Embracing the Messiness: Dysregulation as communication not dysfunction
In conversations about mental health and emotional wellbeing, regulation often takes centre stage. We’re encouraged to regulate our emotions, behaviours, and even our thoughts. But within this focus on control, another equally important experience is often misunderstood or overlooked — dysregulation.
Dysregulation is typically framed as something going wrong: an inability to self-regulate, an emotional failure, or a loss of control. It might show up as intense emotions, impulsive behaviour, shutdown, or chaotic thinking. Yet when we shift the lens, dysregulation can be understood not as dysfunction, but as communication.
Dysregulation as a Meaningful Signal
Dysregulation isn’t always a sign that something is broken. Often, it’s a natural and understandable response to what’s happening within us or around us.
Just as physical pain alerts us to something needing attention in the body, emotional dysregulation can signal unmet needs, boundary violations, stress, grief, or values being challenged. Feeling anxious before an important moment, angry in the face of injustice, or overwhelmed under pressure are not failures — they are information.
In this way, dysregulation can be seen as the nervous system speaking.
A Protective and Adaptive Response
Dysregulation frequently arises in response to environmental stressors or perceived threat. It is not random — it is protective.
When demands exceed capacity, the nervous system mobilises or withdraws in an attempt to restore safety. Feeling overwhelmed by work, relational strain, or sensory load may bring anxiety, agitation, or shutdown — not because a person is weak, but because their system is responding intelligently to stress.
Seen through this lens, dysregulation is adaptive. It tells us something important needs care, support, or change.
Listening Instead of Suppressing
When dysregulation is met with suppression or shame, the message is missed. But when it’s met with curiosity, it can offer profound insight into our inner world.
Exploring what sits beneath dysregulation — whether past experiences, unmet needs, or ongoing stress — opens space for self-understanding and healing. Rather than asking “What’s wrong with me?” we can ask, “What is this response trying to tell me?”
Dysregulation in Children: A Call for Co-Regulation
In children, dysregulation is often misunderstood as misbehaviour or defiance. Yet children frequently lack the language, neurological maturity, or safety to articulate their emotional experiences.
Big behaviours are often big communications.
When adults respond with empathy, presence, and attunement, children learn that their emotions are not too much. Through co-regulation — where a calm, connected adult stays with a child during distress — children gradually learn how emotions can be felt, expressed, and moved through in relationship.
This relational foundation supports long-term emotional wellbeing and secure attachment.
Regulation as Connection, Not Calm
While dysregulation holds important information, it isn’t sustainable to remain there indefinitely. Integration happens through regulation — but regulation is often misunderstood.
Regulation is not about being calm.
Regulation is about connection.
Connection to self.
Connection to others.
Connection to the environment.
Regulation involves developing safety, flexibility, and the capacity to stay present with experience — not suppressing emotion, but relating to it differently.
Building Relationship With Emotion
Regulation allows us to meet emotions with curiosity rather than control. This includes:
developing supportive relationships
cultivating internal safety
finding ways to move, express, or rest
learning to stay with feeling without being consumed by it
Through regulation, emotions become experiences we can listen to rather than states we merge with.
Holding Both: Mess and Meaning
Dysregulation and regulation are not opposites — they are partners.
Dysregulation signals what needs attention.
Regulation allows us to integrate that information and remain connected.
When we stop pathologising dysregulation and start listening to it, we make room for compassion, resilience, and authenticity. Embracing the messiness of being human doesn’t mean staying stuck — it means allowing experience to guide us toward deeper understanding and connection.
