to post various things on social media so they can gain a sense of self.
What happens when you are in that state and there is no emotional regulator?
Nothing and yet everything.
You will be able to trace back to your own self the source of the imbalance. It is a tedious process but one that is inevitable if you are in the business of getting to know you.
And most importantly if you are a new parent, then try and address your child as another person as much as possible instead of doing to the child. Don’t do, just be with them as respond to them as you would to someone else sharing your space. Why we take our children for granted I just wonder, but it’s a real shame and a shambles.
Given half the chance had we had the brain wired with a right balance and not having such hyper vigil, we might have been more comfortable but really so, in our self. Yet.