Hello everyone I am new to this so hope I'm doing it right. I am also new to an all womens support group for 18-25 year olds in my city.

Emotions are talked about a lot in this group that I attend once a week, something that myself and the other members need practice at recognising and sitting with. Personally, I am almost completely closed off from my emotions and I'm really wanting to make this group work for me and help myself to open up. Problem is, I have tried to record my emotions, figure out what I'm feeling regularly each day, decipher between different emotions, and grab the chances that I do have, when I do feel something, to hold on to the feeling for as long as I can, focusing on it and attempting to sit with it.

I have had some successes at sitting with emotions, but barely any. I have been focusing on my enotions and recording them etc for the past 7 months. I think that is a long time and my progress has been minimal so far.

I have barely any ability to feel what others are feeling, or work out/understand what they might be feeling from what they have said or understanding what its like in their shoes. My emotional response to most occurences in my own experience too is also non existent mostl of the time.

So I've been attending this weekly group for 5 weeks. While I realise I'm new and it is normal to expect the process of opening up (and feeling emotions at all) to take a long time, I feel I habe been trying intentfully to feel emotions for a very long time now and I'm just not getting anywhere and worried it's not going to happen simply by attending this group and tryinf what I already know.

I know I have some big pains and enotional trauma that I am deep down preventing myself from feeling, as a self protective measure, and that I learned to do this as a child. However I am not a child anymore, I'm 22, and I want so badly to feel the pain of my past so that I can process it and let go of it. Let go of the hold of the victim inside of me and move on with my life because I am deeply unhappy at present and stuck.

I am wondering if anybody can relate to these kinds of emotional blockages and shut downs of the emotional Self, and if anybody knows how to tap in to such parts of myself and really feel my emotional experiences? If anybody knows how to tune back in to what I have so firmly tuned out of?

Thank you in advance and much love to everyone