Hey, I'm Justin Sunseri. I'm a therapist, a coach, and the creator of the Polyvagal Trauma Relief System. I am doing this very much impromptu. I was about to get ready to settle in for the night, maybe watch some TV or something like that before I go to bed, just relax. But then I saw this comment here on YouTube that really gripped my attention, and I wanted to respond to it before really kind of settling in. I even got my jammies on. I got my red and black Christmas jammies on.
It's not Christmas anymore, but I'm still feeling it. So this was in response to a video I released this week, last week called "emotional regulation: balancing allowing and doing," which really was the response to another comment, which was asking, do we allow, or do we do when it comes to emotional regulation, when it comes to crying? Are we allowing the process to happen or are we making ourselves do something?
And I made the case It's really it's probably a balance of both, but I would lean more toward allowing because I based on the polyvagal theory teachings at least, The way I understand it is that we have a our bodies have a natural Compulsion or predisposition toward homeostasis and self regulation so it already wants to. We our conscious selves need to allow it to happen. So that was the premise. That was the basic idea.
And then this person has a really interesting comment and I'm going to try and tease it out. I've read through it once and it got me thinking, but I'm going to read it aloud and process with you and we'll see where it goes. It says, Hi, I'm new. Topic gripping. Must we permit, and welcome by the way, must we permit sadness to overwhelm unto weeping in order to heal?
So the way I'm interpreting this question so far is, do we have to permit sadness to the point of overwhelm or to the point of where the sadness is so overwhelming that it turns into weeping in order to heal? I don't, I, I, I'm reluctant to say we have to do anything when it comes to this self regulation trauma recovery kind of stuff. I don't want to tell you what your path is. I think there's some common expectations or common spots, milestones on the journey that you'll find yourself in.
But I'm very reluctant to say that one must do this or that. I think there's some very general things according to. Again, the polyvagal theory, this is kind of like my, my thing, according to polyvagal theory, there are some things that probably must happen. Like we have to build the strength of our safety state. If you have no idea what I'm talking about, look in the description to this.
I'll put a link to those episodes where I talk about polyvagal theory really in depth and you'll, you'll get that crash course in it. So I don't want to say what you must or mustn't do. Must somebody must someone tell their trauma story? Must somebody Think of themselves in terms of having parts or an ego or a shadow. Some of this is subjective, it's up to you. Crying is likely going to be a part of the trauma recovery journey, very likely.
Sadness, overwhelm are likely going to be a part of the journey. So do you need to feel these things so intensely that you cry? The way that I teach things here, the way that I do things as a therapist and the way that I teach in my Polyvagal Trauma Relief System, which is a really a self guided, self regulatory system. The way I teach there is that, no, you don't have to, but it likely will happen.
This is, this takes place in the third phase of my system, where I teach people how to look inward, where I teach them how to go from noticing just the emotion, like maybe you can notice the emotion of sadness, and that's great, but underneath that sadness, there lies other things like bodily sensations. and impulses. I think emotion and cognition, so thoughts kind of hang out on the same level. I group those together. Those are secondary to, or actually I would say tertiary.
Those are tertiary to the real problem, or the real issue. So that grouping to me comes after impulses and sensations. Sensations would be things that you feel. It's how you know you have an emotion. So, you know you have sadness because you feel heaviness. You feel like you're in a dark void. You feel little to no energy. You feel no motivation. All these things I would call sensations that indicate or that are the experience of having an emotion like sadness.
People often describe having like a racing heart or heat in their chest when they're in like a fight sympathetic state. So. Like that's kind of what I'm talking about when I, when I say sensations, but I group sensations along with impulses. When we have these emotions and the underlying sensations, the the impulses may come along with it, which tell us what to do with it. So in my system, the way I teach it is if you can notice you have sad sadness, great.
Underneath that sadness might be heaviness or might feel it be feeling like you're Curled up and alone in a dark room with one light hanging above you that is on but flickering. I don't know. So this might be the image of what it looks like or what it feels like to be you when you're sad. It might feel like rejection. There might be memories that come along with it. There might be all kinds of stuff, right?
So if you can tap into that level of your sadness, mindfully and compassionately, which is not easy. Then what may happen is that an impulse arises from that an impulse might come up within you and oftentimes that's good that's going to be crying. So do we have to cry in order to heal? I don't want to say you have to but likely it will happen if especially if you're coming from like a dorsal vagal shutdown state or a freeze state.
That returning or discharging sympathetic energy is likely going to come back or release as crying. Especially I think from freeze. I don't want to tell you what you have to do. The answer is really like, it's likely to happen. But I don't think you need to force yourself to cry in order to heal. But when you're, when and if you feel that impulse to cry, if you allow it, that will help healing move along.
Now, some people cry a ton, and they feel like they can't get any closer to healing, or they can't get farther down their trauma recovery journey. That's likely because while you're crying, you're judging yourself.
You are telling yourself that you're weak you're hiding it, you're Keeping it a secret, you're crying in isolation on the floor in the bathroom, or in your room, in the closet, in the dark, so it's not like you're compassionately, mindfully experiencing the bodily sensations, the release that comes along, or can come along with crying. Or maybe because you have a ton of crying to do and you're just not there yet and that's okay.
This person goes on to say do I see a conflict with meditation here? And I don't, I don't think so. Because so that what they say is I'm it's the The writing is a bit disjointed. So I'm putting pieces together here They say do I see a conflict with meditation?
So my answer is I don't think so if you have difficulty with Feeling what it's like to have the emotion of sadness, try describing it try putting words to it, you know, give it a temperature, give it a size, give it a shape, give it a color that kind of stuff, like describe what it's like to have that emotion. They say, so describe again, which equals observe notice sensations, therefore equals focus and awareness. And yeah, I agree.
Yeah, in, in the, my method in the Polyvagal Trauma Relief System, one of the skills that I teach in there is called the A->W->E Method, which is allow witness and experience. So anchor in safety, allow yourself to feel what you feel, witness it, which is like that description or is more about noticing where it lives in the body. And then experiencing it is really that deeper descriptive type of description type of experience. And then. An impulse may arise from that process.
They say actively describing would accomplish that presence. Yes. If I'm understanding it, then yeah, I agree. This is meditating, which I do when these sensations arrive. Yeah. I would call this meditating. So how, how I personally meditate I, you can meditate when they arrive or what I teach is how to get to the underlying sensations through this process. The act, they say. The act of tuning awareness onto sensation.
Yes, then broaden observation, alert, expand intelligent as possible, attentive third party observation. So I think this is where we might disagree. The third party observation for me is often the starting point for someone. If you're well practiced in this, then you might not need that. But oftentimes what may happen is you feel an emotion.
And to get to that next level, then, like, if you can say, I feel sadness, then you shift to that third party observer kind of mode to identify where it lives in your body. That's what I would call third party. It's like you're kind of zooming out and getting into, like, more of a researcher kind of mindset.
So you're not delving directly into what it feels like you're, you're more zooming out and noticing where it lives in your body, and then zoom in more specifically to that, to that to where that emotion lives in your body. And then describe what it's like to have that emotion, what it feels like in that part of your body. And it could be like, sadness is sometimes just, it feels like it's just draping on us, and that's, that's valid too. So the third party observation permits the stoic to watch.
Yeah, and that, that might be a first step. This disempowers negative sensations fast. This is where I would disagree as well. We don't want to disempower them. We want to welcome them compassionately, mindfully, and if you have your safety state developed Phase 2 of my Polyvagal Trauma Relief System. If you have developed the safety state enough, then you'd be able to welcome, compassionately and with curiosity, you'd be able to welcome what it's like to have these more negative emotions.
They're not really negative, but we'll frame it that way. You would be able to welcome them and experience them. And if you can do that from your safety state, They will not be experienced as negative. It'll be turned into something else. As long as the safety state is active, then it repurposes the defensive activation. So that fight energy that you might feel when dysregulated, if your safety state is active, it turns it into more of a empowerment.
So the safety state, when active, doesn't Give, at least definitely in my experience and from what I see with my clients, it doesn't produce this disempowering effects of negative sensations. It doesn't blunt them. It doesn't create a third party stoic objective thing. Instead it makes the, the individual a direct experiencer of what's happening within them. So that we might part ways right there. This person says that mine are powerful and abruptly come and go due to my method of meditation.
I reckon I feel better for long use of this trick. Oh boy. See, we would disagree there as well. These aren't tricks. What I teach for myself and what I teach my clients in my system it's not tricks. It's, it is how to feel what it's like to be you. In all regards, that includes what it feels like to be you in safety, that also include what it's like to be you with these more typically uncomfortable emotions and sensations and impulses.
It's, it's really how to consciously, mindfully, compassionately be with yourself, not to trick yourself into distancing, numbing cutting off defensive activation, or these negative experiences. So, I think that's, maybe, I think it's a pretty distinct separation there from the way I'm understanding this comment. And by the way, thank you for the comment, this is wonderful, and I appreciate you giving me the chance to answer you by putting it out there.
I think a lot of times we treat meditation As this third party objective thing, like we're, we're distancing ourselves from our present moment experience and we're becoming watchers of our cognitions, maybe floating in and out. And no, I don't, I don't personally look at it that way and I don't teach it that way. That might be the first step. But. Like that's, that's a portal. That's a window into like that deeper experience of yourself, in my opinion. So yeah, I don't want that person.
I don't want my clients and my students to, to use tricks or hacks or whatever the heck to diminish defensive activation instead, ultimately, eventually. We want to welcome it. We want to welcome it with compassion and. Curiosity, genuine compassion and curiosity, and you may not be there right now. That's totally fine. Just it's not easy.
It's not fast This is a process but with my system my overall system that that is the goal to To get to that place eventually and I think it's something that constantly unfolds. It's not something that's like, oh, I'm here overnight. It's it's a process, it constantly unfolds with any continuous practice building a safety state and then eventually feeling defensive activation or those more negative experiences.
And this person wraps it up with a final question thought, they say, can individual healing methods be varied as needed? Yes. The answer is yes. Can individual healing methods be varied as needed or Is it that all who will be healed shall first endure bitter weeping? Yeah, the wording is interesting, and I have no idea if this person meant it this way. I'm just, I don't know them, I don't know anything about them, right? Endure. It strikes me. It's like, it's not a punishment.
It's not an affliction. It's not a virus. It is your self. It is your body. Releasing I would say flight, fight, activation, freeze, activation that's probably been holding on to for, potentially for quite a while, pain, sadness that it's been holding onto. It's, it's lovingly and compassionately feeling it yourself or you are and hopefully releasing it. So I, I don't, if you have for me the word endure. I would hope it's a different experience. I would hope it's something different.
But, I think for many of us, it's not. And that's okay. That's valid too. That's normal. But, ideally, hopefully, eventually, we get to that place where, where it is a different experience. You know, crying can come along with appreciation it can come along with gratitude, it can be with compassion and I know I keep saying that but I think it's an important distinction. So can individual healing methods be varied, yeah of course.
But likely crying is something that may happen when or along the trauma recovery path, the journey's path, it likely will happen. So if I were to kind of, you know, try and sum this up here there's no right way to, no one right way to do this. I don't think there's probably many different things you could do that might be helpful for you. There's tons of therapeutic modalities that I'm not trained in that I have no interest in and I will not use.
But for you that You know, whatever it is, might be the bee's knees and you love it and I'm, I'm happy for you. So yeah, all this is individualized, but along that journey, no matter what vehicle you take to get there, the, there are typical milestones, landmarks that you might hit along the way. And crying might be one of them telling your trauma narrative might be one of them.
So, point being, I do think that crying, releasing, is likely gonna be a part of pretty much any trauma recovery journey, I think. But would I say it must happen? Eh, I, I won't go that far, but It's likely going to happen. But crying from dysregulation, crying from detachment, crying from a lack of self compassion is different than crying from safety, crying from curiosity, crying from releasing whatever is inside of you and then experiencing gratitude for the process.
It's a lot, it's a much different experience. If you want to learn more about my polyvagal trauma relief system, head on over to justinlmft. com slash P T R S. Justin. Lmft. com slash P T R S. A lot of letters I know. That's it. Hopefully this was helpful for you. I really appreciate the comments that I get on YouTube. Overall, overall, there's lots of love and it feeds me and I appreciate it.
And these kind of comments, which are curious and inquisitive and challenged my way of thinking and make me kind of flesh out my thoughts more. I really appreciate it. Please keep those coming. Thank you for watching. Bye.