How to boost self-regulation and overcome bad stress

Self-regulation is more than just getting to a state of calm. It can be beneficial to view stress as a spectrum and to understand what is actually happening in the mind and body when we become triggered and are experiencing symptoms of bad stress. Bad stress can have a debilitating effect on our physical and mental health when we feel like we can’t cope with the given situation.

Types of stress

Stress can be viewed as the nonspecific response of the body to a demand for change. Stress impacts our physiology and can have a detrimental effect on our cardiovascular system, our endocrine and immune systems and on our muscles. Not all stress is bad, however, as we might be bored in the absence of a motivating influence to improve our performance. So, bad stress is when we feel out of control and struggle to cope.

Traumatic stress

This is the response to shocking and emotionally overwhelming situations that may involve actual or threatened death, serious injury or threat to physical integrity. There are various ways one can become exposed to trauma. These are: 

1. Directly: This is when we ourselves are involved in a traumatic event.
2. Witnessing: We might see someone else be a victim of a traumatic event.
3. Learning of a traumatic event of a loved one: We might hear firsthand or secondhand of a traumatic event involving a loved one.
4. Repeated exposure to trauma (secondary or tertiary): This involves experiencing traumatic events multiple times, either directly or indirectly.

Post-traumatic stress

This is when there are intrusive memories, thoughts and feelings/sensations that cause discomfort. There will be avoidance of reminders, both internal and external, and there will be arousal and reactive symptoms.

Post-traumatic stress disorder

Post-traumatic stress does not always become a disorder. A certain time will be needed in having the post-traumatic stress symptoms.

When we get triggered, we are essentially departing from what we emotionally feel as a safe zone, our green zone, or what we might call our window of tolerance. To be hyper aroused is to spike into the red zone, usually by experiencing fear, and we thereby depart our safe zone. This is what happens when road rage occurs, to use a common extreme example of hyperarousal. We could feel anxiety, anger, fear, suffer from poor sleep, be hypervigilant and be on edge. To be hypo aroused would be to drop below our safe zone and enter what we might call the blue zone, where we could feel depressed, resigned or numb.

To be triggered is to have dysregulated arousal, and people can oscillate between these zones without necessarily returning to their safe zone before entering the other extreme set of feelings. For example, someone who gets hyper aroused by becoming very angry might then plunge into a depressed, resigned stance, without returning to their safe zone of feeling calm. This can be observed in everyday situations when the angry person suddenly becomes remorseful and suffers a shameful reaction to their outburst. They can go from being very loud to very quiet in a short period.

When we become more insightful about our own triggering process, we can become better at recognising our own symptoms of stress and how we become dysregulated. We can assess whether behavioural practices and interventions are helping or hindering our ability to be well-regulated. Some people have a wide window of tolerance, some narrow. 

Good self-regulation is the ability to manage and control emotions to achieve long-term goals and to deal more effectively with life stressors, and to essentially broaden or widen our window of tolerance. This involves developing a self-mastery quality.  To be self-regulated is to be the opposite of dysregulated arousal. 

Strategies for boosting self-regulation

Mindfulness

Mindfulness practices improve our mental and emotional well-being and help to clarify our thinking when we have been triggered. We can gain short-term relief to feel more stable by concentrating on our breathing.

Psychological interventions

These can help us to ascertain the link between our automatic negative belief system and our behaviours that are not working for us. Integratively trained therapists will have a range of tools and interventions to choose from to best help with boosting self-regulation.

Body-centred practices

Yoga and other grounding practices help us to lessen the impact of overthinking. When we are stressed, we are usually overthinking and often catastrophising. Our task is to experience ourselves more in our body than in our thinking function.

Resourcing

Resourcing practices help us get into our flow state by doing the things that we love doing. These are actions or a strategy which may be adopted in adverse circumstances. It means being mindful of what balances our nervous system regulation.