Emotions

I don't know if this makes sense, things are jumbled right now. Do you ever wonder if you're really feeling what you're feeling or if you're just making yourself feel like that because society dictates or people dictate that you should feel that way, or you want to feel that way but don't, etc.

Like sympathy, empathy, excitement, fear, sadness, even happiness... I don't know if I feel what I maybe feel sometimes. I can't tell if my emotions are fake. I'll think I'm happy but maybe I'm really angry. Or jealous. Or upset. I don't understand my own feelings. I don't know what my instinct is. It's almost surreal and confusing. I try to think about it, the more I think about it the more my head hurts and nothing makes sense. Things stop seeming real- and I don't know where my real emotions or feelings, ideals, morals, codes or hopes begin. I don't know where I begin.

I know how you feel Fen. Sometimes I wish I was a dog so that all I'd have to think about was food and sleep. Our minds are so complicated. Do you feel that your thoughts are racing? If so you might need a med adjustment. I think that our thoughts and feelings are very real but maybe sometimes unrealistic. My Dr. said I was experiencing rapid cycling from depression to mania. A med adjustment really helped. Be well and keep in touch

Have you tried to ground? http://forums.psychcentral.com/showt...t=16719&page=2

Get yourself in the present, look around to see what is going on and check to see how you feel about it.

All. The. Time.

I seem to thrive on confusion and paradox, myself. For me, when things make sense, that's a time to worry.

I'm pretty well used to others expecting me to feel certain ways at certain times. That doesn't mean I will actually feel any of those ways. Generally speaking, the more willing someone is to let me feel however I feel, the more likely I am to consider them a friend; and the more pressure I feel from someone to feel a certain way (or to pretend to), the more likely I am to consider them not a friend.

I've had little or no success at ever making myself feel any particular way, no matter what the occasion. I used to think this was some skill that I needed to learn and was failing to learn for some reason, but now it looks like I'm a lot better off without it.
I can remember, especially when I was in my teens and early twenties, (a.) assuming that however I felt had to be inappropriate; (b.) figuring out how I was supposed to feel in a given situation; and (c.) pretending to feel that way so no one would notice how out of step, out of fashion and ****ed up I was. Unfortunately, all the ways I really felt were still there, lurking just out of sight, and had a nasty way of sneaking up and ambushing me whenever I'd stop pretending for a moment. Since they were something I'd already decided I didn't want around, they always seemed like a threat to me when they'd turn up.

Three authors I found especially interesting and helpful while dealing with these issues were:

• Carl Rogers, especially On Becoming A Person.

• Alan Watts. I've quoted him here (just yesterday!) and here.

• Ronald Laing, especially The Divided Self.

Namaste,
FooZe

When asked how I feel, I sometimes look at my hands and conclude I most often feel with my right hand.

http://www.relaxed-and-at-ease.com/h...ing-today.html

I definately dont try to live up to the 'image' that society 'puts out there' on who I, Junerain, should be..

We are all unique, precious INDIVIDUALS with stories, fascinating ones at that.

I have read too many pleas and heartwrenching stories in my 7 years with PC that show...the faces you see out in public....are just outward faces..not showing what is inwardly going on, the pain inside..

There are people out there who have not experienced true pain.....

It is my belief that these people, well, they just dont have as much to offer.....

You are Fenrir!! You are wonderful

What kinds of personality traits would you describe yourself as Fenrir possess?

It is my belief we are our personalities, that they form us and are the true us.

When I read the things you write Fenrir they are always of substance, you strike me as a great person

What image does society put out there?

Fenrir, I used to get those feelings all the time, and I finally came to this; we are social creatures and we pick up a lot of feelings from others. If we are normal (or just not hideously abnormal) than felings catch to one degree or another.
Then I decided that my life was too short to spend worrying about where every feeling was coming from. I guess I decide that what I feel is what I feel and if society doesn't like it, well, that's not my problem. Huggs

Thanks for the replies everyone. I'll write a better reply later.

I'm just lost and still confused. I try grounding techniques but I just get lost in my thoughts and it's like I fade away and still can't tell where reality begins. I hate it. There have been so many times I've wished I could fade away and not feel, and now I want to ground myself but I can't anchor myself into this world.

Plagues of nightmares and other stuff don't help. They throw me back to the wrong time. I can't be in the present. I can't understand what I'm feeling in the present, again, what's real and what's not. I get yanked into mist or I get yanked into real but past horrors. Why can't I be grounded here? Into the present, where I'm trying to heal?

And I get so lost and confused and dazed. It doesn't matter if someone is sitting in the room, calling my name. I lose their voice and I wonder if I even care about that person. Do they even care about me? Do I like them or am I pretending to like them? Is it wrong if I hate them? Love them? Everything has to be analyzed and drifts away and nothing makes sense.

Sometimes I figure I could just fade away, and, yeh, no one would be worse off. Or maybe everyone would be entirely worse off and I'm just pitying myself right now because I'm confused.

I don't know.

What does your therapist say?

Fenrir, you seem to be describing an altered state of consciousness. I can't say I know my way around those anywhere near well enough to do you any good. As far as I can tell, most mental health professionals consider it their job to bring their patients back from altered states in the quickest way possible or to refer them to someone else who can. A few, however, report having followed their altered states into transformative experiences from which they emerged stronger and wiser.

The "law of set and setting" affects what people are going to experience in altered states, drug-induced or otherwise: (Wikipedia, Set and setting)

Spiritual_emergency has a blog with links to lots of resources that you might find useful.

Just wanted to say I lived mainly in a an altered state of conciousness throughout my twentie's.......

It took getting involved in LIFE, I fianlly got a job, just a job waiting tables for a family diner, but this experience and the friends I made,,well it eventually, slowly, ever so slowly, set my confidence back up to where it was before my illness hit, and once I had confidence...new friendships were formed everywhere....I grow & learn from each friendship

Perhaps join a support group such as dbsalliance.org

I can certainly relate and understand your feeling of not knowing where you begin. It is a sort of melting where one does not know where one begins or ends and you begin to melt into everything while it melts into you. It is an overwhelming crisis of who am I.
I too questioned my emotions wondering if they were even coming from me or another source. In my case, I did imagine my emotions being controlled by something greater than me and wondered if I ever truly felt anything at all or if I had simply been a vessel that something else had been moving through.
Unfortunately I was hospitalized during some of those periods. Some do find hospitalization and medication to be helpful though I did not. Hospitalization did however provide a fairly safe place for me during rather intense times where my family could at least know where I was and there was little chance for me to just wander off.
The blog by spiritual_emergency that Fool Zero noted I found to be a particular help to me. There are a good number of resources throughout that space and accounts I could relate to that I had not found in other spaces.
I also found journaling to be of help. I was able to sort of lose myself in the confines of that space and even write myself back into this world.
I did find therapy to be a benefit for a time though finding a therapist that makes a good fit can be difficult and I have to admit I certainly do not feel fully grounded in this world either. Sometimes I am neither here nor there but rather rest in the space between.
I wish you the very best. Much peace.