Fibro and emotional dysregulation…

First, if you are like me you immediately said ‘what is emotional dysregulation?’ Mental patient nearly all my life I’ve never heard the term. So here’s an overview for those unfamiliar:

Emotional dysregulation is basically your brain taking a crowbar to your ability to control your damn emotions. It’s like having the temper tantrums of a toddler trapped in an adult’s body. One minute you’re chill, the next you’re losing your fucking mind over something so minor, most normal people wouldn’t even bat an eyelash. Your emotions are all over the place – sadness, anger, anxiety, you name it. It’s an unpredictable rollercoaster ride of feeling too much, too intensely, with no reasonable off-ramp to get those out-of-whack emotions back under control. You can’t just take a deep breath and zen the fuck out. Instead, you’re stuck spiraling down a rabbit hole of irrational outbursts, mood swings, and impulsive decisions until the storm passes…whenever that’ll be. For me, it is further intensified by my Bipolar mania.

In essence, emotional dysregulation is your brain flipping you the bird and saying “Nah, we don’t do chill here. Prepare to be a raging, over-emotional dumpster fire at random!” It’s an inability to self-soothe or rationally deal with big feelings, leaving you at the mercy of your haywire emotions until they decide to simmer down. Fun times!

And what does it do to those of us with Fibro? Guys we were already doing most of this! The intensifying effect wrecks havoc on our pain levels and sends our spoons scattered all over the floor, no spoons left to pick them up. It’s an unpredictable, irrational rollercoaster of feeling too much, too intensely, with zero chill to get those haywire emotions under control. It robs us of that logic process that we use to talk ourselves down from like ninety elevendy seven to a much more manageable 8. It makes everyone around us roll their eyes like ‘oh she’s at it again’, which then triggers guilt, because you don’t want to make your friends feel burdened with your damn brain’s psychotic rants, but that guilt makes you super awkward so everything is all tangled up like Christmas lights and you’re feeling all your feelings at once so you word vomit at the first person who speaks to you so no one wants to speak to you? Just me?

With Fibro and emotional dysregulation your emotions are all over the place – sadness, anger, anxiety, you name it. And good luck trying to self-soothe or logic your way out of these spiraling mood swings. Thanks to our good friend fibro fog, processing and regulating these big-ass feelings is about as easy as nailing jello to a tree. You’re left stuck in a heightened state longer than normal, unable to return to baseline human emotion. Its been so long I can no longer even SEE the baseline. I’m confident its back there somewhere.

So in summary, emotional dysregulation with fibromyalgia is a delightful shitshow of having the emotional control of a toddler combined with the hormonal surges of a teenager – totally fun times! Your moods are the biggest, baddest bullies on the playground, and you’re just along for the turbulent ride. If this is you, you found a home! Lets share what helps! Also, have you met George? He’s super friendly! He wants me to remind you to take care of yourselves, and each other.