#emotional bandwidth

[karrenseely]

Emotional Regulation

So I have CPTSD. Everything I've read mostly points to this being a lifelong condition (yay :P) that is incredibly difficult for all of us whom suffer from it. I know it has been for me. I honestly don't know if I'd have developed it if my parents had been loving, supportive, and understanding like they should have. Because, even if they had been, I would still have likely had many many years of gas lighting from society, them, and my extended family to be a gender other than what I was. And that takes its toll on anyone's psyche.

But who knows, maybe if they'd been really supportive, then I wouldn't have had years of thinking I was crazy or shameful, maybe I would have transitioned really young as soon as I could tell them they were wrong. Then all I'd have to deal with is some body dysphoria. But then even that can take its toll as well. So I really couldn't say if I was destined to have this incredibly difficult mental health condition or not.

Either way, I really wish I'd had the loving supportive family every child deserves. I really wish I didn't find my psyche shattering as I grew up, getting stuck repeatedly at every traumatic event that I can remember, and actively forgetting everything I couldn't along with most of my other memories. Such that now, my memories consist of shattered disorganized shards scattered over the floor, most of those shards long since missing. It's really difficult to live when all you really have is now.

People talk about their childhoods like there's this linear well established timeline in their memories. It was a long time before I realized this was the typical way people remember their past. That for most people, they can remember approximately when such a memory occurred, in sequence with another. Even now, this is so foreign to me. I remember things in disjointed pieces, any one memory is not connected to any other. And few, if any, are connected to a specific time that I can locate.

Then there is the ability to remember what you did yesterday, or last week, or even last month in day to day life. That it's hard to know what's happened and what's been done recently. This was particularly bad when I was dissociating all the time, fortunately, therapy has helped with that part, and I don't do it as much and I can remember more of my day to day life. But even now, there are still significant holes in my memories of adult life. And admittedly as I struggle through my current flare of CPTSD symptoms, I sometimes wish I could dissociate like I used to so that I don't have to feel all of this horrible stuff. It hurts like hell.

If someone created the universe, they must be one of the most sadistic assholes to have ever existed, making it so healing is so effing painful, much less making thinking feeling beings feed off of one another.

In this journey of trying to heal, I've encountered many people talking about how, when we were abused as children we didn't develop our emotional regulation skills like normal loved, unabused kids do. I always found these comments or suppositions confusing. In large part due to the fact that I don't really understand what emotional regulation means. As a child, trying to survive, the only thing that worked, that made things even remotely bearable was dampening down on emotions until I didn't feel hardly anything at all. I wasn't particularly good at this, I still had feelings but they were distorted hazy half hearted things that would escape out, usually as anger, irritability, sadness, often fear, sometimes even joy would get out. But none were fully formed, or fully embraced, because if I did, then the pain would be in full force, the shame, the horror I constantly felt at what I was going through. So I did my best to damp down my emotions to almost nothing, and dissociate as much as I could so that I didn't have to feel or atleast remember feeling all those horrible things I felt. And the plus side to dissociation is that you truly only live in the moment. You can forget so much that way. You can ride the bus to school, but not remember any of it, just one moment you're at home and the next, poof, you're at school, and the next, poof, it's time to go home again and get on the bus, and poof the next you're at home again... you get the idea.

Emotions when all of the above were unsuccessful and I felt them anyway, usually it was the really really bad ones. And they were felt at 120% full blast. It was either 10 mph, or 120 mph. No inbetween. But people who talk about the ability to regulate emotions describe it as having inbetweens. Not having to feel the full blast, but not suppressing it completely either.

For the longest time when I encountered that phrase around emotional regulation, my mind just skittered past it, as it didn't make any sense to me. But I found myself thinking about it a couple months ago. And some kind fellow people with CPTSD pointed me to links that helped to explain the concept... except, those links were mostly just confusing. And unfortunately, my brain interpreted them as, "you are deficient, you're inability to regulate is your fault." Which didn't help. I honestly don't know if those explanations actually implied that, but it's what it felt like. Maybe because I didn't understand what they were saying.

Then... recently I returned to work, full time. And an interesting, if sucky, thing happened. I was fine at work, I could joke, I could laugh and have fun with coworkers and feel empathy for my patients and basically function somewhat like a typical human being in what I imagine is a healthy fashion. But as soon as I left work and went home, I had no energy left to keep the intrusive memories and emotions in check. And I would immediately start to crash. Spiraling down the rabbit hole of all those horrible memories. Nothing had specifically triggered them, it's just I ran out of spoons and they took over. I'd used up all my spoons at work.

Obviously, I'd overestimated my ability to return to full time work, but also it felt like there was an insight here. And it came down to my emotional bandwidth. If I had enough emotional energy, enough spoons, then minor triggers that normally would have lead me back down that lovely negative spiral, wouldn't actually set me off, and I could continue to function. And this was the neat part, I could continue to function without having all my walls slam down and turn everything numb. But, if I run out of that energy, if I run out of those spoons, then any little thing can set me down that self destructive spiral.

And the more I've thought about this, the more I think this is what people mean when they talk about emotional regulation. That most people have a large fount of this emotional energy to buffer against the extremes. And thus can handle day to day joys, stresses and hurtful things without completely falling apart. If this is the case then I guess I've developed some emotional regulation after all, though it's limited.

But why is it so limited? Why didn't I have any before? And the more I look at it. I see it in terms of bandwidth, energy, and/or spoons. Before, when I was having to live in survival mode, all of my emotional energy was being used to just survive. I was constantly in fight or flight. There was no energy to spare for nuance. My bandwidth was incredibly limited because so much of it was taken up with just surviving from one day to the next, with constant vigilance. But when we are no longer in those situations, and just as importantly, when we are not constantly flashing back to those situations, we start to have that bandwidth become available for the nuance. We can start feeling things in between because we have the energy to do so. It's no longer entirely about survive or die.

And that's the worst part about flashbacks. Even though I'm no longer in that constant life or death situation, those flashbacks have me believing I am. And contrary to popular media's depiction of flashbacks, most of the time it's not getting stuck in a living visual memory of an event. No, the vast majority of those flashbacks are emotional flashbacks. Getting stuck in the feelings of the event, the feelings I couldn't suppress anymore, the constant feeling of being in danger, of having my life, my very existence threatened, which brings on the constant sense of danger, of fight or flight. Which means, no emotional energy for anything else, except the extremes. Everything in my life currently can be perfectly fine, safe, wonderful even. But if I'm stuck in an emotional flashback, none of the current circumstances matter, because I'm emotionally back in survival mode, feeling constantly threatened, trying to survive, trying to decide if I need to fight or run. And if I'm stuck there... then there isn't any emotional energy left for anything else.

The really effing sucky part, is that often I don't know I'm in an emotional flashback until after it's gone away, and I can see looking back that how I was feeling didn't fit at all with what was actually happening at the time. I reacted to an outside observer in a rather extreme, or worse in a completely irrational manner. But then when I'm in the middle of it, I guess it's understandable that I have a hard time recognizing it, as all my energy is directed towards surviving, towards keeping the pain and my fears at bay.

So maybe emotional regulation is just having enough emotional energy to filter the experiences you're having into a much more nuanced pattern, rather than having to sort things into binary extremes of bad, not bad. And if that's the case, then maybe, just maybe, I am healing, because I'm starting to free up some of my bandwidth to start sorting out the nuances... even if I can't quite identify what those nuances are yet.

[goodgrammaritan]

Heyo Santa where's that emotional bandwidth I asked for this Christmas

[enigmaris]

Superboy Prime punched through the multiverse. This, of course, defeated the enemy he was fighting that was trying to destroy the world, but multidimensional punches dont just affect the mortal plane.

The ghost zone, the infinite realms, felt the punch like a nuclear blast. Haunts destroyed, ghosts displaced through time and space. It was chaos.

Whats worse? Danny's friend is missing.

Danny had met Robin in the GZ during one of his adventures, the two dead teen vigilantes took to each other like ducks to water. Danny helped Robin learn about being a ghost and Robin taught Danny life skills such as: throwing a punch, lockpicking, and how not to fall for obvious traps that villians set up.

Even Sam and Tucker had met Robin, although since Robin was such a new ghost he wasnt strong enough to leave the zone for long. Young ghosts (halfas aside) needed to spend the first decade or two in the zone before they were stable enough to go back to the mortal side. Danny had offered to fly to gotham with a message for batman, but robin had declined.

Batman and he had had a fight before he died, the guy probably didnt want to see or hear about the robin that failed after all.

Robin had forbidden Danny and the others from looking into Gotham.

Danny would not be in Gotham if his friend hadn't disappeared after the sonic attack that had rocked the ghost zone. He had no idea who Robin had been under the mask. Even in death, his friend had not shared his secret identity. But Danny needed to find his friend before he destabilized into ectoplasmic goop.

So now Danny has to find Batman, convince the guy that ghosts are real and that his adopted son Robin is a ghost. He manages to find the bat signal on top of the GCPD and hails the hero.

Who has a new robin with him.

It hadnt even been a year!!! Batman had replaced his friend with a younger model, this one was wearing pants instead of shorts!! What the hell!!!

Danny is so offended that if he didn't need Batman's help to save Robin, he would so punch the guy in the face. Multiple times.

Danny explains the problem to Batman and FAKE Robin all while keeping his cool.

"His ghost probably ended up near his grave. Just get me to the cemetery, if he's there, i can find him and save him before he fades forever."

Batman agrees.

Internally, Bruce is bluescreening. His mind is just thinking: Jason. Jason. Jason. Jason! Over and over again. He needed to get to his son. Right now.

Tim wasn't expecting his first mission as Robin to go like this, he had just finished his training, but nothing he had trained for prepared him for a ghost that told him that he met Jason while fighting a magic ghost dragon.

When all three get to the cemetary, they find Jason Todd's grave empty. A hole in the grass, just wide enough for a person to crawl through. The casket has a hole punched through it. Parts of the suit Jason was buried in were torn off and caught on splinters of the wood.

"I am gonna be honest. I did not know zombies were a thing." said the ghost.

With that, all hell breaks loose in Gotham.

[mollyfamous]

I really prefer to discuss my mental and emotional energy levels as "bandwidth" instead of "spoons." Bandwidth just seems more... intuitively comparable to me. Like when I can't think because my brain is too noisy and chaotic, it uses up a lot of bandwidth , so "I don't have the bandwidth," to deal with a lot of things. When I can't think because I'm too tired/exhausted/spent, I've used up all my mental bandwidth allotment for the time being, so again, "I don't have the bandwidth." When I'm anxious, or upset, or frantic or having an easily frustrated day, my emotional bandwidth feels bottlenecked. When I'm worn out from feeling too much, I've used up my emotional bandwidth.

[lovesodeepandwideandwell]

.

[bacchuschucklefuck]

love thinking kipperlilly spends her afterlife looking for lucy in a familiar forest

[loquaciousquark]

Beloved mutuals, I come on bended knee to beg for tags on two things:

when you put DAV spoilers in your tags on otherwise non-DAV-related posts (ESPECIALLY for anything related to romances)

anything related to politics, the Deteriorating State of America, Luigi Mangione et al, systemic social justice or injustice, etc.

I really, really don't want to unfollow anyone as I love you all, but I literally cannot emotionally bear the anger or despair that comes with many of the politics posts on my dash right now, and I am choosing to disengage with it here on tumblr so that I still have somewhere I can go to enjoy myself.

Likewise, I really want to go into DAV unspoiled, and for as many words as I've added to my filters, they don't work if the post doesn't have some kind of proper Veilguard tag appended. I've been spoiled three times in the last few days for both specific romance events and with mood spoilers of certain other romances, and I very much want to not see that kind of thing yet. I didn't even want to learn the companions' names ahead of time, though that's obviously been unavoidable.

Thank you!

[mcmeasle]

can we just talk about the only thing cat knowing how to say in French is “do you want to sleep/have sex with me?” and our poor disaster bisexual boy just had to roll with it

[sucresanguine]

The biggest problem with the male loneliness epidemic rhetoric is that people have forgotten that it was originally about men lacking support in male friendships. Then the manoshphere fuckfest got ahold of it and determined that duh, the only important relationships men can have are sexual, and all real men are straight, so clearly this is about men needing women to fix them. And then everyone just fuckin agreed to that dogshit definition. It's the polar opposite issue, and I think it serves in some part to take away from just how much can be learned from the community I've seen queer men hold for one another

[muzsmocsing]

Earth Master Ming Yi. THE Shi Qingxuan asks you if you are best friends. How do you plead?

✅ Our matching Claire's BFF necklaces never lie.

✅ You are the Barbie to my Ken.

✅ I am deeply in love with you Yes.

⛔ "Who's your best friend? I've never been."

[cctinsleybaxter]

i 'ship' yossarian and milo in exactly the same way one would ship ripley and the xenomorph where i'm like 'stay the fuck away from her!!!" but i'm also like hang on. what is happening right now.

[ravenkings]

[trying-to-jew]

How do I explain to my friend that they’re reblogging antisemitic rhetoric without ending the friendship?

[pixeldinostorytelling]

wolf 359 finale is a christmas movie. to me.

[whywhywhymoney]

Really underrated but truly excellent bit of characterisation whenever it turns up:

Whenever Martha Wayne shows up in flashbacks she consistently seems to have the same personality as Selina Kyle and I don't know if this is a DC mandate or like multiple writers over the past decades all had the same idea, but im very glad of it lmao.

[kingedmundsroyalmurder]

@amarguerite tagged me in the 9 books for 2025 meme. I've been meaning to read all my books for a while, so i'm considering this an incentive.

(All images are photos of the covers of the mentioned books)

The Book of the City of Ladies, Christine de Pizan

Got this for Christmas ages ago and never got around to it. A lot of the books on my list are heavy, and while this one won't be easy reading, I'm hoping it'll be interesting without being slightly soul-crushing.

The Social Life of Stories, Julie Cruikshank

This is a reread, but it's really, really good and it's been too long since I revisited it. Like many of my books, it was assigned for a class, although this one was undergrad so I didn't get around to actually reading it until the class was over.

A People's History of the United States, Howard Zinn

This one's a classic, and I've read lots of excerpts, but never got around to reading the whole thing

How Forests Think, Eduardo Kohn

I'll be real with you all, I hated this book. I thought it was pretentiously done and way less than the sum of its parts. But I really *wanted* to like it, so I'm giving it another shot. If nothing else, my snarky margain notes from last time may be fun.

Orientalism, Edward Said

I have read about half this book. It is not a book meant to be read in 15-minute intervals while on a bus though, so I'm hoping a more structured reading environment will make it stick better.

Number, Tobias Dantzig

I was promised this was fun. I hope that is true. I love the idea of math even if the actual execution has never been my strong point.

Europe and the People Without History, Eric Wolf

Another classic that I've read chapters of but never the full book. I remember enjoying the heck out of the authorial voice, so I'm looking forward to it.

Thames the Biography, Peter Ackroyd

Another for fun book. I'm hoping its tone is more historian and less journalist. I struggle with pop history's insistence on writing history as if it was a novel.

Watch Me Play, T.L. Taylor

This will be either very fun or kind of insufferable. I'll let you know which when I get to it!