[RockMaterial]

I rarely express my emotions, simply because I don't feel anything that I need to express. People often mistaken my silence as anger or just being rude, while in reality I simply have nothing to say. Other times, when I'm sad or angry, I keep to myself because I don't feel comfortable showing my emotions to others. When I'm forced to show or talk about these two emotions, they almost always mix each other up (feeling sad - act angry, feeling angry - start crying) Should I be feeling things more? I mean, I just can't make up emotions I don't feel just to appease others. At the same time though, is this normal? And how do I get more comfortable talking about them to people without screwing them up?

[gayleggg]

Hi, welcome to PC. Don't know that I can answer your question, but I do know it takes practice talking about our emotions. Sometimes they are hard to identify. Are you seeing a therapist, if not you might start there to help you sort through your feelings. By the way, I cry when I get angry, too. Writing about them might help as well. Keep posting there are a lot of helpful people on PC.
Gayle

[yellowfrog268]

Hello RockMaterial and welcome to the forums.

Only a qualified therapist or Pdoc can give you a definitive answer as to whether or not what your experiencing is normal. I've known people who are not very emotive. For some it's cultural. For others it's the way they were raised. You said that when you are forced to talk about your emotions that anger and sadness get mixed up. Just a guess here but, could some of the anger actually be from the fact that your being coerced into talking about your sadness when you don't want to?

[Perna]

You can't screw up your emotions or expressing them; they are what they are. Untangling and expressing them well though takes learning, practice, and a lot of trial and error, etc. to get them how you want.

There are a zillion shades of emotions, they are usually a continuum. "Frustration" for example, is on the anger continuum but when one realizes one feels it and expresses that, it can forestall the so-angry-I-burst-into-tears response (been there, done that). It is the bottling up and not saying anything for so long that makes it impossible to "get-there-from-here".

I still remember paying several hundred dollars when I couldn't afford it for my car repairs only to go to the car to drive away and it was exactly as I'd left it that morning (switches pulled out/wires showing and everything) when I dropped it off; they hadn't touched it. My best friend was with me, had driven me to the repair shop but she had to get somewhere else, was late for what she was doing; I burst into tears and she had to explain to the shop manager what the problem was. My only other recourse felt like killing everyone?

40 years later now, after a lot of good psychotherapy, I could deal with that, get the problem solved better and with less emotional cost to myself.