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Expressing Emotions

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Re: Expressing Emotions

Postby Unsocial Butterfly » Sun Aug 14, 2016 6:09 pm

I also was bullied, but my parents never cared enough to move me to another school. I think I have cognitively broken down my trapped emotions too much. There is one memory in particular, where I was in my room after a fight with my dad, and I can remember how mad I was but I was pushing the anger away. The weird thing is I remember how angry I was, but I don't experience any particular emotion when thinking about it. You would expect either feel the anger you experienced, or grief that you were in that situation, but I am just happy to be away from it.
"While Eeyore frets...
...and Piglet hesitates
... and Rabbit calculates
....and Owl pontificates
.... Pooh just is." - The Tao of Pooh
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Re: Expressing Emotions

Postby julllia » Mon Aug 15, 2016 1:05 pm

you never feel anger or sadness or fear? you do not remember how anger feels?

i push the anger away and it turns into sadness.i used to be more angry .when i couldn't express it anymore. instead of being angry like i used to, i get immediately depressed.

Are you saying you push emotions down so that you can't feel them? Or are you feeling them but can't show it outwards?

i am not like this.now i understand from this description.this must be very difficult to deal with. you do not even feel the emotion at all . never?
if someone push my buttons i will express it, i might explode (in crying and anger and every emotions there is)but i am good at controlling it and good at being social but is very tiring that i have to control it, to the point i prefer to avoid everything.probably this sounds more like social anxiety and depression . sometimes i am very apathetic and i usually wonder on my own why i do not feel anything when others do. wtf is wrong with me.
i love feelings and expressions too much and i can not do it. and i have to be in control of it. he said about food disorders. i am very controlling with food too.
is a feeling more of :i have to be in control of it.i can't let go of control.i want to let go /i can't let go
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Re: Expressing Emotions

Postby Unsocial Butterfly » Mon Aug 15, 2016 2:04 pm

I rarely feel sad or angry, but if I really ruminate and try I can become sad or angry about events from my childhood. it helped me identify a bit more with those feelings when my therapist asked me to consider how I would feel if I saw a child being treated that way.

Even when I do get sad in therapy, I give one tear and feel like I spent enough time crying. although, there was one time in emdr when I going over a more traumatic memory, and I was physically crying but mentally not aware of it. my therapist told me I was crying, but I did not believe her until I wiped the tears off my face.
"While Eeyore frets...
...and Piglet hesitates
... and Rabbit calculates
....and Owl pontificates
.... Pooh just is." - The Tao of Pooh
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Re: Expressing Emotions

Postby Auxiliary11 » Mon Aug 15, 2016 6:00 pm

I find comfort in the fact that this is typical for borderlines and avoidants, at least I know I'm not alone in having a hard time expressing myself. For the longest time I thought this was reduced affect display, but it's not, because not feeling emotions is so different to not showing them. I mean you know it's emotional detachment when you've barely cried in months and months; and you rarely feel much anger anymore.

It's interesting, but also really sad, to hear that you can become physically ill from this. I know in my case I can experience real psychomotor slowing in response to the numbing...

Honestly a few weeks back I'm sure I had something of a nervous breakdown. Through a combination of sensory overload, repressed feelings, conscious suggestion that I was "crazy" by someone who I was with at the time, perceived hostility from the other person, a deep guilt over what I'd done earlier, and lack of coping mechanisms -- I had this breakdown. I dissociated heavily, felt anxious and confused, erratic, and neurotic; I don't think I'll ever forget that.

Sometimes I wonder if I have BPD features too. If that's not the case, then I think I'm a deeply disturbed and decompensated fragile narcissist and aspie at the same time, which would explain the emotional outbursts, and inward hatred. I mean really, why couldn't someone have both? Nothing worse than feeling like the very essence of who you are (false self) is just 'dying'.

Expressing feelings will always be difficult for me, partly because they're too difficult to acknowledge myself, and partly because - as others have said - they might incite a negative judgement over being 'weak' by the other person. Being rejected over expressing affection or positive emotions would crush me.
self dx. pdd-nos (level 1); covert narcissism w/ avoidant traits; social phobia; inertia.

INFP; dismissive/fearful-avoidant & highly sensitive person

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"you built up a world of magic, because your real life is tragic"
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Re: Expressing Emotions

Postby Remember Ronni » Mon Aug 15, 2016 8:24 pm

I do feel emotion, it's just that I can switch it off or shut it down straight away. Sometimes it's strange because I will wake up and feel angry, and then spend all day feeling angry, even though nothing has happened to make me feel like that. But if I ask myself what is it that's really making me angry, I can usually find some triggering event days, weeks, months or even years ago. My therapist commented on it once - that because I dissociate or detach emotionally from things it can be very difficult to work out triggers for those emotions. So to me, I just have mood swings. To my therapist, I just haven't let myself feel an emotion or process an event because I switched it off.

One of the problems with the whole over control thing is that shutting off your emotions like that can lead to depression and mood swings. My mood swings are rarely seen by other people. Of course sometimes I just don't feel the emotion in the first place - it takes a lot to make me angry, and I rarely cry.

Anyway I am still learning about all this over-control stuff. I didn't know that what I was doing was dissociation either. So all of this is still very new to me.
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Re: Expressing Emotions

Postby Unsocial Butterfly » Mon Aug 15, 2016 9:50 pm

I don't experience a lot of anger or sadness. one emotion I did experience a lot before I started therapy was shame, because I had learned to always find the fault in myself. now that I have most trained myself not to do that, it is pretty calm.
"While Eeyore frets...
...and Piglet hesitates
... and Rabbit calculates
....and Owl pontificates
.... Pooh just is." - The Tao of Pooh
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Re: Expressing Emotions

Postby AvoidantPenny » Wed Aug 17, 2016 7:20 pm

God some of the things people post here... it's like your lives are clones of my life, so many little details in common. It's weird.

I came up with this visualisation for my emotions. They are round squashy things with little arms and legs, kind of like the M&M character. And I keep them in cages, especially Anger, he's never ever allowed out of his cage. I don't want to allow them free reign because they'll run around causing chaos and I don't know how to deal with them. The cages are kept in the loft (attic) so the main house is perfectly quiet and still, but in a dead and eerie way.

I need to get to a point where the emotions can all come and live with me in the main house. They can run and play as they like but if they get too raucous or start making trouble I can say hey guys, calm down and go sit on the sofa for a bit, and they'll do it. Then my house will be lively and colourful and a happier place to be.

Auxiliary have you heard of emotional flashbacks? Your breakdown sounds a lot like a flashback.
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Re: Expressing Emotions

Postby Remember Ronni » Wed Aug 17, 2016 11:51 pm

I know this is going to sound really silly, but my anger also has a name. Little Miss Angry. She's usually very quiet because I am really not an angry person. But every now and again Little Miss Angry escapes. I've joked about it on the forum before. It's usually when I'm really tired or in the past when I used to get PMT. Sounds like that movie, inside out where the emotions all have characters - not that I've seen it, just seen the trailers.
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Re: Expressing Emotions

Postby Unsocial Butterfly » Thu Aug 18, 2016 12:52 am

In the last few months I have been reading books about Taoism, and Buddhism, and it has really changed how I perceive events. My biggest problem was self shaming and fearing the worst outcome(pretty always how I would my job because I'm not good enough). Now I just try to stay present, I could get laid off but that is something I can deal with if it happens. I can tell I am present based off of things like noticing room temperature differences or the breeze on my skin.

When you are experiencing strong emotions is it more physical or thought based? for me it is thought based, so if I turn it back to physical sensations they pass very quickly. I think I might only cry for a second because I am not giving it thought space to fester.
"While Eeyore frets...
...and Piglet hesitates
... and Rabbit calculates
....and Owl pontificates
.... Pooh just is." - The Tao of Pooh
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Re: Expressing Emotions

Postby Remember Ronni » Thu Aug 18, 2016 2:35 am

For me it's feeling.

My therapist would ask me, when she saw a flicker of emotion, what I was thinking and I struggled with that one. So she started asking me how it felt and to describe what that feeling was like and where it was I was feeling it.

I don't know if this has anything to do with this at all but my Myers Briggs personality type is INFJ. The F stands for feeling. There is also INTJ and the T stands for thinking. May have no connection to this though. But I tend to make decisions based on how I am feeling.
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