What is dysregulation?
Dysregulation is when your body is not making sense of or responding to the sensory information it has received. The brain becomes disorganised and it becomes harder to do simple tasks of focus.
And emotional dysregulation is an inability to control or regulate one's emotional responses, which can lead to significant mood swings that may impact on you or your child's ability to get tasks done and connect with others around you.
We're encouraged from a young age to soothe our emotions away, distract ourselves, change our outlook into something more positive but emotions are for feeling into. We feel jealousy for example and we learn something about ourselves. It's never anything to do with the other person. We learn what we wish we had, what we desire and hunger for. With that information we can choose to take action and fulfil our need or ignore it and feel resentment, another emotion with more information and more choices for us to make. (Resentment is never about the other person either. None of them are.)
From time to time we all have strong feelings but for most neurodiverse people, emotions feel so big that they're scary and something to avoid or something that they react to in quite a big way. It's as if the strength behind their feelings is all consuming. And then they can react to that strong feeling with insecurity and fear. This sometimes looks like sadness, shutting down, defensiveness, eating or drinking to numb the feelings, anger and frustration amongst others. The nervous system (our stress system) is activated and that's when you find yourself in a place of fight, flight or freeze and not from the calmer, more logical part of the brain. In these moments there can be tears, shouting, storming off, mean words, physical aggression, destructive acts like throwing things or ruining things, self harm and so on.
So many things can dysregulate us and this is especially true for children and adults alike, with neurodiverse brains, who become dysregulated much more quickly and easily than others.
A quick list of the more common triggers would be:
- Hunger/thirst
- Feeling ill/tired/discomfort (think hay fever, colds, sunburn, a blister)
- Rejection (even a low level of rejection such as no thanks to offered food can cause a reaction)
- Being told off
- Feeling embarrassed or shamed
- Feeling out of control of self or a situation
- New surroundings
- Feeling judged
- Meeting new people
- Arguing with a friend or someone you love
- Feeling disconnected and insecure
- Not getting something right/failing
- Believing a task if too much or too difficult, not feeling capable
A neurodiverse child is likely to become dysregulated many times a day and when their bodies and brains are in this state, their nervous system activated, they are not going to be able to communicate well, sit still and learn.
As individual adults we all have differing abilities to stay calm or regain our centre and feel balanced again after an upset. As a parent, it's likely at times that you'll unconsciously find yourself reacting to your child's dysregulation. We become knocked off kilter and reactive. Our own nervous system response is then triggered.
Over time our kids will learn to some degree or other how better to manage these moments. It's a lagging skill that improves with age as we find strategies that work to calm our parasympathetic nervous system (a network of nerves that relaxes your body after periods of stress or danger. Interestingly, this system also helps run life-sustaining processes, like digestion, during times when you feel safe and relaxed.)
A calm parasympathetic nervous system feels relaxed but not in a sleepy way. There is a refreshed, alert quality to it. It's the feeling of being grounded and centred. As part of my own parenting journey I've created an easy-breezy meditation that's perfect for overwhelmed parents and suitable for complete beginner's with no experience of meditating. It will soon be free to listen to on Insight Timer. Check it out and let me know how you get on! Lou xx