[misse]

Not sure if this is the right place, but I just wanted to ask how you deal with your emotions? I seem to have grown up learning that it wasn't ok to express emotions, especially strong ones or socially unacceptable ones, so instead I find I bottle them up, or go over and over my life looking for a problem to solve, so I can use my pent up emotion to "fix" something.... Anyone have a less dysfunctional suggestion for what I can do with these evil feelings!! I'm a passionate person, so I suppose I should be looking for outlets rather than trying to become more mild and calm?
thx!

[nowheretorun]

dance? paint? draw? sing? laugh? run? skydive? write? just some ideas that i hope help.. you can have some fun with those things if you want to..

the angry ones? maybe practice judo? kickboxing? the martial arts training skills will help you even out your moods in a calm way while simultaneously training you in self defense

[(JD)]

(((hugs))) Emotions are not evil in themselves.

Here are some links to drclay's book (who will be back before too long to this forum) about emotions. Let me know if you don't find the help you're needing, ok?

http://www.psychologicalselfhelp.org...+with+emotions

Also, there is a sticky post at the top of Psychotherapy Forum that lists the 10 common cognitive distortions. Reviewing them and working on changing how you view things, might also help.

TC!

[Perna]

Letting them out before they build up is the best idea. What you were taught was not very useful to you, it doesn't sound like. You might want to go to a counsellor for a few sessions and see if you can start learning a different way.

Emotions are information for you. They let you know what is going on with you and can be helpful for telling the people around you what is going on with you so they can understand their world better (you're in it :-) and how to help you if you need or desire help. Emotions should be used to help make you more fluid; if you stuff them you become "hard" and it hurts to bump into you :-)