When Self-Regulation Becomes a Way of Avoiding Yourself

This morning on my walk, I was reflecting on our tendencies to control, and how our subconscious convictions get intertwined with every aspect of our life and start to affect it.

Because I've done a lot of in-depth work to understand my own mind better, it's become quite clear how I'm personally influenced by my own patterns, and how they manifest in the choices I've made over the course of my life.

One interesting thing I find nowadays, at least in the last ten years I've been exploring this type of work, is that more and more methods and techniques are being offered to regulate the system. Everybody, it seems, is looking for techniques to regulate the nervous system.

What I've come to understand myself is that there's almost a dividing line you reach at some point in your development. Then it's up to you to choose: leave the old ways and beliefs behind and embrace a new perspective, or continue on that old path—which might eventually hold you back because of the conviction attached to it.

I think that trap is present within nervous-system regulation work, and all these techniques, methods, and sequences we can adopt to gain some sense of control over the nervous system. I don't think that's necessarily true. It's true in the sense that these things will have an effect on your nervous system. But if you understand the mind on a deeper level, it's not really the specific technique or sequence that has the effect. The only thing that truly settles our nervous system is the mind being focused and present in the moment.

In a way, you could say techniques like a vagus-nerve reset sequence, or tapping the body to regulate the nervous system, work. However, not because the tapping itself has such a profound effect. Yes, it may have some effect on the body, stimulating certain areas; I'm not negating that. But the strongest effect on the nervous system comes from giving your mind something to focus on, away from the thoughts and emotions that are overstimulating it.

When someone is still focused heavily on techniques to regulate the system and maintain a sense of balance, they're in the realm of trying to exert control over the system and manage it. Often, I think that's related to a fear of truly letting go and surrendering—the need for a sense of control over circumstances. Because it's impossible to control the circumstances outside us in life, we turn inward and use these techniques to gain a sense of control over our mind, or our feelings.

I think there comes a point in development where you have to see this was a crutch—helpful up to a certain point. Like any crutch or support, it can help in the beginning, because it helps you regain some control and strengthen your system. But just like a crutch used for a broken leg: once the leg is healed, if you keep relying on the crutch, you're not strengthening the leg beyond that point of repair. That's obviously an oversimplified example, but it's what happens with the nervous system and energy system when we rely too heavily on these methods and techniques.

When we reach that dividing line, that's where the choice comes in. We can block ourselves and keep ourselves stuck by maintaining our old ways of trying to exert control over the system. Or we can let go of what we've considered a crutch, and really dive into ourselves—embracing what's alive rather than trying to manage it away.

That's not to say techniques or methods are bad. The question is: what's the underlying intention behind them? In my own journey, I've used a lot of techniques, tried different things to work with my nervous system, and in the moment, some of them genuinely give support. If you can pull the mind back into the body somatically and be present, it's helpful—it slows down the system and the mind, and gives it a single focus, which can settle the system. The point is that, at some point, they can hold your development back, and you'll need to let go of them.

The way I look at that dividing line is: after it, if you choose to let go of the crutches you've been using, it becomes more about practising and refining an art. It becomes about mastery. The mastery of your system, and, in a sense, the mastery of life in general.

When I say mastery, I don't mean mastery as control, as though you're controlling every aspect. There's actually an aspect of a lack of control involved, where we surrender to life and allow it to move us in whatever way it moves us, without making us collapse or crumble, so that we can keep standing.

For that, certain practices are really helpful. I'm personally very much into the Daoist arts of Qigong and Tai Chi, working on a more subtle level with my energy system—first learning to cultivate it, understanding how it functions, and then strengthening it through various practices, and through cultivating the mind.

But I think it's important to embrace the idea of first-principles thinking. So much nowadays is secondhand knowledge, instructions received from others, or advice, routines, and protocols that others have devised based on their own experience. If you want to grow beyond a certain point, I think it's essential to let go of all of that and turn inward, discovering for yourself how your system operates, and how you can work on a deeper level with it.

It requires a sense of surrender and a sense of maturity, being able to let go of the crutches and embrace the unknown. For a lot of us, especially in the beginning, that can feel very shaky, because subconsciously we've been using many crutches to cling to, to find a sense of stability.

These crutches can be anything, I'm not just referring to practices. It could be the people you spend time with, the partner you're with, or, for parents, perhaps their children. Anything that provides a sense of identity: "This is me, and I need this to feel stable and secure within myself." At some point, we have to let go of that.

That doesn't mean letting go of the actual things in life. I still do many practices, and they're very helpful and insightful, but I do them from a different perspective now—no longer from needing to do them in order to create stability so I can function in the world.

When we make that choice, it will inevitably bring up a lot of things—discomfort, emotions that are still unresolved within our system. If we can embrace that, that's part of the beauty of it. We can start to integrate the thoughts, feelings, and emotions that come up.

That's the thing with using techniques, and with the distraction of the mind. If we have some kind of overwhelm within our system and use certain techniques to calm it, it may help temporarily, because we've distracted the mind away from the feeling. But it hasn't resolved the underlying issue, so it will resurface again. We can only distract ourselves from whatever comes up for so long.

I'm a big believer in embracing those emotions without trying to manage them. I'm also a big fan of doing deliberate work in the moments when we feel calm and centred—working with our system, our breath, our energy, our physical body, and our mind. These practices are extremely helpful, and they'll also be beneficial in the moments when we're challenged in life.

But I also think it's essential that, when something gets activated in our system because of circumstances in life, we don't try to escape and find refuge in certain methods or practices to distract ourselves from what's actually alive within our system.

I think that's part of emotional and energetic maturity and mastery. Over time, it becomes stronger and more integrated in our system, to the point where it's simply a quality that's there, and we don't need to constantly manage our system in daily life.

It's a journey... gradually uncovering certain aspects of our system, and gradually strengthening it, to the point where we can choose to embrace the unknown and walk that path with confidence and strength.