Live with Dr.Charryse 🧠: “It’s OK to Feel Dysregulated”

Cosphere, we're back again. This is type two. And hopefully everyone will be able to join with no issue. I'm gonna give us a moment to see if you can get in. And as you do, do what you always do. Say hello. Let me know where you are in the world, how your week is going. This is our midweek time just to check in. And if you're back for a second time, I appreciate you. That's okay. Sometimes it's like that. I was trying to give you all a view of the water, but it makes the lighting kind of bad. But you know what?

I think we're just gonna go with it because, gosh, look at that. I feel like you deserve that even more. And you see me all the time. So I'm gonna give you little, little blue skies. Come in. Rate your week. Remember how important it is for you to take the time to check in and go, how am I? How am I feeling? Where is my mentality? Where's my mindset? What are you noticing about how you're talking to yourself? Good morning, Philly. Good morning from the Peach State. Who knows what the Peach State is?

Let's do a little trivia if you know where the Peach State is. I know where the Peach State is because I actually spend a lot of time there. But rate your week. 1 meaning it's been awful. 10, meaning given the context of your week, it has been absolutely phenomenal. I would say that my week is a seven for no particular reason other than being tired. But hey, being tired at the beach is. Is not a bad thing. I even wonder. I'm so tempted to like, try to go outside and do it. I wonder if I can get away with that or I'll lose signal.

I don't know. Since we've been working so hard to get signal, I won't mess with it. Hello, from Northern Minnesota. Focus of this week is all about hello Audrey. Wonderful that you're an eight. Happy related birthday. Audrey celebrated a birthday this week, so make sure that we tell her happy birthday. And of course, any of you as you come in and you celebrate something for sure, definitely let me know. Where I want to focus this week or this morning is what's your reality around how you expect yourself to handle life.

Right? I still want you to think about that and pop it in the chat for me. When you think about stress, overwhelm, anxiety, all the things that you experience emotionally, what kind of expectations do you place on on yourself? How do you think you're supposed to be able to handle difficult Moments. Can I be honest? It varies with me, right? Sometimes I give myself complete permission to go, I hit a wall and I'm about to crash out. Other times, I can be too hard on myself because I have skills. I know skills.

But I then have to remember, regardless of what I know, I am still human. And as humans, we're going to have moments where life is overwhelming. Somewhere along the way, you might have picked up the idea that healing, resilience, strength means you never feel anxious, you never get overwhelmed. You always feel grounded and calm. That is not true. That's not healing. That's perfectionism in disguise. You're not always going to feel great. You're not always going to handle every moment, every situation in your life with a gold star.

You're human. And I want you to remind yourself how important it is for you to acknowledge that human anxiety triggers that I'll also call activation and emotional waves aren't signs you're failing. They're signs that your nervous system is responding to life. So as long as we are living and blood is pumping through our veins, we're going to feel different states. Because life isn't a straight line of peace and calm. It's dynamic. It is a roller coaster. Your nervous system is designed to support you and to help you.

It's designed to move through different states. I want you to think about this. Your nervous system goes through every ounce of your body and includes neurotransmitters and synapses and cells and nerve endings and oxygen and blockages and memories and thoughts and feelings. So you're going to feel, and we have to stop trying to do things that keep us from feeling. And because the nervous system is designed for movement, one of the most harmful things that you can do is to be still. I understand that when you go through difficult times, a lot of times you want to isolate, a lot of times you want to pull back, a lot of times you want to withdraw.

But doing that allows all of those things to kind of pull up. It would be like getting a little nugget on your head. And if you lay down and you don't work through it, it swells up and it can rupture. So moving through your thoughts, through your emotions, and moving your body is essential and key. Your nervous system is designed to shift between three different states that I want you to understand. Activation, that's energy, stress, alertness, good energy or good stress, or even difficult energy or stress.

It's designed to shift you through dysregulation, dysregulation, Is when we have anxiety, depression. When we feel activated, we feel triggered. When we want to shut down, when we feel overwhelmed, Any dysregulated state, that dorsal vagal state, and then it's designed to shift to regulation. The movement between the states of activation and dysregulation and finding that middle ground of balance and calm is regulation. And sometimes regulation requires our participation. It requires us to be flexible and to move forward and to not stay in one state.

You need all of these states. If you're someone, you're like, I'm never activated. I always feel fine and great, something's not right. And you are caught in toxic positivity, and you're probably not being honest with yourself, but that's a whole different conversation. If you're a person that you find that you get activated and you stay there because it is easy. A lot of people will find that they get overwhelmed and stressed and they pitch a tent there. My children and I talk about this a lot.

They're young adults, 23 and 25, and they're not uncondra. So I can use them as examples. No, they know I'm saying all this anyway. But we often talk about the fact of are you moving through what you're experiencing, or are you allowing what you're experiencing to sit and take residence? If you notice that when you go through a hard time, you're the kind of person that says, this always happens to me. Oh, my goodness, this is just like this one time. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. That means you're holding on to past states of dysregulation in a way that is unhelpful to you.

And if you notice you're going back to past seasons of your life, that is not ideal. It is normal. It is not ideal. Tell me what you know about yourself when you are activated and overwhelmed. Do you tend to want to move through it quickly, or do you tend to sit in it and kind of get stuck? You can decide whether you answer that question just for yourself or if you're bold and courageous and you want to put it in the chat, then this is a great opportunity for us to share mine. It just really goes back and forth, right?

It depends on how much overwhelm it is, how much stress. But I do tend to want to go, I need to get through this. I want to get through this. I know the cost of sitting in it too long. Yeah, Gwen, I'm similar. It can be sometimes both, and I think we experience both. But I want you just to really get a good Gauge for what's your natural tendency? What do you automatically do? Because there's a cost to both. If we move through too quickly, we often have parts of ourselves that are unresolved. And that means that we are going to feel like we're repeating the same triggers because we haven't handled through them.

If we sit in them, that's when we get into emotional eating, emotional drinking, substance use, numbing, zoning out, sleeping too much. So yeah, I love what you all are saying. Yep, rip the band aid off and move on for some people. Others go, I want to plow through to do's we can overcompensate. We love to overcompensate with work and doing tasks as a means of going, I'm fine, I'm just taking care of business. But that also has its casualty. I want you to think about this for a moment. Anxiety. If you're feeling anxious, as an example, that is your body scanning for safety.

That is your body going, am I safe right now? Is this person safe? Is this situation safe? Is my life? Circumstances feel safe. If you feel triggered or activated, those are typically old wounds that are asking for attention. Side question for you to consider on your own. Are you noticing any old wounds resurface? Do you notice that you're repeating some of the same cycles and same thoughts and same emotional states over and over and over again and you know where they started, but you haven't really given them the attention they need.

Your old wounds will hold you down. Expired mindsets is often about that. The old wounds that are unresolved that we bury deep beneath the surface, but they're really running the show. So if you're in a state where you feel like I'm not able to act at my fullest potential, I'm still doing things that I say I don't want to do, then somewhere old wounds are holding you hostage. When you're feeling overwhelmed, overwhelm is your system going, I need a break now? Typically when I say that a lot of people will go, well, Dr.

Shareese, what happens if you know that you're overwhelmed, you need a break and you can't take one? You can. You may not be able to take as long of a break as you would like. You may not be able to take a day off of work or school or life, but we can take moments, we can take micro breaks until we get to the point that we can go, I need to go to bed early or I do need to take that nap or I need to call off the evening activities. Give yourself permission to take the break that you need. Because if you don't, overwhelm will push you.

Your nervous system will push you and slow you down and get you to the place where you're forced to do so. But here's what I want you to remember. If you don't remember anything else. Feeling life, being overwhelmed, being anxious, being activated. None of these make you broken. None of these mean that you are weak or lack will. They mean you're alive. And they mean that you're human. The goal of healing isn't to eliminate discomfort. That is not possible. As long as you are here on Earth. We are going to be uncomfortable.

It is to build your capacity to feel life, to hold life's struggles and to move through them without abandoning yourself. That's what I want you to understand. You're going to have moments where you feel like, I don't know what to do. I am tired of struggling. If one more thing happens, I'm gonna lose it. Most of us say that at least once a week, myself included. But the goal is we don't abandon ourselves. That means we don't stop doing the things that we need to do, and we don't stop doing the things that.

That honor our needs. It means we still wake up, we still get dressed, we still take a shower. We still feed ourselves well. We still pay attention to our rest. We still pay attention to how we're nourishing ourselves. We still engage in social connection. Don't abandon yourself. When life gets hard. You can pause, you can take a moment, you can catch your breath, but know that you can handle it. I want you to say this to yourself. If you're comfortable, even though life is challenging, I can handle what comes my way.

And you might think, well, how do you know? Because you're here. Because you're still standing. Because you chose to come into the space. Because you wake up every day and you try again. That means you've handled every other thing that has ever happened. I can handle what comes my way today. That is how to affirm and activate hope. To activate our reward center, to remind us that we're capable if we take our time. Now, I will finish part two of this conversation next week. And where we're gonna go from here is.

I want to talk about next week. What if instead of trying to chase a perfect calm, we learn to trust ourselves through every state, Activation, dysregulation, and regulation. What does that look like? And how do we do that in life? But until then, remind yourself that feeling overwhelm activation is just a part of being human. It's not about having a perfect day and not feeling anything. Don't numb out today. Get in life today. Get some sun on your face. Get some grass beneath your feet. Get connection.

Find rest. Find contemplation. Find meditation. Take some deep breaths and remind yourself you absolutely can handle everything that comes your way. And I will see you on Sunday. Have a great week.