Quote:
Originally Posted by shygirl2101
I'm having trouble identifying my feelings, particularly if it's a positive feeling. That's sort of my fault, because when i started high school i made this conscious decision that i want to numb my feelings. That meant that when i felt sad and depressed i tried to push those feelings away and didn't cry, because i thought that was showing weakness. When i felt angry with someone i didn't argue with them. . . and so on . What i thought then was that if i don't act on my negative emotions that i'm numbing them and then i can only feel the positive ones, but what came as a result was that i felt completely numb. I felt that all my tears dried up and when i smiled the muscles on my cheeks hurt. Also it was a period when i felt really distanced with everybody and just demotivated. Then the following year i got transferred to a different school and after the self acceptance that i have a mental disorder and two months of therapy, i began taking dietary supplements. That's when i felt like something unwound in me, and all the emotions just started to break free. I could feel happy and laugh from the heart, but also i started to tear up for no reason . Although ever since then i'm feeling better, i still get back to feeling empty once in while. The hardest thing about this situation is that when i feel like that i don't know how to react to certain situations that require emotional response. And also i find it hard to express my feelings, like i can't find the right words for them. The only feelings i can express are for the most part anxiety and sadness, because i feel them very intense.
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>> My experiences with repressing my feelings back in early childhood was that, once the feelings began to emerge at middle age in therapy, I simply did not have a vocabulary or the words to talk about how I felt and had to sit through a lot of sharing meetings to gradually acquire the words and terms to describe and talk about my feelings. I've come to see that MANY people cannot talk about their feelings for the same reason - not enough adequate words and terms! I spent hours in a dictionary or thesaurus working with simple words like: anger, hurt, sorrow, rage, depression, jealousy, fear, hate, god, etc. to come up with an arsenal of useful words to bring into sharing meetings or in my journaling. I got the idea from a one page piece that dramatically broke down the Serenity Prayer, word by word, like dissecting a plant! The work was worth it to finally be comfortable with and clear about my feelings and thoughts.
I offer you this piece I wrote about tears and hope that it helps:
http://forums.psychcentral.com/adult...ars-grief.html
good luck,
jim
