I Think I am Thawing Part 4: Understanding Bypassing

A lot has shifted since the last post, and it might all sound very crazy.

Since March 2025, I began having a series of emotional breakthroughs (or breakdowns). It’s been good but it got to a point where I got so dysregulated, just about any little thing threw me over the edge. I’ve written about some of the things that were going on. One was when I was driving and got totally freaked out in rush hour traffic. Another was a flight home where I had to suppressed a nervous system cycle that was trying to come up but I didn’t have the comfort or the safety to process it out.

It just got to a point where I couldn’t manage very well.

When I started getting really sick in 2020, I had a lot of pain in my body and a lot of the pain was centered around the upper portion, especially my arms. At that time, I was so overwhelmed with the symptoms and the sensations that I was doing whatever I could to try to make them stop. I’m realizing now that this was a really terrible way to go.

Why? You may ask?

I have only just realized literally within the last 4 day, that in all this time, maybe even decades of time, all the things and all the efforts that I have put into trying to make myself feel better-

Was actually bypassing.

Bypassing

This can be very confusing because mildly dysregulated systems retain partial autonomic flexibility, allowing treatments to activate regulation without overwhelming stored survival type energy. Those kinds of systems can process and integrate change without triggering strong defensive responses. So, in that case, someone can do the same exact things that I’ve been doing, and it would NOT be bypassing.

BUT for the person with a severely dysregulated system, we (or me) carries higher loads of unresolved survival energy, bracing, and incomplete autonomic cycles. Treatments activate deeper, suppressed material, exceeding the system’s current capacity, causing strong reactions. The difference is the volume of stored charge and the system’s available regulation bandwidth.

Bypassing, in this case for the more severe type, is avoiding or suppressing uncomfortable sensations, emotions, or autonomic responses by distracting, overanalyzing, or forcing regulation. This prevents the nervous system from completing stored survival responses. This is all very understandable. For me personally, when I was feeling overwhelming amounts of sensations and symptoms, it was only natural to try to do everything that I could to make it stop. I’m sure there are many others out there that have done the exact same thing that I have.

Here are some bypassing examples. All of these prevent full autonomic completion (if severely dysregulated):

— Overthinking sensations instead of feeling them
— Trying to “fix” or stop symptoms quickly
— Reassuring oneself excessively to avoid discomfort
— Forcing positive thoughts or affirmations
— Using screens or media to distract from sensations
— Constantly analyzing past events
— Avoiding stillness to prevent feelings from surfacing
— Seeking constant reassurance from others
— Overexercising to override anxiety
— Using substances (food, alcohol, caffeine) to numb discomfort
— Forcing breath control during panic
— Over-intellectualizing trauma instead of processing bodily states
— Emotionally detaching or dissociating when triggered
— Minimizing or dismissing emotional pain
— Trying to predict or control outcomes to feel safe
— Focusing on external problems rather than internal states
— Hyper-focusing on protocols, supplements, or health fixes
— Forcing “calm” behaviors without genuine regulation

Bypassing blocks autonomic completion by preventing the body from fully sensing and releasing stored survival energy. When sensations are avoided, controlled, or distracted from, the nervous system cannot complete the unfinished defensive cycles. This reinforces patterns of fear, keeps dysregulation active, and signals ongoing threat.

I am learning that full recalibration requires direct, present-moment sensing without interference, allowing the system to discharge and reorganize naturally. Therapy for someone like me in this stage should be oriented around bottom-up, somatic-based work (e.g., tracking sensation, impulse, regulation) rather than primarily cognitive or narrative processing.

But even that, I’ve recently learn, has come with its very frustrating challenges.

Discharge

Then there is discharge which I am learning more about as well. This is the release of stored survival energy held in the nervous system from unresolved stress or trauma.

I bring this up because after having had many emotional releases in back in March and April of this year, it then followed with me having extreme sensations in my legs. This wasn’t exactly new for me. As I mentioned earlier, when I first got really bad in 2020, it was heavily focused on my upper body. I ran around like a crazy person trying to make it all go away. That approach didn’t work at all. Now, 5 years later, it has shifted to my legs. This is far from over.

This has been going on for 3 weeks. It has been really unpleasant. The feelings are very hard to explain but I will try my best: It felt almost like ants were crawling up and down my legs, my glute muscles hurt very badly. There were areas of my calves that would start to feel like they were going numb, especially in my calves which have always been very tight. There were muscle twitches and spasms all throughout different areas of my legs, most commonly in the upper parts. I would even get a lot of ongoing pain in my feet and especially my right foot (it’s probably good to note that I have sprained my right ankle very badly in the past, which has caused for my entire right leg to have issues). I was also felt my temperature rising.

So, I was analyzing it, panicking about it, searching on the web about it, and doing some things to try and stop it. I didn’t do anything too extreme, just gentle kicks, stomps, or shaking my legs. It sort of helped but overall, it didn’t seem like it was ever going to stop.

Something else I was noticing is that the feeling of my thighs touching made me feel very overwhelmed and disgusting. I was realizing that a lot of these feelings come from major places of pain. I’ve always been very insecure about my legs in general, how they look and how misshaped they are. I am especially very insecure about my thighs. I was really starting to recall a lot of things for my teenage years regarding this. There always seems to be an emotional component to all of these things…at least for me.

I did find that this was most likely a sign of nervous system discharge. Discharge reflects the unwinding of freeze or bracing patterns that once immobilized the body for protection. As the nervous system regulates, this trapped energy moves through the muscles, fascia, and nerves, often producing sensations like tingling, pulsing, warmth, heaviness, or spontaneous movement. This process allows the body to complete what was previously incomplete, restoring natural mobility and regulation. Here are some links regarding this:

Somatic Experiencing: Healing Trauma Through the Body – Empowered Mind Body Therapy

Recognizing Signs Your Body is Releasing Trauma

The problem though, was that I was not ALLOWING For the discharging to really take place. I was constantly bypassing. This then encouraged the discharge to be ongoing, and not be fully processed. It was like my nervous system was signaling something, but I didn’t know how to address it other than just trying to make it stop.

Present Moment Exercises

So, I did what seemed to make sense based on the research that I did, and I started to do techniques to support discharge. I did these exercises:

• Present-Moment Tracking: Stay with internal sensations as they arise. Name sensations neutrally (“tingling,” “warmth,” “pressure”).
• Orienting: Gently scan your environment with eyes and head movement. Engages the vagus nerve, signals safety.
• Grounding: Feel feet on the floor, body contact with chair or bed. Use slow awareness of physical support.

These are other techniques that I haven’t even tried yet, and glad that I hadn’t (I will explain why in the next paragraph).

• Pendulation: Move attention between areas of activation (tension, pulsing) and areas of relative calm (neutral zones), allowing oscillation.
• Titration: Allow small doses of sensation. Avoid overwhelming the system with full intensity. Pause when activation increases.
• Slow Movement: Gentle stretching, walking, or rocking. Supports motor discharge without overstimulation.
• Breath Awareness: Natural breathing. No forced breath control. Notice breath rhythm as sensation arises.
• Containment: Place hands on the body (chest, belly). Provides somatic boundary and safety signal.

The Good and Bad News

The good news is, my legs feel drastically better since I started using some of these techniques.

The bad news is, I now have horrible gastric issues. I’m struggling to decide whether I genuinely have food poisoning or if this is just the usual rebound feeling I always get whenever I try something new.

Or, if this is perhaps, what “allowing” can be like. Maybe it is different than just the usual rebound.

I started doing these techniques almost 5 days ago. On day number three, I went over to a friend’s house. I wasn’t feeling particularly too well but I also wasn’t unwell enough to not go over. I mainly just had a mild headache which is nothing too terribly uncommon. As the day pressed on, I was starting to feel worse, and I abruptly had to leave.

When I got home, I immediately had to use the bathroom, and I got into bed and I fell asleep for 4 hours. I was really shocked. I felt pretty zapped for the rest of the day and had to stay in bed. It took me a while to fall asleep when it was actually time to go to bed. I assume it was probably due to the 4-hour nap I had earlier in the day. But I did sleep eventually, and I slept in rather late the next morning.

But the diarrhea got worse, and the diarrhea is still ongoing even right now.

What Could Be Going On

I believe that these present-moment techniques are allowing my nervous system to access and release long-held survival energy previously stored in freeze and sympathetic patterns. This now constant diarrhea reflects parasympathetic discharge through the gastrointestinal system, which is a primary exit pathway for stored autonomic charge.

As my body works through old, unfinished stress reactions, my stomach and intestines start moving more to help eliminate built-up tension and waste. This could be a sign that my body is trying to heal and bring my nervous system back into balance. Oddly, this process can feel like things are getting worse. In reality, as earlier surface layers of stress discharge, deeper layers of stored autonomic charge, survival energy, tension, and unresolved responses long suppressed to protect me from overwhelm, are being accessed and released. Severe nervous system dysregulation is tricky like that.

This temporary increase in symptoms reflects deeper processing, not regression. The system is tolerating more, revealing more, and discharging more. At least….I am hoping.

However…

As the title clearly suggests “I Think I might be…” this is unfortunately, all speculation. I do a lot of emotional processing work with an incredible Chronic Illness Coach which has helped get me to next level healing and functionality, but there are other things I’m doing completely on my own. For better or for worse, this is where I am at.

I can only provide my personal experience; I can only be honest with what is going on for me. Perhaps there are dangers in releasing information like this publicly and possibly looking like an idiot. This is something that I’m always really afraid of but the things that have happened are real and they are my personal experience. It’s not a perfect process by any means, and it has been generally a lonely one.

That’s really what this entire blog is about. It is this space, this place where I’m trying to get my voice out, I’m trying to be heard. It’s hard. I have felt the need to be completely anonymous and part of the reason for that is so that I can talk very openly about all of these things without worry of the wrong people finding this. I never thought that I would be this old and still being very haunted by the things that took place in my childhood.

But part of the reason why is because I bypassed.

I remember very vividly on the day I was driving to college at age 18: I remember thinking to myself ” My parents did the best that they could and I really don’t want to hold a grudge so I’m just going to forgive them.” It felt nice at the time, and I thought that I was being “good” in doing this.

But this encouraged further unresolved nervous system cycles being locked inside my body. I have been on a quest ever since trying to figure out the cure, the one thing that will make it all go away.

Conclusion

This “allowing” thing sucks. It sucks because even that has caused for a strong reaction in my body. I just want relief so badly…but even the relief, even the wanting of relief….causes bypassing. Wanting relief focuses attention on stopping or escaping sensations rather than allowing them. This introduces control, resistance, and cognitive interference, and signaling danger to the nervous system. The system interprets avoidance as threat, reinforcing survival states. Bypassing occurs because relief-seeking interrupts the natural discharge sequence, preventing full completion of stored autonomic responses.

Are You Bypassing or Overriding Your Body’s Genius? | Psychology Today

This is all complicated. It is layered. It is in many parts, as you can see since this is part 4.

I am pretty sure that this franchise is far from being over…until next installment…

I don’t know where this is headed, but I know I’m not giving up on listening to my body.

Recalibration vs Healing: Understanding the Difference – Astra speaks – Part 5 of this Series