Notice How Quickly We Turn Experiences Into Identity
Notice how quickly we turn experiences into identity. A feeling moves through, a moment arises, and almost immediately we name it as who we are. I am stressed. I am anxious. As if a passing state gets to decide something essential about us.
This habit is subtle, and it is powerful. When we speak this way, the nervous system hears finality. The experience collapses inward and begins to feel fixed. What might have been temporary now feels defining.
Most of what we are naming in these moments is not who we are at all. It is the nervous system responding to stimulation, pressure, fatigue, or uncertainty. These are states. They move. They change. But when we identify with them too closely, we lose access to choice.
When you instead name the experience as dysregulation, something shifts. Saying “my nervous system is currently dysregulated” creates autonomy in the experience. Dysregulated is the opposite of regulated, which means there is a way back. It implies direction rather than stuckness. It reminds you that you are not anxiety itself. You are a person having a physiological response.
This distinction matters because it changes how you respond. You are no longer trying to fix what you think you are. You are orienting toward support for what you are working with.
This is where practice becomes real. You resource yourself. You take the walk. You look around the room and orient to where you are. You slow your breath. Not as coping, but as choice. Choice in how you support yourself and how you relate to the moment you are in.
This is where practice becomes real. You resource yourself. You take the walk. You look around the room and orient to where you are. You slow your breath. Not as coping, but as choice. Choice in how you support yourself and how you relate to the moment you are in.
Each time you move back toward regulation, you build nervous system resiliency. That is the muscle. Your body remembers. Your nervous system remembers. And the more you practice with awareness, the easier it becomes to find your way back.
In the Yoga Sutras, this relates to avidya, or misperception. Suffering increases when we mistake what is temporary for what is permanent. When we stop turning passing experiences into identity, we relate to ourselves with more accuracy and more compassion. Language becomes a bridge back to ourselves rather than a trap.