why does it hurt so much to have feelings?!

It's so much easier to avoid a lot of this stuff... avoid grieving... but also to avoid gentleness... avoid hope...

If you can let yourself feel the bad things maybe these good things will follow...

T tomorrow......and I feel like shutting down.....I know I shouldn't shut down though and I will be honest about feeling that way, with T.
Wish I didn't feel like shutting down. But it seems like all I feel these days is sort of numb or fear or a huge wave of anxiety, ugh. And the anxiety and the fear is getting to be rather overwhelming, to the point where numb feels like a better option.....though it isn't of course!

I'm seeking numb right now but it isn't the easiest thing to achieve. When the bulldozer of emotion runs over you, it's not like you can fight back.

amen, sister! you just have to let the emotion roll over you and that ain't easy to just let it come and let it be and deal with it.......I feel like I am in fetal position while these things roll over me! I feel like I WANT to be in fetal position literally anyway! Gosh, I hate this.......think I am not liking therapy (or taking meds or myself much, either....) at this moment!

Maybe having children that you need to attend to is a real blessing. My kids grown now, I can spend the 1/2 the day in bed. (like I did yesterday) Yaaay, fetal position. But, it's probably much better to be forced to keep going.

(((((((((((poetgirl))))))))))))))

It really is okay to shut down sometimes. Sometimes, in session, I just close my eyes and let myself drift away. T and I call it "taking a break". And sometimes I need to take a longer break than that...for days, or a week, or whatever.

I want so much to learn to feel my feelings, but for me, it can't happen all at once. Some feelings are BIG and can just be kind of overwhelming at first while we learn to deal with them. I told T it's like running a marathon...I can't go from sitting on the couch (feeling nothing) to running 26.2 miles (feeling everything) in one day. It takes time, and training, and practice. And that is OKAY.

I do think our feelings can be SO physical. I can't remember the hardest part of session yesterday very clearly, but we were on the floor, and I do remember that it hurt so much and I felt so ashamed that I couldn't sit still. Sometimes the feelings are just THAT BIG. I've curled up many, many, many times in therapy. If that's what your body needs to do, that's what your body needs to do.

I think that the expectations we put on ourselves are so harsh sometimes. Can you let the expectations go and just let yourself be where you are? Sometimes if I can be gentle with myself, it helps, wherever I'm at.

I hope your session is just what you need today. Thinking of you

Oh, tree, if I could let those expectations go, I bet I would feel lots better. But I have high expectations and standards for how/who I should be and how I should be handling things and how much I should be progressing in therapy......and then I feel such despair at perpetually falling short or at how much there is to do. T said today it is not inconceivable we would be having sessions through another year.......but not 2x a week! I WANT 2x a week for a long time.....I am sick of therapy and these feelings and yet I just want to get the work done, get through it, get done, get moving forward, get through the pain......all as quick as possible! I said, I don't want to sit with feelings for a whole week - she said, try FEELING them and then you don't have to just sit with them!
Gosh, she said I AM strong and more stable emotionally than I think, that I AM stable. I. so. DO NOT BELIEVE HER! I feel so undone......and a bit on the fragile side yes......another stressor and I will come uncorked. It feels like anyway.....
But then she says and what would it hurt if you did just that, let it come out, released it all......would you not feel better by feeling your feelings!
She described how most ppl deal with feelings....like a line that curves up to the top and then comes down. Ppl feel their feelings, have catharsis at the top, come down the other side. I get halfway up one side, go 'oh sh * * (and yes, she said that!) and back down and RUN! She's like that is what you want to do now, vintage PG, you want to run. She keeps saying this recently, why not allow myself catharsis. What would it look like if I did. Wouldn't it feel better to allow myself release.......
Sure it would, but I don't know HOW to get to the top of that line she described! The habit is so ingrained to fall back down once the incline gets too steep.....I am afraid of what it may take to get catharsis ( a word she loves to use....)
And I am irritated at her saying how stable I am when I feel SO unstable right now.....as a matter of fact, I am simply irritated with HER and with this whole process and am busily venting for probably nobody to really read.....but it does make me feel a bit better!
Ah well.......and so it goes......

Well there's an idea. Gosh she makes it sounds so EASY!!!!!

I know what you mean with the not feeling feelings, I notice it sometimes playing music and it just feels sort of tasteless/flavorless. Keep posting on this poetgirl I'm curious how you are going to break through that barrier.

My T told me today that my coping with my depression yesterday by sleeping the day away was perfectly fine. So, no 'sitting', only 'laying and snoozing' for me.

does make it sound simple doesn't she......and it is a simple concept but not a simple practice!
she does know what she is talking about though, she was quite a bit more self-disclosing today than usual in mentioning more of her experience with miscarriages and losing her baby and the feelings she went through and how she learned to deal with them.....all reasonable and relevant and helpful to me actually! so she does understand.....and has apparently succeeded where I am trying to figure out how to succeed, so the example is there (like T is supposed to be an example, I guess.....) for me to see that it can be done!
I think some of my anxiety, panic-fear-type waves of feeling, has been drawing me closer to that top of the line, the top of the curve, closer to catharsis.....but I still just cannot picture what catharsis looks like for me...tears or no?! I keep thinking I should cry, but maybe I don't have to cry to have catharsis?!?!?!?!?!!! Maybe I can just scream until I fall in an exhausted heap?!?!?

I would want more understanding and info about this 'catharis' and what lies beyond it before I would be able to trust that process completely. I think that taking plenty of time is a wise approach.

Yes, personally I hope it is this.



I am glad your t is a wear her heart on her sleeve kind of person. Part of it is just passion, you know?

I overthink everything, especially what is right and wrong. There's not enough room for emotions sometimes. My heart is ruled by an iron fist!

I think first I need to release the anger-- that's what my T's have always told me. The sadness comes next. Supposedly I already mourned my relationship with my Dad but the one with my mom is still in progress. I dunno. Not sure if it's a real thing or just T procedure, but that's what they say.

Next would be letting out the joy in my heart-- it's already there. We just need to make room for it to flourish.

Anyhow that's where I am with it.

(((((((((((poetgirl))))))))))))))

It took a long time before I could allow myself to feel my feelings.

I think a couple of things happened, with T, that were big enough that I couldn't help but feel my feelings. One was our first "rupture", and the other was the first panic attack I ever had, triggered by something I read in a book. The panic attack happened in session. T was so so so so good about helping me through both of those...owning his part, listening to me, apologizing in the first, and being so gentle and accepting and really taking care of me in the second...that I think I started to learn I really could feel feelings - really, really, really big ones - and it could be okay.

It wasn't magical...I didn't instantly go from feeling nothing to feeling everything...but slowly, over time, as I've had some REALLY REALLY big feelings and survived (because, honestly, even though it sounds irrational, I do think there is this fear of dying from their hugeness sometimes), I've been less scared to feel. And the more I allow myself to feel the hard feelings, the more I get the gift of feeling the peaceful, joyful ones.

You can do this...and you ARE doing it, step by step

that I understand! I have felt like I was dying little deaths all week, each time this wave rolled over me, each time my heart does its odd, jerky, jittering flutter and roll in my chest.....some of that might be a physical/physiological thing, but a great part of it is just that those feelings are rising up and demanding their cathartic moment, as it were!
thanks again for understanding so well, tree!

well, had a big garage sale yesterday that had me triggered big time all week, because we were getting rid of baby clothes and I am so sad to see the end of the baby years (my youngest is 10 months, almost 11 months, so I do still have a baby but no more pregnancies....) It had me anxious to the max all week.....wasn't as bad as I thought, but it was still hard at the end of it to box up what was not sold and give it away. Made it SO final.
And my H and I had several mini-fights and I felt so run over by the end of the day I wanted to sleep forever.....I so hate being treated like a child and being dismissed when I try to point out that that hurts my feelings. SOmetimes trying to talk to my H about my feelings and how he treats me and the feelings it causes makes me feel like this >>>>
So I actually cried.....not cathartic or an all out weeping session but I did cry and it did help. WHat I really want to do is have an alone session to throw a full on tantrum with kicking screaming and crying, that I think would be very cathartic.
I need to go look up that word, catharsis, and study it more so I know what is going on with that process and what T is talking about when she keeps bringing it up.....I feel like I am on the verge of either finally FEELING my feelings in a huge way or shutting down.....one opposite or the other....hurts enough right now to make me WANT to shut down but I am trying to cope and NOT shut down. Doesn't help to actually be sick......and feel like I need only to sleep.....