Making Excuses For Emotions

Trying to figure out what is up with my emotions and hormones. I used to block a lot of emotions out, automatically. This upset me. I didn't want to feel numb or disconnected from others, but I wasn't sure how to take down the walls that my subconscious quickly erected. In fact, I wasn't sure if there were any walls. I thought, maybe there is something wrong with my brain and I am just....cold hearted. Later, as I would catch myself doing something like....crying over a commercial....it occured to me I wasn't void of empathy. There was something else going on. It took me a long time to truly realize I had been supressing emotions, and I won't get into what brought that ephiphany about due to it taking up a lot of space here.

However, the thing is, eventually, I did seem to reach this conclusion. Before this time, I found that when I would cry, sometimes, I felt nothing. I just cried. This was rare, though, from what I recall. Other times, when I cried and did feel I'd tell myself, I couldn't be having emotions that weren't selfish because I was a bad person. This didn't go with my view of myself as bad, so it couldn't be. I told myself my subconscious mind had started making me cry over these things in order to decieve other people into thinking I wasn't a bad person, AND to trick my very self into thinking maybe I wasn't such a bad person, so I could feel better. But I thought, I was on to my subconscious mind, I knew it was trying to trick me....I knew those tears were fake, I knew my feelings were forced and half a**ed, etc.

Well, later, even after the events that helped me realize I could feel, I sometimes still questioned the supression theory, telling myself I really was cold hearted. In the past, I excused my tears as being some manipulative, decietful act of my subconscious. These days, when my feelings feel too real to deny, I have a diff. theory. It's my hormones. It is true, my hormones seem to have changed in the past few years. So, how do I know the difference between healing and getting better in touch with my feeling, and just crazy hormones? I know our feelings are chemical based, but to me saying it's just increased hormones makes my feelings feel somehow fake or not as real and important. Plus, what happens when those levels change? Will I die inside? Am I healing? Is this "hormone" talk just another way of convincing myself I am bad and can't feel properly, or am is it true? Is it just the hormones?

Also, the a month or two ago, I felt myself shut down a lot more than I had been in awhile. It kind of worried me. It dissapeared, but is this always a threat? To close myself off again? I still feel I have walls up, but how can we remove them? We didn't consciously put them up and I feel I cannot consciously remove them, either.

idk Locust, ive heard others say these things too and i wonder.. when i was married my wife felt no need to change very many things about herself.. and, looking back now, i think she was right.. she was fine the way she was then.. its when we start having difficulties that we start to look at ourselves a bit closer and ponder... how could this be different for me? and, when we look, we can find helpful others that choose to support and guide us... they are nothing less than blessings to us in our down times, like PC

((( Locust )))

Usually when people block out their emotions it is because something has made it too painful or difficult to feel the emotions, so they learn not to. It could be because of intense grief or trauma, or also because your experience has been that if you express emotions you get them rejected or invalidated, which also hurts. You sound like someone who has grown up in an invalidating environment, and, as a lot of people who grow up that way do, you learned to invalidate your own emotions. Emotions become confusing and you question what you really feel, or wonder if it could be mostly hormones instead, and your expression of emotion doesn't match your interpretation of it. Sound about right? That's a very painful way to live, which could result in cutting off emotions again.

To heal from this, you need to become more aware of your emotions and learn to trust them. Give yourself permimssion to feel the way that you feel. Hormones might make emotions more intense, but you still feel how you feel. It's still you. Yes, emotions are represented in the brain by chemical signals, but that doesn't mean that they are any less real. The emotions can cause the chemical changes just as well as the other way around. Everything that you do causes chemical changes in your brain. It's still you acting and feeling and thinking.

Expressing emotions is important too, and having them understood and validating, as well as validating yourself. Expressing them out loud and having them heard strengthens your ability to feel what you feel.