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EMOTIONAL DYSREGULATION

As the information slams into you, your body gets hot and adrenaline fills you like a million lightning bugs firing at once. 

Your hands shake, your knees cave, your heart starts to race. Your mind is like a skipping record, racing and jumping, the thoughts coming too fast to even think them, flying by in a kaleidoscope of remembered conversations and events, color and sound all mixed together in a shower of lies. 

And now your body gets cold and the shaking is in your limbs. Your heart slows as a deep brick-like dread fills your stomach and chest and the tears come. More tears than you had any idea a person could cry.

That is a description of what it feels like in the body to experience emotional dysregulation related to trauma. Remember, feelings and emotions are felt unconsciously in the body before they consciously register in awareness in your mind.

When trauma occurs, the body’s Autonomic Nervous System (ANS) shifts into high gear within a nanosecond and the body ratchets up into a state of threat preparedness. The body registers danger and sends signals throughout, elevating adrenaline, cortisol, and other stress hormones that prepare the body to fight back, run away, or, if those are not possible, to shut down. 

The body is created to be able to respond to stress in this way and then to calm itself and settle back down into a balanced state of being – alert yet relaxed. Think of this as an emergency brake system, it’s not meant to be used all the time, but it is there when you need it.

When infidelity occurs, betrayed partners enter a state of prolonged emotional threat and danger. The initial discovery of betrayal is enough to cause the body to immediately ramp up its threat response system. Unfortunately, partners are often dealing with not just that first discovery but an ongoing series of discoveries that activate the threat system repeatedly, causing it to fire up and prepare to fight, flee, or shut down over and over. 

Many betrayed partners report feeling that just as they start to calm down and gain some equilibrium another discovery occurs and once again their system rockets into chaos.

The body responds to the repeated discovery of betrayal and the very real fear of future betrayals by keeping the threat response system activated. Instead of acting as an emergency brake system, this state of high activation becomes chronic. Because of this, betrayed partners often find themselves attempting to handle life with an activated threat system. 

Essentially, they are responding to the initial trauma while also managing the chronic fear of re-experiencing future trauma. This creates the profound emotional dysregulation described earlier. And this emotional dysregulation may be experienced daily, hourly, and even minute-by-minute – often over many weeks and months.