Labelling of Emotions

[flowerapple]

I can't say the name usually, but I can say, "the feeling like (X- when the car drives past; the light goes out; the cold shiver goes up my spine; my stomach drops, etc etc etc)'.

I don't know but maybe this might help: The Importance of Understanding Your PTSD Emotions.

 

[Tinyflame]

Thank you @flowerapple I will read it.

 

[Widow_of_one]

I can cry easy for others, don't mostly for myself. But either way can't explain what I'm feeling (or not feeling). Heartbroken for them; written off for myself, maybe?! :hug:

ye dove noticed this about myself. What I’ve come to notice is that when I am in bed at night or sitting on the sofa or even in a chair I try to relax and connect with my body. During the day when life is busy it is easy for me to “ignore” my judy but at night when it is quiet it is easier to connect. It is all there it is just a very small dim voice.
A friend of mine came running over one day he was so happy that he met a nice girl. I was so happy for them both - they are both my friends - I hugged him and I felt some other I hadn’t felt since 1985 while living in Ireland. I got nervous bc I thought “omg do I like him?” Nope it was a feeling of happiness that I felt once over 35 years ago. And One night while in bed playing video games, my mind flashed to a Funny story about A friend of mine told me about her grandchild. As it ran through my mind I felt a tinkling sensation in my chest!! Omg that is what laughter feels like!!!! Ahhhh!!!! Mostly things have gotten better since I started having “emotional flashbacks” about a year and a half ago!!

 

[grit]

IMHO, it is kind of conformity to want what others have that we lack all the time.

I think if you are feeling something but unable to label it that is so you! no one else. So rather than thinking you must label it like everybody else or for your therapist's wish you to label it, what would be more authentic for you and maybe for your body is to say - I feel something but I do not know the word for it. So in essence, you (the body) knows there is something lurking/feeling, but you (the mind/cognition) cannot label it. Both are true. That truthiness is the authentic space for you at that time.
Do not chase what others or even therapist want: stay in your body and admit your lack of knowing something that you are feeling.

I do not know if this makes sense but to me it sounds you are feeling but struggling with vocabulary/some cognition of describing feelings that are in your body. A lot of people even healthy people may also struggle with this. How often do you hear people expressing feelings of disgust? but disgust is a fundamental emotion? Most humans struggle with pinpointing a feeling right at the time of the feeling. Own that minuscule minute struggle.

We do not know what we do not while we do not know. So that is what I got from your post. You know there is something but yet you do not. That is you at this/that point. That is your truth of the situation.

 

[Widow_of_one]

IMHO, it is kind of conformity to want what others have that we lack all the time.

I think if you are feeling something but unable to label it that is so you! no one else. So rather than thinking you must label it like everybody else or for your therapist's wish you to label it, what would be more authentic for you and maybe for your body is to say - I feel something but I do not know the word for it. So in essence, you (the body) knows there is something lurking/feeling, but you (the mind/cognition) cannot label it. Both are true. That truthiness is the authentic space for you at that time.
Do not chase what others or even therapist want: stay in your body and admit your lack of knowing something that you are feeling.

I do not know if this makes sense but to me it sounds you are feeling but struggling with vocabulary/some cognition of describing feelings that are in your body. A lot of people even healthy people may also struggle with this. How often do you hear people expressing feelings of disgust? but disgust is a fundamental emotion? Most humans struggle with pinpointing a feeling right at the time of the feeling. Own that minuscule minute struggle.

We do not know what we do not while we do not know. So that is what I got from your post. You know there is something but yet you do not. That is you at this/that point. That is your truth of the situation.

Wow!!! I am giving you a standing ovation!!!!! Yes it is time that we as survivors stop being bullied by “the rapists” that try to “help” us! By telling us lies such as: your growth is stuck at whatever age you were molested at. It’s insulting and simple untrue! (You can see my diary for an explanation if u need one which btw isn’t just my opinion I learned it in sociology/psych class!) bravo!!! And thank you!!
Ps your new nickname is “True grit” :)

 

[Deleted member 49701]

I have difficulty coming up with names of emotions as I'm feeling them, but oddly, not from the other perspective. If I have a list of emotions or emoticons in view I home in the ones that seem a close fit ... or I'll find myself recalling a time when I felt a given emotion listed or displayed via depicted facial expression

As I child I was highly sensitive, but as a boy/male I was teased, tormented for `being a sissy' for experiencing and/or expressing emotions, so I learned to suppress, repress, and trivialize my emotions as either unimportant or less-important than thought/cognition and `objective' modes of operation.

As an adult I've tested as as a pronounced `thinker' on the Thinker-Feeler spectrum of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, though Feeling comes into play through art and aesthetics.

Ahhhh ... that's it! I didn't learn the names of emotions BECAUSE so few of those around me gave a shit about what I was emoting/feeling! My mother was an insensitive bitch who cared what I DID by way of chores. She used to mock me when I expressed emotion.
And among my guy friends we were all (mis)raised with the big boys don't cry, don't express the full range of emotions which girls/women do.
We are allowed to express anger, loyalty, and stoicism ... and perhaps affection in private, but not all those emotions found on a chart or in an emoticon lexicon.
Guys are only allowed to `color' with the 4- or 8-color box of crayons as girls and woman are allowed the 64-color assortment.

So, yeah. I'm with you. It's difficult for me to precisely identify the emotions contributing to a cocktail of emotions, or even a single emotion which captures the essence of what I'm feeling at a particular moment.

I'm one of those guys whom women ACCUSE of lying-about or `hiding' my emotions.
And the assumption is that I -- and some other men -- are even aware of our emotions, having learned the hazards of not suppressing and/or repressing our emotions.
It's not that I'm lying or hiding them so much as I can't report on what I'm not aware myself. If I'm aware I can admit to a degree of awareness, though perhaps not be able to pick a word or two which portrays the essence of what I'm emoting/feeling.

I ought to carry a chart around with me to consult over the course of the day. After a while I might regain my ability to unREpress, unSuppress, and allow them to manifest in free flowing manner where I can find myself opting to (e)motivate me in the moment and come off as more human and humanizing than otherwise.

Naw! People should KNOW what I'm feeling by my demeanor and behavior, not by the use of names and labels. Yeah, I get how it would be handy for use with therapists, but for most people one's mood and affect are expressed and revealed by facial expressions, body language, and such. I value authentic emotion/feeling and it's expression in the here & now, not so much naming what ought to be obvious by those present. None of this comes through via text in groups like this though, so if one doesn't have person-to-person contact -- such as during lock down -- one may find oneself deprived of opportunities to express one's own emotions and read and resonate with those of others otherwise encountered during f2f interactions.

One of the challenges I have is being able to correctly label or even label at all

Hmmm ... as a pathogenic `problem solver' I've come to notice something about both my problem-solving motivations and those who present would-be problems for solution, resolution, re-solution, re-re-solution, etc, ad nauseum.

When problems as such are presented via language the language used reveals the problem as well as being part and parcel with the problem.

If we start with the premise of feeling and emoting and look to the features of human anatomy responsible, what do we find?
Yet if we start from the interPersonal communication end of things wherein spoken/verbal language -- not sign language, not written forms -- then we end up at Wernicke's area and Broca's area ... regions of the brain.

What does emoting have to do with speaking?
If the regions of the brain responsible for generating speech or even serial motor control were deactivated or excised surgically, would it prevent us from emoting/feeling? I don't think so.

So what's the problem?
If your T(herapist) is an NF/Idealist flake, (s)he more than likey operationally-IS WORD BASED.

Were NF/Idealist word-based flakes successful at playing messiah with mere words would there be `art therapy', `dance therapy', yoga, meditation, Rational-Emotive therapy, etc?

Is your T right-handed as well as word/speech favoring? The speech centers of the brain usually reside in the left hemisphere which controls the right hand and deals with sequential thought processes as contrasted with all-of-a-piece holistic thought which the right hemisphere experientially-manifests.

Here's a what-if to ponder. What if a yet-to-be-reprocessed still-encapsulated trauma occurred at a stage in your personal development which was prelingual, or perhaps in kindergarten, or such?
Most shrinks have `regression' in their lexicon and repository of concepts.
What would happen if an EMDR patient/client were working on a traumatic memory with roots going back to a stage of speech development which found them lacking grown-up words for whatever they are feeling?

One of the reasons shrinks are shrinks is that they are NOT rocket scientists and do not have what it takes to NOT create self-contradictory paradoxes and logic traps.

I just stepped you through a scenario where someone can EMOTE without associating symbolic words to whatever emotion is experienced. I also put forward the possibility that if a patient/client subjected to messianic salvation by an expectant messiah FORGETS that regression may have manifested during the course of the EMDR session and to expect a human experiencing at THAT (st)age of development to speek-as-if at an adult stage of linguistic development, `the problem' rests with the quack T and expectations imposed upon the object of manipulation via tools they use churlishly while inducing cognito-emotive dissonance in their object of manipulation.


EG `talk' therapists routinely impose THEIR preference for word magic upon their victims ... I mean `patients'/clients.

Thus, to attain benefit from INFP or INFJ -- the two most common NF/Idealist flakes working the therapy racket -- word magicians who have been trained in the priestly ritual of EMDR it is important to MANIFEST therapeutic PROCESSES despite impositions to interface with the talk therapist via the therapist's preferred form of expression, communication, data gathering .. whatever.

When you get out of that session you might double dip by returning home, rounding up drawing and painting implements which can be held in your LEFT hand, then allowing your right hemisphere to EXPRESS it's SELF in non-linear, non-sequential ways. Put on some music and DANCE your emotions back into your body while ignoring the word turds preferred by talk therapists who've learned how to perform priestly EMDR rituals.

I don't know about you, but I don't express JOY by saying the word `joy'; if I have to channel joy into language an NF/idealist flake accepts then actual joy gets repressed, suppressed, and stunted into some perversity approximating flattened affect.
For me, Joy is the freedom from imposition to use WORDS to express emotion better and more wisely expressed otherwise.

To wit ...
I HUGE break-through in my own life arose from interacting with a GF who turned out bipolar, and whom had experienced childhood trauma consistent with the diagnostic criteria for cPTSD.
When she transitioned into psychotic mode she would externalize as modeled by her parents which would manifest knock down, drag out fights before said GF and her siblings: she would smash stuff, pound on me, and `lash out' in general.
over a substantial period of months worth of dealing/coping with neurotic-to-psychotic-and-back-again transitions I gradually noticed something useful: through wrapping my arms around her to pin her arms down to her side to constrain the violent outburst, at first her body was tense and rigid, which corresponded with psychotic mode, then after perhaps 8 to 10 seconds the rigidity transformed into a more muscularly-relaxed state while her emotions were still strong and raw.
And what started out as a constraint could turn into a loving hug ... perhaps with gentle swaying, perhaps with words which corroborated the MEANING implicate and emBODY'd in/by the hug.

Now when a dumb ass woman NEEDS to hear `I love you.' I experienced the triggered meme, `you self-stupified extortional bitch' ... WHILE wrapping my arms around her to EXPRESS my both sustaning and transformational `love', which typically provides what she ACTUALLY wanted or needed and is merely SYMBOLIZED by the magic words `I love you'.
Hint: I'm not an NF/idealist flake.

To return to `the problem', Korzybski said it well, "The map is not the territory."
Any dumb ass T who fixates up WORDS merely symbolizing and deSCRIBing emotions is fixating upon a `map' -- a mere REpresentation scheme for what is present in your PROCESS and the qualia manifesting part-and-parcel with the PROCESS which experientially-IS you.

My advice to you and those that find themselves in a similar situation is to rationally-emote AROUND the problem like a squirrel trying to get to a bird feeder while trying to avoid the neighborhood cats; express the emotion in any way YOU feel moved to express it (within moral and legal guidelines, mind you) ... despite the restrictions imposed by a non-shamanic modern day `priest' (ref: this is a distinction made by Joseph Campbell made by his series of interviews with Bill Moyers)

Emotions can be experienced, manifested, experientially-manifested and EXpressed SANS WORDS!

Any would-be `therapist' who attempts to bias you into expressing or channelizing your emotions into a stream of words is a Procrustean Fool prehaps inadvertently prostrating you onto the Procrustean Bed of Language, which is but one of countless artistic media available for expression.

Feel free to show this post to your T.
If they try to convince you otherwise, send him or her to me for a sound tongue lashing. 8-}

Just a few thoughts.

Warmest regards ... and HUGS!

I know quite well about the wheel of emotions...........still is of no help because the wheel of emotions requires you to know what the emotions actually feel like to be able to be useful. For example sure the the wheel shows that disgusted drives feelings of contempt, repulsive, apathetic, averse but if you can't label what you are feeling as apathy then how do you know that the driving emotion is disgust

Natural language allows us to both use and induce sloppy thinking. For instance, in your use of `know', which are you addressing more: (1) epistemology or (2) discernment/differentiation?
From what I've noticed, when a lot of old farts recite the answer to "What's the difference between apathy, ignorance, and ambivalence?" as I don't know and I don't care one way or the other they are as likely to no longer be capable of differentiating their ambivalent lack of caring from their will-lacking erstwhile-intentional ignorance.

I certainly know that when I'm feeling that don't-know-and-don't-care-one-way-of-the-other gestalt I don't need to tease the individual threads out of that emotional tapestry as I experience it whole cloth, as-is.

As a guy, I was and typically am allowed `pissed off', but this was a fronting, masking, veiling emotion for other emotions not allowed. Moreover, if I was foolish enough to experienced `pissed off' with the `at' option I could be doubly wrong or self-misleading.
Most the time that `at' target was wrong and I wasn't even `pissed off' or angry; I was frustrated, disappointed, discouraged ... and I was externalizing vis-a-vis whoever I had targeted my mistaken emotion of `pissed off'/angry.

I could feel I'm angry at/with you., but I might actually have been frustrated or dissatisfied BECAUSE a need or expectation went unmet, unaddressed, or unsatisfied BECAUSE I hoped or expected the vilified person to fix it, make it better, comfort, soothe or do what they either said or alluded ... and in a timely fashion.

How does `I'm feeling unhappy' transmogrify into `I'm mad at you'? How do guys with vilified emotions reclaim them and lobby on their behalf to give those devils their due?

For me I had to learn how to discover my own wheel and run it backward, analytically to discover what emotion preceded the masked one appearing in the here & now.

Disgust can certainly inhibit joy while de-funding caring, enough to find one experiencing apathy; I can corroberate THAT circuit.

 

[Blondutch]

I can't and have given up on putting 'emotion labels' on how I feel during my therapy sessions. It became a guessing excersise or I was just making it up. Now, instead I describe what I literally feel physically in my body, I say I feel agitated I want to hit something, nervousness in my guts, adrenaline increase, dizziness in my head, tingling in my feet/hands, paralysed as if my leggs can't move, an iron ball in my chest, lump in my throat etc...

For me it's a more accurate way to communicate my emotions to my therapist sometimes he mirrors it as "anger, fear, anxious, sadness, relief etc..."

In the outside world I pretend to know my emotions, only to meet society's expectations. It is still trial and error, i.e. matching label vs my behavior which I get wrong at times and people find it odd, but these days I don't care much about what people think and I can live with that.

 

[joeylittle]

Now, instead I describe what I literally feel physically in my body, I say I feel agitated I want to hit something, nervousness in my guts, adrenaline increase, dizziness in my head, tingling in my feet/hands, paralysed as if my leggs can't move, an iron ball in my chest, lump in my throat etc...

That's a totally valid approach. As long as you're differentiating - being specific about those different physical sensations, and which ones are happening - then you're doing the same task, just in a different way. I think the goal is to observe and differentiate - that's how we can learn our responses, and ultimately shift them when we want to.