What Does It Mean To Physically Experience Emotions?

[Naoru]

Yet "I" would be okay. But I wouldn't be okay. I would be behaving like a depressed person, only thinking I'm not depressed. I was disconnected.

This really stood out to me and describes my experience perfectly. Many times I have been told I am depressed (or fill in the blank), yet I haven't been able to see it because of this disconnect. My body is doing one thing while I am thinking another, and I have no awareness until I am in crisis/physically debilitated. Emotions? What are those? Wait, you mean my neck is spazzing because I'm stressed? That just can't be.

Thank you for this thread as now I see why T is constantly asking where I feel things in my body, which I find to be quite annoying:
when you are anxious/sad/angry/whatever, where do you feel it in your body? Is your chest tight, are your muscles tense? How is your breathing? I feel nothing! Geezus, I'm not breathing!

 

[The Albatross]

The not breathing thing is fairly common under stress. I had to relearn breathing through stress/distress and breath work helped me immensely.

 

[Gaining-clarity]

This really stood out to me and describes my experience perfectly. Many times I have been told I am depre...

I relate to this so much it's not funny. I'm still learning about all this. I can grasp it in my mind but putting it into practice is like slowing things down to slow motion. I keep realizing more and more. In theory it makes sense more quickly, but in practice the understanding deepens and I can finally say, "So that's what it is, eh."

You have validated me. Thank you.

 

[Poofycat]

Thanks for all the great responses everyone.

@Suzetig Your description of how you learned to identify feelings with your T sounds like some of the work I've been doing with my T. I guess he's already been teaching me this stuff? But maybe I didn't quite realize what we were doing.

@Friday I really like the idea of using the adjectives used to describe emotions to identify what I'm feeling. That should help quite a bit!

@EveHarrington I hope you didn't have a flashback and are feeling much better today.

@Gaining-clarity and @Naoru This sounds very familiar to me as well. With depression and being really, really tired from not sleeping. It's one thing to understand what is happening, but putting that understanding into action and accepting the fact that the depression is real and you are actually experiencing it sounds terrifying and difficult. Much easier to continue to ignore it!

One thought I've been struggling with the past couple days is how we learn to link the word to the emotion. For example, if your parent teaches you that the color blue is called orange then you will grow up thinking that blue is orange and be very confused to learn that everyone else calls it blue and that orange is a completely different color. I guess that would be a form of gaslighting. But one of my fears is that I've been taught that what I call happy is actually something completely different, so when I talk to my T, I might say I'm happy and he'll think I'm happy when I'm actually experiencing a different emotion. No idea where this fear comes from. I think this is where @Friday's idea of using adjectives to identify emotions will be really helpful.

 

[Draiocht]

I'm kind of in the middle of figuring this out myself. Like others have said, it wasn't really until my therapists started asking me about physical sensations that I have been able to put the two together. It's helping me to get in touch with what I'm feeling, kind of like grounding? So I knew I was terrified in a meeting the other day because I felt my whole body tense up. I still sit back from the emotion, like, "huh, looks like I'm feeling pretty anxious about something".

When it's really strong it's like my body rebels. When I am really upset I just get so tired moving is almost too difficult, and once or twice I have been so worn out I fell asleep in the daytime. With anger it's like some great force rushes through me, my eyes roll involuntary so I can't see for a second or two, it completely immobilizes me.

 

[Tinyflame]

We can often feel different things at once.

how do you tell them apart?

The brain assigns the meaning, what you think about it.

 

[recoveringfromptsd]

When I was in the hospital I had an episode that they called an emotional flashback with disassociation, basically as I learned about it, it was an unconscious emotional response to a perceived threat or situation that the reaction is extreme, and way out of proportion or improper for the moment. The mind is experiencing this in trauma time, thus its a form a flashback they call an emotional flashback.

 

[Gs172003]

For the longest time I thought I was getting a sinus infection. Turned out I was clenching my teeth so hard my facial muscles were hurting. Not exactly sure why though

 

[aut555]

@Poofycat You said robot like feelings, like you don't have the emotional awareness at that moment. But your body still reacts to what you are internally feeling, by your heart racing, you may breathe faster, you may sweat or cough, or laugh. Everybody responds differently to what we perceive as threat, trigger, stressor, unwanted feelings. Maybe start taking inventory of how you feel in stress situations or allow yourself to have these feelings and simultaneously giving yourself a high five for acknowledging all this. These feelings pass, and you can mediate, breathe deeply, what ever you want to feel emotional grounded afterwards.

 

[Abstract]

There are some DBT exercises that are great for this. There is a DBT book called Don't Let Your Emotions Rule Your LIfe that includes these.

I used to be very disconnected and can still be, I had no connection to the physical sensations of emotion, Especially anger. Or understanding of them, I have learnt through painstakingly journalling experiences and looking for appropriate emotions and for their sensations and did this for many years, Eventually it started being more and more instinctive, I still dissociate them at times and some things are still not connected but the changes that have happened have made a huge difference. Danger is one. Just by being more able to identify what is happening I am able to interact with life and others better, Its still not great but it astonishes me to think I managed to get through life as I was before. Not very well I guess is the answer.

Emotions have physical manifestations and thats part of how we recognise them. Not so easy when you have no real connection or relationship with your body!

Good luck with this. I think it increases trust in ourselves too.

 

[katz]

I'm working my way through a workbook called "Coping with Trauma-Related Dissociation". It's been real...

I have found that when I'm very upset. I cry. I can almost feel the emotions flowing out of me as the tears fall. I'm always tired afterwards, but then I feel much better that I have let all that stress "drip" out of me.

 

[Poofycat]

@katz That sounds lovely! I can't cry. Or at least non-dissociated Poofycat hasn't cried in over a year. Apparently I've been crying periodically since my dad died almost three months ago, but I never remember doing it. I don't even know which part it is that takes over and cries. I don't think I can access or communicate with it yet.