What Am I Feeling and Why Do I Feel This Way?

If you’ve ever been a part of one of Scott or Chris' coaching, groups or retreats, you’ve experienced checkins using the above affect continum tool. This graphic is a simplified visual representation of our autonomic nervous system (also known as the ANS).

The ANS is part of our central nervous system, comprised of brain, spinal column, nerves and associated nerves. The role of ANS is to automatically govern the arousal states of our bodies, including our bodily sensations, our instinctual impulses and our emotions. Taken altogether, these elements are known as AFFECT and affect governs pretty much everything about our minute-to-minute state of being, body+brain+mind+relationships.

There are two main branches of the ANS: the Sympathetic and the Parasympathetic. The parasympathetic branch is further separated into two distinct sub-branches, the Ventral Vagal branch (ventral means "front") and the Dorsal Vagal branch (dorsal means "back", as in the dorsal fin of a shark).

The sympathetic branch functions like the accelerator on a car and is responsible for upregulating the energy and action in our bodyminds. The parasympathetic branch is like a brake and is responsible for downregulating the energy and action in our bodyminds.

In addition to understanding the different functions of the ANS, it's helpful to understand the role of the Vagus nerve, which is the major nerve bundle that connects the areas of the body governed by the ANS to the brain. Dr. Stephen Porges developed polyvagal theory to describe how the vagus nerve functions as part of the ANS, particularly in its role with activating the social engagement responses (approach/turning towards from a sense of connection and safety) or our threat responses (avoiding/turning away) with automatic impulses to FIGHT/FLEE in high sympathetic arousal or FREEZE in parasympathetic shut down. Polyvagal theory sees these different parts of the nervous system operating in a hierarchy so that when social engagement is threatened our ANS first responds with sympathetic arousal and action (FIGHT/FLEE) and if that fails to resolve the perceived threat, to drop automatically into FREEZE as an escape of last resort respons.

What Am I Feeling?

The first time Scott had me scan my body for sensations, he had me search from head to toe, asking me to pay attention to any sensations I noticed, particularly below my neck. I closed my eyes for 30-seconds, and reported back, "I don't feel anything." This is common for most men.

Male Normative Alexithymia is the term that describes the inability to feel bodily sensations, impulses or emotions prevalent among males. This is caused partially of how males are socialized to engage their emotions in development and partially from the fact that the male right brain is more at risk than the female brain for developing emotional regulation challenges, especially in the first two years of life.

Thankfully, with help, men can train themselves to notice and name their affect states, and as we do, we grow to develop a sense of empowerment with our emotions and impulses and compassion and insight into the reasons we're activated in our ANS in the present and never developed the ability or stopped feeling feelings in our pasts.

Learning to feel again helps us regain our inner compass and a sense of our authentic selves. It helps us get in touch with buried memories, disappointments and grief, and long-forsaken dreams.

If you have a history of trauma, you might relate to either feeling nothing or feeling too much when paying attention to your body. You may have learned to dissociate from emotion (the blue zone in the chart above), or become overwhelmed with emotion (the red zone). Let's talk about why this matters.

Learning Language For How We Feel

This chart is designed to help us locate our current state on the affect continuum. We learn to identify which color zone were in and what the level of aroual we're feeling in that zone by paying attention to bodily sensations, impulses and numbering system of arousal level from 1 to 10 at the bottom of the graphic.

If I say I’m “a blue 1,” I’m feeling intense grief, numbness, or depression. A blue 2 is those same feelings but less intense, and a blue 3 might be just a little checked out and numb, but it doesn’t feel unbearable. If I’m a red 10, I’m having a panic attack, feeling rage, terror or overwhelm. A red 9 indicates I'm feeling quite anxious but not panicked, and a red 8 may be just an undercurrent of unsettled worry. The closer we get to the Yellow/Green zones of regulated arousal, the more we feel open-hearted and like our best, most authentic selves.

You can also be both blue and red at the same time. Whether you spend more time in the red or blue zone of dysregulation depends on your story and circumstances. 

Where we want to be is between a 4 and 7, in the green and yellow zones. This is where we feel calm, curious, and connected. We feel regulated and hopeful. I was surprised to learn as I began this work that I was capable of “being regulated.” I could start in the high red but with the help of others, move into the middle zone. 

Why is all this important?

This chart gives language to our inner world that allows us to connect our bodily experience to another who can help regulate us. I don’t know a single guy for whom this "name it to tame it" process has not been life-changing.

If you have a history of trauma, you’ve likely felt intense anxiety and fear throughout your days on one hand, and listless, numb fatigue on the other. For me, this manifested in panic attacks, OCD tendencies, and constant hypervigilance on the red (hyperaroused) side. On the blue (hypoaroused) side, I’d find myself in listless fatigue, lying in bed for hours at a time with a show or stream on, not quite napping, but not quite awake. Maybe I'd scroll through Reddit posts or Reels for a few hours. This chart clicked so much of my lived experience into place when I realized that both of those experiences are two sides of the same coin. They are both reactions to a dysregulated nervous system. 

I used to spend hours lying in bed in the middle of the day. I didn’t know how to describe what was happening inside me or that anything was wrong, that was just my normal. I sometimes cursed myself for being so lazy. But after months of working with Scott, I could call him and say “I’m a blue 2 right now.” He would help me find language for what I was experiencing in my body, which I had practiced in our groups, name it with me so that I’d “feel felt,” and help me move through it to regulate my emotional state. And boom, I’d somehow have energy and be ready to do something active. 

This is what parents are supposed to do to help children develop the ability to regulate their emotions when they’re in a dysregulated state. They gradually experience enough co-regulation to learn how to do it themselves and self-regulate. Encouragingly, research has proven that this can be learned in adulthood.

Why Do I Keep Doing This?

The other thing to notice is this: you’re far more likely to reach for survival strategies (porn, drugs, alcohol, gambling, binging shows, unhealthy food, working hard, compulsive exercise, whatever you learned to use as a child to soothe yourself) when you’re emotionally dysregulated. No, I’m not calling them addictions or sin in this context, though both may be true. These are strategies that we used to survive households that were barren of, or brazenly opposed to, those things God created us to need from our parents (taken from Adam Young’s The Big Six): Attunement, Responsiveness, Engagement, Ability to Regulate, Strong Enough to Handle Your Negative Emotions, Willingness to Repair.

In other words, your survival strategies are symptoms. Your main problem isn’t porn, it’s pain. It isn’t hookups, it’s a dysregulated nervous system.

If you live with a dysregulated nervous system, of course you reach for porn. Of course you reach for alcohol. If you never had someone there who could be with you in your big emotions, who could regulate you when you were suffering, then the ways you found to survive must be honored while you heal. They are symptoms.

How Do We Heal?

Kindness is the only thing that changes us. Until you have a person who is there for you in your big emotions, who can help you regulate your emotions when you’re hurting, who will honor the ways you’ve survived even if they’re not serving you anymore: until you have enough experience of that, you will continue to experience symptoms. Those symptoms are asking you to pay attention. They are pointing toward your healing.

Be kind to yourself.