Feeling Emotions.

[Kas_Can_Fly]

At some point or another I stopped feel emotions fully or correctly, it progressed on and off to an inability to feel all emotions or to even be able to understand them. Now I am able to recognise them and feel them from a distance, I want to be able to feel my positive emotions and even my negative ones to an extend, but I'm terrified of them.

I'm scared that if I can feel anything enough to touch me, I will feel the grief, anger and pain that I know must be lurking underneath. I'm scared that they will consume me. I'm scared that if I start crying, I'll never be able to stop. I'm scared that I will have to rely on someone else to help me stop, if I allowed that to happen. I'm scared that "allowing" it won't be my choice. Like a ticking time bomb of negativity. I'm scared that I will break. Mostly I'm scared of actually feeling and experiencing those emotions. I don't think I'm strong enough.

 

[Leah123]

Oh my goodness, Kas- you sound just exactly like me. I've said these exact same words before. I have been there, and back, and felt stuck there again, for a time. Sometimes, I still suffer with dissociation and numbness, and I also have a tendancy to be extremely impatient with them and almost wanna run myself into the ground to get back to that place of feeling 'normal' emotions again.

But, I am a hell of a lot stronger than I was when I was traumatized in my childhood. I have created a framework to allow me the space and safety I need to let these organic defenses against the once-life-threatening emotions of the trauma I suffered slowly erode, until I can manage all my feelings, go through them, and heal from them.

Others *can* help you stop, when the pain gets to be overwhelming. My therapist helps me, and to a certain extent, other survivors and my husband, along with other resources I give myself- good music, writing, time for myself, pastimes, etc.

It's been a long journey, for me personally, about 20 years now, since I first started working on my issues. But, I'm glad to be where I am, still dealing with certain traumas, but feeling almost glad sometimes to trust myself enough to look at them a little more and have the faith I might get all the way through.

My therapist has very wisely told me that although my emotions *feel* consuming, overwhelming, and endless, they are not. It helps me a GREAT deal to see my little girl (she's about 8) and sometimes, she feels the whole world is unfair, and she'll be SO mad or SO hurt, that at first I would panic when I saw it, but now, as her mom, I've learned that those emotions do pass, and she is ok, she's not crazy. I was like that when little, but never got the chance to deal with my emotions. I hardly had them because of the level and duration of my trauma. So, I think I just have to get through that, and like her, it will pass for me too, though it's harder and scarier because of the delay.

I wish you well, and hope you find lots of support in your healing.

 

[franciemarnie]

I can so identify. I felt increasingly numb from late grade school onward to mostly numb from 30 to 50 with the briefest of moments emerging of anger (then completely gone an hour later) a couple times a year and then a couple of times a year of bottomless sorrow. Then back to numb.

My early life particularly seemed to happen to someone else, as if I walked out of the movie frame at certain usually traumatic moments leaving who I had been behind. Every time I walked out of the frame, I was leaving an integral part of me behind so that eventually I felt like a walking cipher.

The last few years slowly feelings have returned. Particularly this last year when I got off an anti-depressant I was on for 25 years. (I was numb before I took them so I am not blaming them. I guess I was changing underneath them.)

I too felt if I let the rage or sadness in, they might never end and I thought maybe I'd go nuts. I haven't. I have gotten better and better.

They have felt terribly uncomfortable sometimes, as well they should since I buried them since childhood. Plus who likes rage or sadness and tears. But oh my God, how healing it has been and continues to be.

Like Leah said, a framework of safety and support is important.

For me, I see these feelings as part and parcel of the selves I left behind or who fled for safety from the trauma. I want them back, the pieces of my soul torn away and feeling those feelings is one way I connect with the selves I inadvertently abandoned. Take it as metaphor or real, doesn't matter. This is how I see it and feel it.

As far as I'm concerned, for me - the feelings come thru when my psych is ready for them to come. I trust it. They only persist if I resist them.

Wishing you the warmest welcome to your feelings. I see them as friends and allies. You are not alone. I am sending you healing light wherever you are.

 

[Pencil]

Like a ticking time bomb of negativity. I'm scared that I will break. Mostly I'm scared of actually feeling and experiencing those emotions. I don't think I'm strong enough.

I relate 100%. I am too scared of where it might take me, and so I spend a LOT of energy preventing being pulled into feeling anything. And so it becomes progressively bigger, more threatening, and requires more energy to resist. I don't know about you, but I don't have a framework for safety and support.

 

[maddog]

Excellent thread, full of truths that resonate deeply with me and really good advice. I think that the framework of safety and support really is critical in the journey to uncovering and experiencing emotion, chiefly because those who have never learned to have emotion have never learned to regulate it, and that's the part of emotional experiencing that feels so frightening and out of control.

I do think it's so so hard, yet critically important, to remember that emotions cannot kill or even hurt us. They are feelings, they come, and they go, and they never stay the same for long, no matter how we feel. Holding onto these facts almost like a mantra has sometimes been my only hope in navigating through the terror of emotion, and I am lucky enough to have had a solid therapeutic relationship to anchor me through that and to give me a safe place to experience and to start to learn to regulate those emotions.

Sadly, suppressing them, no matter how hard we try, tends to have a lifespan, and at some point life and its evolution usually bring those emotions up to haunt us. Just like thoughts and physical sensations, they are part of what makes our experience as humans full and real, but they are definitely a frightening part of reality for those of us who haven't grown up with them.

I've found that writing about them, such as through journaling, is really helpful. It sometimes helps to break their spell over me, and to remind me that they are nothing more than constructs in my head which can be explored with language. Sounds a bit simplistic, and doesn't always feel helpful at the time, but it's one strategy that is enduring and reliable and exists even in the absence of external support.

Maddog

 

[Jacnic]

Emotions are scary! I lose control when I am in an emotional overload. This is terrifying!

 

[Anna]

At some point or another I stopped feel emotions fully or correctly, it progressed on and off to an inability to feel all emotions or to even be able to understand them. Now I am able to recognise them and feel them from a distance, I want to be able to feel my positive emotions and even my negative ones to an extend,

Ditto. I am not scared of them though, but I am unable to feel much anymore.

 

[Jacnic]

Good point, Anne.

Thinking about it more, I do not "feel" scared..... But I am so afraid of the unknown scope of the emotions that I am in flight mode. There is absolutely no way that I want to go anywhere near them.

On a slightly different point, how does everyone else understand the difference between being emotionally numb and emotionally disconnected? Is there a difference?

 

[Leah123]

Well, I imagine a little of it is open to interpretation, and some might say it's just semantics, but numb and dissociated for me are different. Numb is when I feel... flattened. Just overtired emotionally, perhaps somewhat like being in shock.

Dissociation, for me, is feeling above or outside myself, and the worst episodes have been where I panicked about getting back "in." that type of dissociation feels like losing one of my vital senses, just as if I've lost the sense of touch or hearing. Moreso, it's like a bat losing it's radar, I feel I've lost my emotional radar. I could go on, but afraid I have to hurry out. Hope that helps, but I'm sure it's a somewhat personal, individualized experience.

 

[who am i kim]

I am about to rediscover my feelings that have been buried for so long. I had to as a child in order to survive. I thank you for writing this thread. I am not looking forward to it but now can see a better light on the subject. So maybe I will not be as scared or overwhelmed about the forthcoming journey. :)

 

[Kas_Can_Fly]

I can't feel those emotions when I'm on my own, but there are two good people who bring out the best in me are beginning to awaken those emotions. I go from being entirely emotionally unavailable at home to being slightly available when I'm with them - enough to laugh at a joke or smile/join in on a conversation, but then in the background I'm aware of suddenly feeling emotions for the first time.

After having stayed with those two people for a little over a week, I started to feel waves of emotions in the distance. These people are good and they know a lot about me and my past, but they haven't seen me truly experience it - they haven't seen me when I'm down, panicking with an anxiety attack or during a flashback. I'm scared of letting them see that, I don't want them too for their sake so much so that I don't want them to see it for my sake either. I want to protect them from me, not that they need it, but that urge is so overwhelmingly strong I can't open up any further than I have.

But I'm worried that these emotions will come before I'm ready to share and I will break down and the brunt of my emotions will not only have to be felt and experienced by me, but witnessed and endured by them. I don't want to put that on them. I don't even really want to feel them, except I feel that they would be therapeutic. But I don't think I can feel them on my own. And I'm even more terrified by the level of comfort that I find in the idea of breaking down and having them there for me, despite not wanting them to have to go through it. It feels as if it would be so incredibly healing but my urge to protect them and not show that part of my self is so strong it numbs these feelings all over again. But I can't get better with out letting these emotions outside one day or another.

It's so confusing.

 

[Kas_Can_Fly]

Also thanks for all of the replies, there is so much useful interpretations and information in them, I'm sorry that so many others experience this.