[granite1]

if you have only felt fear and anger or nothing do you think a T can teach you how to feel at all.i dont mean teach you how to deal with feelings but accually how to feel if you spent most of your time feeling nothing.if you ever feel anything it is anger and fear.do you think any T can teach a person to feel???

I think what out t's do is help us deal with whatever it is that is causing us to have problems with our feelings so that we CAN feel eventually. That's been my experience anyway.

[dinosaurs]

theres probably other feelings hidden away. i know i just kinda stuff things down or cut feelings off or basically just do what ever i can to escape them so they dont exist. but theyre there. they just come out in other ways (like hurt can get turned into anger, or could be stuffed away under work).

i guess a goal in t is to feel safer with feeling things, to understand why they get pushed away or covered over, get practice at starting to feel stuff. t can help with all those things.

ive often felt broken cause i dont feel some things but t insists theyre there. its just a matter of finding them. not feeling them is a form of protection.

[Sannah]

I don't think that they teach it because you already know how to feel, it comes naturally. What I think the T will do is to help you to dig through all of the baggage that you have been carrying all of this time so that you can work through it and then release it and then you will have "space" to feel.

[trueFaith]

Hi granite1!

Sorry you have such difficulty with your feelings. But I understand what you’re saying. I had the same problem as you, had feelings of “only” fear and anger, or totally numb. For me a feeling was somewhat like a separate entity, something separated from me and had its own life and I was SO afraid of them. But I came to terms with that. Every morning and night I sat down for a while to check my body, especially the chest area because it is the centre of sorrow, of pain. When I focused on that area, I realized that I never exhaled enough. (Holding our breath “numb” our feelings) So I exhaled, let all of the air out just a little bit more than I would normally do and held it there for a second or two and then, the sadness arose and I cried for a while. And while crying I also paid attention to the thoughts that followed. And as I did that I consciously increased my awareness about my feelings to include three times a day until I could easily reach my feelings without even thinking about it – finally, they came to me. So, when I could sense the feeling in my body they became more understandable and manageable.

Maybe you can try this to get in touch with your feelings underneath your fear and anger.

[WikidPissah]

hmmm....I don't know granite. I think they help you identify your feelings. Like what you think is just hate and fear might be a bit of grief as well. It all looks the same to us, but they can see differently. I haven't cried in many, many years...not a tear. I sometimes wonder if I ever will....I kind of don't want to, because if it happens will all those years of not crying push their way out at one time?

Before I started T, I ONLY felt "okay" or "stressed". Not angry, scared, sad, joyful, etc. When another feeling threatened to sneak up on me, I just used a bad coping mechanism and made it go away, or pushed it away, or didn't recognize it, or any number of other things. I didn't know I *could* feel other feelings. At my first session, T asked why I was there and I said "I want to be able to feel my feelings"

T never "taught" me to feel. But he helped me work through all of the barriers to feeling. And sitting with some REALLY BIG feelings in T's office and surviving has shown me that my feelings won't destroy me. That's been huge. Just being able to be in a safe place and allow whatever happens to happen.

It's been a really slow process (like everything else in therapy), but worth it. When I pushed away sadness, fear, anger, etc, I was also pushing away peace, serenity, joy, and I didn't even know it. I thought I could pick and choose, but I couldn't.

Life feels more "real" this way. It took me a LONG time to realized that that's what I wanted - real life, with all of the good and bad feelings that come with it.

[WePow]

Granite, you have tons of great insights about this. And I have to agree - that T offers a person a safe place and safe person with whom one can be open to other emotions. The more relaxed you are around T, the easier it is to relax inside your own skin. When you are relaxed, emotions have room to move around inside.

[granite1]

thanks for all your responces.i have to think about them a bit.sometimes i swear i have no other feelings.i doubt i would recognise it if i did.i hate it when my T asks me how i am doing on a scale from 1 to 10.i just want to scream how the hell do i know.i was even readin my old journals yesterday and it is the same thing.i write a lot about things that are going on around me.nothing about how i feel or anything.like i wrote about how i had SI but nothing about why i did it.books full of behaviors and things i did but nothing else exsept a lot of anger.

[Sannah]

Maybe the anger is crowding out everything else and it needs to be worked on a bit and worked through and then it will move aside and make room for other feelings?