Анна ШиманDraft translation. This text was translated automatically and has not been proofread yet — if something reads oddly, it does.
Where do you find energy for life when your mood changes every minute?
What do you do when laziness suddenly takes over? Is it normal for criticism or other people’s judgement to frighten or deeply hurt you?
Has the feeling of “no energy” been your constant companion lately?
Do your thoughts swing back and forth from “I can do anything!” to “I can’t do anything”?
Let’s work out why this happens and how to manage your energy.
In short, our energy comes in two kinds: psychic energy (libido) and physical energy (the work of our body’s organs and systems).
The human psyche is a single system: the physical state affects the emotional one, and vice versa.
It is the body that helps us feel our connection with reality, through the senses. And if you don’t feed it, wear it out with lack of sleep and never let it relax, a state of stress will form. The nervous system will work itself to the bone trying to stabilise the situation, and gradually an imbalance between tension and relaxation will build up. Without relaxation a person gets used to living at high revs, and gradually the nervous system, followed by the hormonal system, adjusts to the new rhythm.
This is how the physical resource is gradually depleted, and after it the psychological one. An energy pit will certainly come; it is only a matter of time.
So why, knowing all this, can’t a person make themselves follow even the most basic rules for improving their state?
Why don’t people want to learn self-regulation?
Here are the reasons:
Habitual “hormonal patterns” (cortisol, for example).
Cortisol is the stress hormone, and it is released every time a person senses danger (the emotion of fear). It is important to say here that danger can be real, or it can be imagined. For example, as a child someone lived in an atmosphere of constant tension and uncertainty and felt in danger. This happens when the parents are always quarrelling, someone in the family has an addiction, or the child’s mother is immature and therefore inconsistent, her emotions unstable and deeply wounding to the child, who is instinctively attached to her. The child doesn’t know how to behave, what to feel or what to expect from a mother whose behaviour depends on her moods and becomes unpredictable. Such a child gets used to living under constant stress and develops psychological defence mechanisms. The child has no chance to be alone with themselves, cannot relax or listen to their own feelings, desires and moods. The whole living space of such a child, outer and inner, is taken up by the constant need to control themselves (so as not to provoke a negative reaction from the mother) and the mother’s mood (to protect themselves and not get caught in the crossfire). In especially neglected cases the child learns to control every member of the family and develops such sensitivity that from the sound of a key in the lock they can already tell who has come home, in what mood, and what plan to come up with so that this time they won’t be the one who suffers.
This behaviour becomes fixed, and even after separating from their parental family and becoming independent, the person still remains a hostage to their “cortisol pattern”. Unless, of course, they do something to change it and turn to a specialist.
The psychic reality of such a person is chaotic: they are not acquainted with themselves, with their emotions and feelings; they often don’t know what they want, what they like and what they don’t.
Depending on temperament, they may take on the roles of rescuer, scapegoat or winner. All these roles let them control others (which is what they got used to doing in childhood) and discharge the inner tension of constant stress onto outside situations (which, of course, are always to be found, while other, effective ways are not).
For example, a girl’s father left her mother and was unfaithful to her. But she sees herself in her daughter and projects her fears and anxieties onto the daughter’s life, forbidding her to date boys. Or a woman whose father drank, whose home was full of constant rows and fights. She will closely watch the life of her grown-up daughter and her husband, trying to find “facts” that confirm her deep beliefs that the world is a dangerous and unstable place, populated by unpredictable people. That a man brings danger and nothing good can be expected of him. She will remember how her own mother could not protect them from the father’s aggression, and will certainly decide to become strong, so that “never again” will she have to go through anything like it. She is not aware of these decisions, but she sees herself in her daughter or in other women. She starts controlling them, rescuing them.
Sadly, without working on their childhood scripts, such women only manage to become very controlling and hard, and spend their whole lives in situations of fierce competition, struggle and defending their rights in arguments and conflicts. Such a woman finds it hard to trust anyone (after all, she doesn’t trust herself either), which makes things difficult in her relationships with men, with children, with bosses and in general in any area of life that involves emotions, feelings, empathy and relationships between people based on emotional attachment.
Put such a person in an atmosphere of love, acceptance and comfort. In an atmosphere where someone loving and open is close by, and they won’t stay there for long. Because the pattern learned earlier is at work: if everything is fine “outside”, all is calm, nobody has problems, nobody needs rescuing and there is no need to sacrifice themselves, then the inner anxiety and fear become visible and start making themselves felt through unpleasant states, tension and panic.
Here, at this point, one could realise that anxiety and fear are “a part of me”. But as a rule this is very hard to do without a specialist. Because of a lack of self-regulation skills and a poor understanding of oneself.
And most of all, because of the inability to give up the feeling of strength and omnipotence that appears at one of the points of this pattern (cycle). That this omnipotence, after yet another “victory”, is inevitably followed by a fall into an energy pit, into feelings of worthlessness, weakness and self-pity, is something a person usually doesn’t want to notice.
And so we have a pattern of colossal energy expenditure that brings a tiny result: a state of omnipotence and uniqueness for about 5 minutes (all right, sometimes 20 minutes, depending on the size of the obstacle and the cortisol level). After that the person starts paying for their “pleasure” with even more stress, which comes from thoughts like “what if I can’t cope?” These arise when the body refuses to obey and falls ill, when a “sloth” state suddenly takes over, or when you planned to conquer the world and only managed to get out of bed, wash and eat.
But even here the controlling winners demand obedience, and they may indeed go to a specialist. With the request “fix me, I want to feel that rush of victory again”. And out of habit they start controlling. The specialist. They explain that there is nothing wrong with them, it’s just that this bit and that bit need fixing. Or they try as hard as they can to be “good clients”, to show understanding where they have understood nothing, or to keep suppressing their feelings (so as not to hurt anyone by accident).
And never mind that the happiness in such cycles lasts 5 minutes, while the damage done to the body and psyche takes several years of regular work to restore the body and the nervous system.
It resembles the behaviour of an addicted person, an alcoholic or a drug addict. Yet them we are used to condemning (or rescuing). Whereas nobody wants to notice their own addiction and its consequences for their physical and psychological health.
What can be done?
Start tracking your stress cycle; find your inner addict, rescuer and winner. Take back your will in this place with the help of a specialist, and be well,
Anna Shyman, psychologist.
