When You’re Having a Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day

This viral video came to my attention this week.

(Before you read further, watch at least a minute of it)

In the video, the protagonist is still under the effects of anesthesia after getting her tonsils removed. The effect of the anesthetic is so exaggerated that we get to see primitive processes that are usually much more concealed (yet still operate in all of us).

We tend to think of ourselves as fairly rational and consistent over time but most of us are FAR from it.

The sooner we realize that we have an inner child on board the better.

When we feel tired, stressed, ill, or threatened, not only do we lose our sense of self, or system-wide perspective, but our more sophisticated protectors go offline. We lose things like repression, humor, people pleasing, intellectualization, and sublimation (turning threatening impulses into art forms).

Instead, we regress, or fall back, to a younger age exposing both our emotional core and the burdens it still carries, as well as our early protectors like defiance, denial, splitting (black and white thinking) and self-interest.

Before I break it down, I want to highlight that this was likely a pretty scary medical trauma, involving loss of control, uncertainty, and pain. Our culture greatly underestimates medical trauma. And it’s easy to forget how difficult hospital experiences are if you haven’t been through one recently. OK, now let’s dive in.

The protagonist loses perspective and gets swept up in strong waves of emotion. She becomes adorably attached to things that don’t really matter in the greater scheme of things, such as not being able to see the remains of her tonsils, losing her hospital-provided hair-net, not being able to say “hi” to another patient, and forgetting to wear underwear to the hospital.

We see unveiled aggression toward her mother for withholding her phone—she can’t understand that it could be for her benefit. We also see a flash of aggression toward her friend for not answering—she loses the ability to hold her friend’s experience in mind and becomes completely self-oriented (in the way that all young children are).

Most of all, she just can’t let go of things. She is fused, or blended, with her early protectors.

We all have occasional moments of being triggered like this.

When it happens, it’s like we’re looking out at the world through the heavy filter of our childhood experiences.

Being triggered is not just a binary phenomenon. We are always cycling through different levels of put-togetherness, even during an average day or week.

The super-skill in life is learning to tell when your mind is properly contextualized, or grounded, and can be most trusted.

This happens when we are well-rested and sense that we are safe.

When this is the case, our wider nervous system comes online and we may feel a light hum of energy throughout the body, particularly in the extremis of the hands and feet. In IFS this is known as Self Energy. In Somatic Experiencing it is known as Regulation or Parasympathetic Tone.

The secret to life is basing your decisions on this more expansive state of mind, and being gentle with yourself when you’re not there.

But I’m curious to know what you thought watching this video. Feel free to post your response using the link below.