By Azadeh Weber
Within the human being, homeostasis can occur on a physiological or psychological level. Homeostasis refers to a system’s tendency towards equilibrium between interdependent elements and equilibrium is a state of equal balance between all interdependent parts. An example of homeostasis on the physiological level is when a person becomes cold and starts shivering to develop heat in order to restore his or her body temperature to normal range.
Physiological homeostasis can also have negative implications, such as when a person is unable to lose weight beyond a certain point, despite best practices. On a psychological level, homeostasis may have negative or positive implications as well. The purpose of this article is to describe some of the negative implications of psychological homeostasis, so as to begin to harness the growth potential in chaos. A cross country runner is familiar with the notion that for every uphill battle, there follows a time to coast downhill.
This being said, our emotions may operate automatically via homeostasis. If a person is feeling sad or angry the person may automatically distract themselves with something pleasant in order to return to the emotional state he or she is accustomed to as normal. This drive towards enhancing pleasure is based on the pleasure principle, rather than the reality principle. With regards to anger, the inability for anger to ground itself due to near constant distraction prevents a person from sublimating aggressiveness into assertiveness, leaving the person to experience anger in a dissociative state when it does arise. When in a dissociative state a person’s thoughts are disconnected from their consciousness. This means the person’s thoughts are split off from the person’s heart center and the person may become prone to cruelty.
There are times when homeostasis prevents the person from being able to sit with an uncomfortable emotion long enough to properly actualize the growth potential within each emotion. When an uncomfortable emotion is not grounded the risk is it may come up again in the future and interfere with a person’s ability to align their values and behaviors. A case in point is when a person has unprocessed trauma and as a result, experiences anxiety whenever he or she encounters an environmental cue associated with that trauma. In turn, the anxiety may impair the person’s attention to detail and lead to various mistakes. This happens quite suddenly and often at a below threshold level of awareness, catching the individual off guard. For example, if at the time of trauma, the air was cold and dry, now the person may get triggered by experiencing that climate in the future. The body starts to relive the trauma and the autonomic nervous system activates into fight or flight mode. The air and temperature can trigger a stress response in the individual and he or she doesn’t know why. Once the trauma is processed the environmental trigger and “existential anxiety” start to dissolve. Associated symptoms of anxiety such as impaired attention, difficulty focusing and lapses in executive functioning also start to dissolve.
According to the notion of Homeostasis, families also develop recurrent patterns of interaction that maintain the stability of the family, particularly in times of stress (Becvar & Becvar, 2009). This is referred to as systemic homeostasis and it becomes problematic when families act in ways that maintain a problem rather than change it for the better. An extreme case of this is when a family enables a member’s drug addiction by making excuses for this member and assuming the responsibilities of the member. Overtime, without responsibilities the member further loses meaning and purpose in their life and numbs the pain with more drugs.
An antidote to falling into a cycle of unproductive homeostasis is developing the inner resources, tools and social network to thrive in times of chaos. Embracing chaos is important because every step into positive change is experienced as the unknown. The unknown is unpredictable in the same way as chaos. For many people, this is antithesis to the pleasure principle. The unknown, the unpredictable and the mysterious may arouse fear within the rigid personality structure, causing the individual to distract themselves from the undesired emotion by returning to homeostasis, rather than embracing the mysterious and shifting into a flow state towards positive change. By all means, structure and order are important. However, strength of character develops in response to unpredictability so the value of chaos, wherein the mysterious lies, cannot be understated.
A sign of maturity is a person who has replaced the pleasure principle with the reality principle. In his book, “The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable, “ author Nassim Taleb (2007) explains the value of thriving in times of chaos. According to Taleb, resilience is the ability for a person to return to a normal state after the disaster. Returning to normal state after disaster is a positive presentation of homeostasis. Nonetheless, Taleb points out that there is a more preferable state to resilience and that state is anti-fragility. Anti-fragility is a preferred state to resilience because an anti-fragile person doesn’t simply return to their previous state after a disaster, he or she grows and thrives due to the chaos. Of course, perpetual chaos is not what we are after and we certainly don’t want to instigate chaos to benefit from it. Yet, chaos is unavoidable.
An effective life strategy is to have some psychological tools, namely emotional and social skills to leverage chaos when it shows up in our lives. One such strategy is calling out to Allah when we are feeling vulnerable, so as to draw closer to him. In this way we may consolidate our inner resources and reconnect to our strength and patience. Certainly, gratitude for everything, for all things are from Allah, is a blessing.
Taleb, N. N. (2007). The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable. Becvar, D. S., & Becvar, R. J. (2009). Family therapy: A systemic integration (7th ed. ed.). Boston: Allyn & Bacon.