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Emotional vocabulary

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Keen

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My T says I'm emotionally blunted and need to develop a greater emotional vocabulary. She gave me some HW to do, but I'm wanting more I can do so I can increase this ability quicker. I couldn't really find much online though.
What has helped you to develop greater emotional vocabulary or ability to recognize and name a greater variety of emotions?
 
me too! soon as you figure it out let me know!

My T told me this week that I don't have a correct definition of most common emotional words - so she suggested that I start using French words instead. (I'm in the middle of a french class)
So instead of saying "I am angry" I could say "je suis en colere"
She thinks that since I understand the English definition of "en colere" I can say it without feeling guilty or bad or overwhelmed or whatever.
I'm going to try it over the next couple days and see if it works....
 
What a great idea!!! I know it has taken me a long long time to learn to allow myself feelings, much less be able to name them.

I know one I can start with.. the initial feeling will be 'frustration'... which, when I set and go deeper with it, I am usually feeling angry, cornered, stupid, not heard, overwhelmed. And probably more.

So then I have to set with each word... and see how it makes me 'feel'... until I hit on what is 'really' going on. Because when I feel 'not heard', I get hurt, which is one I will cover up quickly, instead of setting with that feeling. I will cover it with 'anger', because anger helps me to not feel so powerless. It's an illusion, I'm still hurt.

Before I ramble on with this, is this what you are asking? This is going to be a great thread.
 
she suggested that I start using French words instead.
Huh? No comprende. :roflmao::roflmao: Actually, Freida, that sounds really interesting. When foreign words are used for our English ones, it would make sense that the emotional aversion to the familiar gives way to a simple academic view of the word. The "bite" of "our" language is diminished. Let us know how this works for you.

@Keen, my first reaction to your post was that I cannot help you with your homework because this should be your own discovery. However, I will say, as with the others who have responded, I would like to know what these words can be. Since I (and I assume most PTSDers) stuff emotions and fail to willingly and or accurately identify how I feel, a broader description of emotional words would be helpful. At this point in time, I am pretty much limited to phrases like: "I'm fine.", "I'm good", "I'm OK." "I'm all right." I use these phrases in response to my T's question as to how I am doing, at the beginning of each session. I use these same phrases whenever friends, hubby, or family asks me how I am doing. I don't know what else to say beyond these. To say anything more threatens to reveal a level of emotion that I am not secure in wanting to share. But, knowing what else to say that would be more honest and safe to say, would be nice. Everyone gets tired of my pat answers. When you get your list put together, share it with us. It would be interesting to see what you come up with. Interesting homework assignment....:)
 
I'm wondering if this might help?

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I love how you put that --- and sad (for both of us) that I understood it completely

@mumst...


Yeah. It's ok-ish, I guess. It's a bit banal and inaccurate but I got given it at the hospital along with loads of other hand outs, some are really good articles.

I think this is ok if you use it just to think about the broader range of feeling words that we have available to us. It actually changes our brain-wiring when we name the emotion, which is a key part of recovery, but some of these faces are not too accurate and some of the words are wrong, for instance "guilty" is not a feeling so much as a reality, you either are or are not guilty of something, shame is a feeling that being guilty of something, can induce, or we can be manipulated to feel shame for someone else's crimes, but shame isn't listed. It's a big one for us ptsders, I believe.

This might be good for those who have not had too much expose to feeling words, but it's a very limited list and sometimes mixes up verbs with adjectives.

Concentrating is a doing word, not a feeling.
Aggression is not a feeling word, it is a action word. There are a host of feelings behind the acts of aggression, like fear, anger, assertion, courage, commitment, righteousness etc.

Idiotic is to have no political views, so it's more a sense of capacity than a feeling.

So yeah, I guess someone who considered themselves "educated" wrote this list and it's a good start for want of something better. I think the idea is sound but I would like to see a better, more comprehensive list with more accurate examples of expressions.
 
What has helped you to develop greater emotional vocabulary or ability to recognize and name a greater variety of emotions?

Feeling things.

I couldn’t feel anything for a long time... and I took it a bit to extremes in order to feel anything. I don’t really recommend that, but it’s what I did.

Once I could feel things again, I added something I usually call rampant hedonism ;) into my life. As a line item. Which is in part extracting -or inserting- every last possible molecule of joy/fun/adventure/shazaaam into absolutely everything I do. No matter how mundane, and especially if it’s something I don’t like. Cleaning is a good example of that one, as both mundane and something I dislike (and it leads into my next point in the paragraph below). I reeeeeally don’t like cleaning. But I <swoon> loooooove and adore clean space / zero clutter, clear lines of sight, peace... So I do it every day... and make it fun. :sneaky:

My personal “space” is also -usually- something of a sensory explosion. What that looks like changes a great deal depending on where I’m living, although there are a lot of common elements. What I touch, see, smell, hear, etc. all evokes certain emotions / how I choose a space, what I do with it, and especially what I bring into it are all chosen very intentionally. From the weight of the silverware to the surface my bare feet are on, I get more than a smidge control freak about it. I have to LOVE it. Objects and spaces matter to me. Possibly more than they should, but the alternative is that nothing matters to me. I can live anywhere... I just blank it out. If I DONT want to blank it out? If I want to feel things? I need to be careful about where I live. And about how I live. And who I live with.

I know this all sounds very exterior. (Things I do / experience evoking emotion.) Possibly even materialistic. (The things I own / where I live). But that’s where I had to start. And it’s something I have to maintain... because things need to be “real” to me. There has to be a point of connection that I actually want to encourage / develop, and become baseline. That’s a very difficult thing for me to do. My go-to is shutting off my emotions & severing connections. This is how I work around that.
 
Thanks for everyone's responses and ideas.
I'm definitely not asking for help with my HW (which was to try to list emotions that were allowed and that were not allowed in my home growing up). Just for ideas of how others have been helped to learn to recognize and name feelings.

I know one I can start with.. the initial feeling will be 'frustration'... which, when I set and go deeper with it, I am usually feeling angry, cornered, stupid, not heard, overwhelmed. And probably more.

I like this idea, thanks!

I am pretty much limited to phrases like: "I'm fine.", "I'm good", "I'm OK." "I'm all right." I use these phrases in response to my T's question as to how I am doing

Yes, this is exactly what I do!

I know this all sounds very exterior. (Things I do / experience evoking emotion.) Possibly even materialistic. (The things I own / where I live). But that’s where I had to start. And it’s something I have to maintain... because things need to be “real” to me. There has to be a point of connection that I actually want to encourage / develop, and become baseline. That’s a very difficult thing for me to do. My go-to is shutting off my emotions & severing connections. This is how I work around that.

This was really interesting, I'd never thought of these connections, thanks for these thoughts!
 
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