sometimes i think i'm processing my feelings but then realize later i'm really just dwelling on them and stuck. i just don't know how you know which is which when it's happening. any ideas as to how to tell the difference? also, i know how to repress feelings or get stuck dwelling on them but i don't really understand how to feel them and move past them in healthy ways. are there any good books or resources about this? i've got the two dysfunctional opposites down pat now i need to learn the healthy way.

[lynn P.]

Just want you know I read your thread - don't like to see a thread without replies. I think you ask an excellent question Bloom - but I don't know the answer lol. I'll be thinking about it though.

[Miracle1986]

I am guilty of dwelling on emotions.
I hope someone has some insight/answers for you (and me!)

[JeanJean]

Hi Bloom3... I'm new here and don't have any wonderful books or websites to refer you to, but I love your question.

Jean

[(JD)]

It's good to realize that you are feeling and perhaps not thinking correctly (but running on how you feel instead.)

Ruminating is running the same thoughts over and over again, the same worries or scenes over and over again in your mind. If you are doing that with thoughts of your feelings, then I guess you could stop it the same way.

One way is to set aside time during the day when you focus on ... your feelings... for instance. Maybe all your feelings during that day? You have a time limit (depending upon how many and much you want to cover, but no more than 15 minutes I would say.)

Once you've ended the time, then whenever you find yourself being selfconscious about how you are feeling, tell yourself, " NOPE not now, I already worked on that, I'll address it again tomorrow."

You can really let the feelings run and ruin your life. It's okay to push your feelings at times, when it's good such as when you are enjoying something and then you focus on how feeling good etc is feeling. But don't dwell on it, as that will take you off track. (Especially if you are depressed, all those negative thoughts will come in too.)

Distraction is a good tool for stopping negative feelings. I personally use the game arcade here when I can, when the pain is enough to make me not be able to think happy thoughts but I can still manage to distract myself with the game to play. This keeps me from sliding down that slipery depression slope of how miserable my life is when the pain increases, etc.

Again I have to refer to the sticky post in the psychotherapy forum that lists the 10 common cognitive distortions and what to do about them. You might be battling more than one of them.

Good wishes.

[carinacan]

don't know if i can be much help.....i usealy don't feel my feelings so its hard to know what thay r when i do......but i understand what u mean...sometimes i want to feel something( anything) that i think i just make it up...like i'll become super happy or somthing.....and i don't know if its real or if i just want it to be.....

i can't say how to find the diffs but just wanted to say your not alone

[FooZe]

Originally Posted by bloom3

i know how to repress feelings or get stuck dwelling on them but i don't really understand how to feel them and move past them in healthy ways. are there any good books or resources about this?

If I understand Carl Rogers aright, psychotherapy for him was all about learning that very distinction. He described it in "A Process Conception of Psychotherapy" which later became a chapter in his 1961 book On Becoming a Person. It's long been one of my favorite books. A Google Books copy of it is available online here.

I also found a webpage that sounds like someone's counseling homework on that chapter. I hesitate to recommend it because quite unlike Rogers, the author manages to make the topic cloudier rather than clearer for me. Perhaps it's a concrete example of thinking about feelings instead of feeling them. Anyway here's the link: Questions to help elucidate Rogers' seven stages of personality change in psychotherapy

Originally Posted by bloom3

i've got the two dysfunctional opposites down pat now i need to learn the healthy way.

I don't see them as true opposites. When you're learning to ride a bicycle, falling over to the left isn't really the opposite of falling over to the right. Either one is the opposite of keeping your wheels under you and staying upright.

thanks to those who can empathize and thanks to those with ideas. i hadn't thought that maybe it's more my ruminating thoughts that are causing me to dwell on my feelings but that could very well be. i do use distraction techniques as that works and i did just recently give myself a deadline on my dwelling as it was driving me nuts. that worked too but i'm not sure about setting a really limited amount of time. my concern there is that i might just end up stuffing feelings that do need to be dealt with. i do know though when i'm spiraling bigtime that is necessary. i'll have to check out the carl rogers info. that sounds interesting.

[FooZe]

(Take 2 )

Originally Posted by bloom3

sometimes i think i'm processing my feelings but then realize later i'm really just dwelling on them and stuck. i just don't know how you know which is which when it's happening. any ideas as to how to tell the difference?

When you process an experience -- just let it be the way it is and see where it takes you -- you soon move on. When I find myself dwelling on something, it's seldom obvious at the time but it usually turns out that I've been resisting whatever comes next.

I'll try to notice the next time or two what I do to move on, but it seems to me that it's some version of, "Oh, hey, I'm dwelling on this! Well, then, let me really dwell on it and see if I can have a good time doing it..."

[Meow_is_Truth]

I know I'm dwelling on a feeling when I realise I'm secretly enjoying it. I'm not saying pathological emotions are a choice, but sometimes dark thoughts and feelings can get attractive.

[sugahorse1]

I've been told by my T i dwell on my emotions instead of just going with the flow of them.

[Gently1]

I do not know much on emotions or feelings,
but I am an expert on dwelling on thoughts- what if's, but fail to see the underlying feelings.
As I have made some progress is has been by asking questions. Hope you find the information that you need.

[Perna]

Feeling feelings is in the moment. Right now, I'm tired, bored, a little sad. Any "thought" about one's feelings, especially those that do not belong to "now"/have passed or are about an incident other than one that is or has just happened, is dwelling.

Just like one is worrying if one is thinking about something that hasn't happened yet (no way to know if it will go well/ill or be good/bad, etc. because it hasn't happened yet, may not happen at all), we feel things all the time, as they happen, whether we realize it or not. It's all right to have "mixed" feelings (be anxious and excited at the same time or happy and sad) but one should be able to stop and think, "what am I feeling right now" and take the time to answer. There are no "right" feelings because no one else can be in our bodies having our experience so can't judge whether what we feel is right for the situation or not. Do you remember Mary Tyler Moore and the "Chuckles the Clown" episode where she was laughing at his funeral? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chuckles_Bites_the_Dust

You can't really re-feel/experience what has passed, you can remember the experience and respond to your memories of it (and perhaps remember what feelings you didn't remember feeling at the time) but other than working on a past situation in that way, usually in therapy, any other going over feelings for an extended period is probably going to be "dwelling" on them.

If someone dies, etc., yes, you are going to feel sad and angry and lots of stuff for a long time but you probably aren't going to focus (dwell) on that you are feeling those things all that time. Feelings are to help us "navigate" through our current experiences, it is information to tell us what is going on with us interiorly and exteriorly.

If someone dies and you go to the grocery store the next week and burst into tears in the canned soup aisle; it would help orient you to look around and see you are in the canned soup aisle and your childhood friend's mother use to serve you and she Campbell's Tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwiches for lunch when you were five. But it would probably be dwelling to have that happen and then cry every time you have soup, remembering that you cried for your friend and missed her in the soup aisle at the grocery store. Once you make a connection between an event and a feeling, when that connection happens again, you may acknowledge it, "Ah, it's Susie and the soup again, gee I really miss Susie and her mother and the good old days in Bethesda when we were children" but to continue thinking about it or to "get lost" in it and let your mind take you back to the good old days (when you are at work and supposed to be working) would be dwelling and inappropriate. We can't choose our thoughts and feelings but we can choose our focus and activities. Once we connect thoughts and feelings to activities in the present, we can refocus and move forward some more, get new thoughts and feelings and activities

[Kisstal3]

I never thought of it that way..... that's a good question. I def dwell... and on stuff that SHOULDNT even matter!!

[bluemonkey2]

Originally Posted by bloom3

sometimes i think i'm processing my feelings but then realize later i'm really just dwelling on them and stuck. i just don't know how you know which is which when it's happening. any ideas as to how to tell the difference? also, i know how to repress feelings or get stuck dwelling on them but i don't really understand how to feel them and move past them in healthy ways. are there any good books or resources about this? i've got the two dysfunctional opposites down pat now i need to learn the healthy way.

hi i'm new here. i tend to dwell on things a lot. while i can't answer your question, i can offer up a possible solution to stop the dwelling especially if it's negative. wear a rubber band around your wrist. everytime you start dwelling on something snap it. hope this helps.

[Lilleth]

I wish i had an answer for you but I am the same too. And even if I can rationalise it all there is not solution and then I sink deeper into depression. At lot of my problems are emotional, financial with no solution and I have no one to turn too. I am having cognative theraphy one to one sessions and the T says I am stronger than I realise but I cant see that in myself I just feel a failure and weak.