I'd like to ask for some general advice; medical, psychological, spiritual. As some of you know, I'm in the on-going process of trying to regain full control of my emotions, and this means I need to learn to control my body. For the last few years, I've been in a near-permanent state of physiological arousal (no sex jokes, please
). My body's always primed for fight-or-flight without reasonable cause, and it really takes its toll on me. Not only do I hardly ever relax, but those odd times where I do find myself relaxing it feels so alien it's nearly intolerable, and I end up inducing a state of physiological alertness before even realizing I'm doing it. Naturally, I want to stop this and learn to "turn off" my physiological alarm system.
This state is artificial; it's a learnt response that became permanent, like the TARDIS being stuck on "blue police box" for camouflarge. In fact, my state of mind is aligned towards a sense of peace and non-aggression, and the physiological influence on my mood often leaves me torn between a "genuine" sense of my feelings and a "false" mood stemming from whatever my body's pumping, which I can't switch off. In my "normal" state, believe it or not, I'm actually not prone to extreme reactions - indeed, during my childhood, tantrums or large emotional displays were nearly unheard of. I did cry a lot, but even that was silent tears, never demonstrative. I was a quiet, controlled, peaceable boy. It even took me literally years to learn how to actively assert an opinion around other people, because challenging other people's worldview in any way struck me as an imposition, and I wasn't comfortable with "attacking" them. My response to being "attacked" myself was to assume either misunderstanding on their part or error on mine, and calmly aim to do better next time. Aggression had no part to play.
Now, I acknowledge that adolescence is obviously going to knock you around chemically, but I'm now settling into post-adolescence and my body is seemingly stuck on overdrive. For the last few years, not only am I constantly on edge but I'm jerked around like a puppet by bodily reactions that don't match up with my frame of mind, and confuse my mood. Any unexpected noise, for example, and I experience a massive rush of chemicals and nerve responses that really tax my body. I'm nearly always exhausted - sometimes I literally struggle to climb the stairs. And I'm always hovering on the edge of underweight no matter what I eat.
So, given how useful this little community is with advice and general observations, I ask you: how do you learn to control your body's response to external stimuli? Make it relax and ease it into a standard setting of non-arousal?

This state is artificial; it's a learnt response that became permanent, like the TARDIS being stuck on "blue police box" for camouflarge. In fact, my state of mind is aligned towards a sense of peace and non-aggression, and the physiological influence on my mood often leaves me torn between a "genuine" sense of my feelings and a "false" mood stemming from whatever my body's pumping, which I can't switch off. In my "normal" state, believe it or not, I'm actually not prone to extreme reactions - indeed, during my childhood, tantrums or large emotional displays were nearly unheard of. I did cry a lot, but even that was silent tears, never demonstrative. I was a quiet, controlled, peaceable boy. It even took me literally years to learn how to actively assert an opinion around other people, because challenging other people's worldview in any way struck me as an imposition, and I wasn't comfortable with "attacking" them. My response to being "attacked" myself was to assume either misunderstanding on their part or error on mine, and calmly aim to do better next time. Aggression had no part to play.
Now, I acknowledge that adolescence is obviously going to knock you around chemically, but I'm now settling into post-adolescence and my body is seemingly stuck on overdrive. For the last few years, not only am I constantly on edge but I'm jerked around like a puppet by bodily reactions that don't match up with my frame of mind, and confuse my mood. Any unexpected noise, for example, and I experience a massive rush of chemicals and nerve responses that really tax my body. I'm nearly always exhausted - sometimes I literally struggle to climb the stairs. And I'm always hovering on the edge of underweight no matter what I eat.
So, given how useful this little community is with advice and general observations, I ask you: how do you learn to control your body's response to external stimuli? Make it relax and ease it into a standard setting of non-arousal?