Ok, I'll bite. Exactly what kind of help are you looking for? Unless you are clear on what kind of help you are looking for, no one is going to be quite sure how to respond to your response.
Do you want other people to respond to admit that they experience something similar so that you don't feel like the only one who experiences this particular issue?
Are you looking for responses that will be supportive and encouraging so that you feel like someone cares?
Or are you looking for practical advice on ways to evaluate yourself and your own behaviors for clues to understanding how you are feeling at any given point in time?
Just for the record, I am a bit limited on emotions myself, so you will receive practical steps or advice to ways to overcome this if you are asking for the latter kind of help. In fact, my exact advice in this situation would be to point out that some people are just unable to experience or understand emotions, and the reasons for this are varied, whether through personal experiences or neurological differences. If you want advice on how to function with blunted or limited emotional range, go hang out with the Aspies and Schizoids because they are the ones who live with this. If you have a full range of emotions but just difficulty identifying them due to life experiences, go hang out with the abused/PTSD posters. It doesn't matter yet why you are the way you are if you are looking to become functional. Get behavior and coping skills that will stabilize you to the point where you can feel start exploring the underlying issues.
You can also consider investing in some books or websites about body language and what behaviors indicate about people's moods. There's a book for writers called the emotion thesaurus that provides a pretty good variety of emotions and what kind of physical behaviors accompany those. In fact just a general search for emotional or behavior online should get you a wide array of hits online. If you're not a reader and more of a visual learner, go hang out at public places and sit and people watch. Try to figure out what people are feeling based on their behavior. Eventually the patterns will emerge and you will be able to recognize commonalities and apply them to yourself.
Do a little research so you have your vocabulary and understand the core concepts you can move onto practicing self-awareness. Once you know what kind of behavior accompanies certain emotions you can start using that knowledge to understand what kind of behavior you are displaying and the likely emotions that you are feeling to accompany that. If you start to realize what behaviors are ones that drive other people away you can start reading books about emotional intelligence or behavior modification, or start watching TED talks online or whatever to get ideas on ways to modify your impulses. If you have reason to believe that your behavior may be rooted in neurological or require medication, then don't hesitate to go to therapy for help. Mindfulness therapy will help you learn to recognize your feelings in the moment, behavioral therapy will help you learn healthy methods of coping. Read books about how to get along better with people and try to apply those ideas will help you interact better with other people so that they are more willing to offer you help when you ask. Also, all of this is a process and takes time and trial and effort on your part, so you can't expect an immediate fix.
|