03 / 05
difficultpleasant
difficult feelings
pain
🔒
anxiety
🔒
shame
🔒
anger
🔒
loneliness
🔒
pleasant feelings
joy
tenderness
love
delight
pleasure
system sensitivity62
quietbalanceflooding
one dial — for every emotion at once
app 3 · regulation

why you can’t switch off just the pain

We tend to think of regulation as “getting rid of the bad emotion” — not feeling the pain, the anxiety, the anger. As if there were a remote inside us, with buttons.

sadnessoff
loveon
anxietyoff
joyon

tap any button…

But no such remote exists.
🎛️
Step 1. There’s no separate button inside for pain, or love, or joy. Try to move one emotion on the panel 👉

The nervous system isn’t a remote with separate buttons. It has one shared dial — the level of activation and sensitivity.

The work of regulation is to tune the system so you can feel it, stay with it, and choose how to act.

🔊
Step 2. This isn’t the volume of one song — it’s the sensitivity of the speakers. Turn the dial and listen to what happens to everything at once.

Turn the speakers down and they reproduce everything more faintly — not just the unpleasant sounds, but the pleasant ones too.

When you spend years learning not to feel pain and shame, you turn down the volume on joy, tenderness, and pleasure too. In a single move.

🧊
Step 3. That’s why, after stress or burnout, people don’t say “I can’t feel sadness” — they say “I don’t feel anything at all.” Switch on survival mode 👇
tendernesswonderdelightfalling in lovegratitudeinterest in lifea sense of closenessjoy in small things

This isn’t a malfunction. The psyche didn’t break — it adapted to conditions where feeling was too painful, too dangerous, or simply too much. Not because you’re weak — because, once, this was a way to survive.

🤲
Step 4. Now we bring sensitivity back. But the system answers: “Of course. But first you’ll feel everything that was frozen.” Press 👇
01sadness, anxiety, anger
02shame, hurt, loneliness
03bodily tension, exhaustion
→and only then — joy, love, lightness

A frozen hand thaws through pain and pins-and-needles — and only then does normal feeling come back. “I feel worse” often means: the system is regaining access to itself.

🌗
Step 5. You perceive the world not directly, but through the state of your nervous system. Change the setting and look at the very same situation.
pick a system state above ↑
When the setting changes, your tastes change with it: music, people, relationships, the pace of life. What felt like love can start to feel like anxiety. Boring can feel like safety. Safe can feel like the absence of life. The world isn’t changing — what’s changing is the instrument it passes through.
what regulation really is

Not “switch off.”
But tune.

Move the dial and find the zone where emotions don’t flood you — but don’t disappear either:

…
🔁get rid of the bad emotion → tune the sensitivity of the whole system
🔁I’m broken → the system adapted in order to survive
🔁I feel worse → I’m regaining access to my whole range

Too much — we gently bring it down. Too little — we gently restore contact. The goal is to feel, to stay with it, and to choose.

more on emotions and the nervous system →
next in the series → app 4 of 5
one last thing

By now you know a little more about yourself, your nervous system, and how regulation actually works — and maybe you’ve noticed a few new questions too.

If you’d like to keep getting to know yourself, come see me on my site — you’ll find more free interactive tools, practices, and ways we might work together.

Learn more →