Thank you 12AM for the kind post and visitors' profile message. I hope that the info is helpful to you.

Your post made me wonder if you'd ever tried asking your subconscious why you feel angry or depressed, and if you feel that you don't deserve to feel good if it causes dissociation?? I've not personally tried free writing, but I've heard it's a good way to tap into your subconscious. I used to do this mentally, asking myself Qs, and feelings and thoughts would surface. One example was that I left a particular therapy session feeling really dejected, even though on the surface it'd been a good session. So I asked myself why I felt sad and I heard a voice out loud say "because it's pointless", so then I asked myself why is therapy pointless, and the same voice replied "you're pointless!" and then I understood why I was sad. Back then I was operating on the belief that I was an awful person and so I felt that I didn't 'deserve' to feel better or make changes to my life. If a person feels like that, they will often subconsciously sabotage their attempts to improve things, so it's an important belief to work through. I don't know who the voice was, it certainly wasn't me, but it helped me realise things that day.

Another way I've seen work (though with voices and with people, but I don't see why it couldn't work on emotions too??) is the empty chair technique. You sit in a chair facing an empty chair where you 'sit' the voice or person or part of yourself (or emotion in your case), and you talk to them and somehow your subconscious gives you 'their' answers. So, for example, if I was you I might put my feelings of anger or depression in the empty chair and ask it why it's angry/depressed and what you can do to help it feel better. I will admit that it does feel silly at first, but it can be a good way to unlock answers from inside yourself. Just don't try to force the answers: let them come from inside you naturally.

I also thought that maybe giving yourself 'permission' to be angry or depressed in a dialectical way might be useful? E.g. So you could say to yourself something like "it's ok to be angry, but I'm going to do X to calm down". Or "it's ok to feel scared when good things happen, but I still deserve to feel good" etc.

Acting opposite to how you feel and "doing it anyway" is hard. I've been doing it my entire life and I still find it hard sometimes. In some respects, I am very good at compartmentalising my feelings and experiences and getting on with what's needed, but it is tiring. What I'm saying is, don't be demoralised if it's hard or you can't always do it. I can't always do it either. You are not looking for perfection: it is not attainable. If doing X opposite to what you want to do feels impossible, try Y which is slightly easier but still gets you in the right direction. For example, if I'm too scared to go out to run an errand, I will force myself to walk my dog. I feel safer outside when I'm with him so it's easier to go out with him when I'm scared, though still hard. But once I've done that (and praised myself for it), it is then easier to go and run my errand on my own because I can tell myself that I've already been out once before and it went ok. And some days it just doesn't happen for whatever reason, and that's when you need to be gentle with yourself. E.g. "I'm disappointed that I couldn't do X, but that doesn't make me a failure and I will try again later/tomorrow".

All the best

*Willow*