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Emotional processing

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How do you process emotions? Are there any good tools/sources out there that helped you get into a routine? I'm doing my best, but I find it very hard to keep it up after PTSD. I'd love to hear how you do it or get links to articles/videos about it, if you have any to recommend.
 
Hi! Do you mean every day emotions? Labelling and dealing with them? Or ptsd emotional fallout? What do...

Great questions. I actually can't remember how I processed feelings before... I think I just talked about them to anyone willing to listen, but back then nothing too extreme was on my mind, so it was easy to just talk things through. Also, I normally felt like one whole person, so it wasn't as if I divided between me and emotions all that much. I just was. Needless to say, I'm originally an extravert.... Now that I no longer talk with people all that much, and now that I live with a much higher base stress level, I find that I have started avoiding even "normal" emotions, as everything used to overwhelm me for a few years, and I've gotten into the habit of numbing/dissociating, I believe. I obviously need to both keep a focus on "real time" processing (including paying attention to what I feel and labelling) and I need to find a way to access the monsters that tend to result in flashbacks rather than processing. But I guess I made this thread for the day to day normal emotions. How do I "merge" my emotional self with my public self again? Meaning - how do I see my emotions real time again?

What I do about it, these days, is to ask myself as often as possible "what am I feeling now" to force myself to not suppress or numb myself. It's quite tiresome, but it does help me to more and more often see the feelings again. Maybe not real time, but with less delay than for the last years. The next thing I do is to label and then accept. Normally I don't have to do much more, as I'm fine at that point, and feel somewhat whole again for a bit. My problem is to keep it up, to see the emotions "on the run", as I tend to "look in another direction" automatically. It's so hard to merge the emotions with what happens around me it's as if I'm split in two - the emotional me and the other me - and they never seem to be united anymore. It sucks.

Hope that made sense?
 
Yes you make sense.:)
ask myself as often as possible "what am I feeling now" to force myself to not suppress or numb myself. It's quite tiresome, but it does help me to more and more often see the feelings again. Maybe not real time, but with less delay than for the last years. The next thing I do is to label and then accept.

This is all that I do. Exactly as you described it. It is very tiring but I think (and I don't know why) - it get's easier and then it can be very hard. I'm not sure why. It could be because I don't really want to accept that feeling/label and then behave in a way that goes against my initial response which might be flight.
 
Perfect sense! :)
It took me ages to realise that I had no connection between myself my feelings and events so I think you are doing really well. I actually first needed to diarise every day. I did it for about 2 hours every day for at least 5 years. I was so disconnected. I would write down what happened in great detail and try to think what emotions I would likely have felt. I would then look for the emotions.

I did a few other things that were helpful. I did DBT reading on the role of emotions. What they are, how they feel, what role they play in healthy human functioning. All emotions. I worked on accepting each emotion as important and important to listen to. That feeling and acting on emotions are two different things and feelings are information that allow us to make decisions, set boundaries, self care and a whole lot of other things. I did daily work on accepting the value of all feelings and identifying them.

I also did mindfulness and practiced it all the time. As much as is possible. Longer term this helped a lot breaking down the near constant dissociation I dealt with most of my life. Started me paying attention again. Its at this point I felt I was born for the first time. I started having a sense of really existing.

Eventually the wooden studied nature of it all started to be a little more intuitive, in the moment - little by little. I am not there yet but I am so far away from where I started. I actually sometimes forget exactly how things were then and how much work it was just trying to function like a human being day by day. Improving this helped so much when it came to managing the trauma symptoms. I liken it a little to being on a ship in a storm without a mast. That ability to know oneself and manage these basic things is like having one. If that makes sense.

Hope it continues to improve for you!
 
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