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Naming and understanding multiple emotions

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Thank you @berlinda and @Friday
Really appreciate it. Its amazing how I seem to have reached this age and still be so ignorant in certain areas. Its seems to me that sometimes its the common stuff I don't look at. Half purposeful but unknowing/automatic blindness I guess. An unconscious mindset. An unwillingness to discuss it or look at it but without being aware that that is the case.

Interesting diagram Berlinda. Funny how I want dissociate myself from any of it. Friday revulsion and loathing are obvious now that you pointed it out. Need to think more.
 
This worksheet was given to us in my PTSD group
Just for the record my heart beat goes very, very slow. Not sped up. It's a great sheet though! And yes, voiding (or the horrible feelings prior to), I believe, are my emotions coming out. I am going to say overwhelmed emotions. So generally they will hit when a large trigger happens for me. Any time I am asked to leave a place, reminded of homelessness, threatened inside a building (any kind of building), this biological bullshit is my body's immediate response.
Revulsion & Loathing (both types of Disgust) are synonyms for nausea...
They can be for sure. But for me, as stated above, so are impending/perceived threats. There is a 'feeling' attached to it but I am pretty sure it is a mixture of emotions and I haven't been able to pick them apart yet. It's on my list though.
 
Still trying to figure all of this out for me @shimmerz
Is a bit like a puzzle that you never knew was there and then keeps shifting, out of grasp. That probably sounds as nonsensical as I feel. Its not that I am not certain. Its just more complex than that. Or maybe I am more f d up than that.
 
Just found this chick. Really shocked I haven't heard of her before. I think I am not quite myself tonight so I am not taking this in properly. Either that or I am splitting off or it is triggering me. It is, after all, talking about emotions. Anyway, I will come back to this tomorrow and will park this here hoping it will help someone else.

 
@grit Dr. Joan Rosenberg PhD and Dr. Trevor Cates. There are sites found under search that do not use YouTube’s if that is a concern or others to be found for Emotional Mastery.
 
Emotional Equations. Chip Conley

Emotional Equations

So a typical 'feeling' for me that has led to all sorts of very bad things has been my Annihilation Anxiety. This is nothing I would find in any of these emotion wheels. Which is why I think I can't relate to the wheels often. My life - due to the traumas, is not so easily labeled. As a result, I have had to graduate to emotional equations. Which I have to tell you, isn't easy but is definitely a key into figuring out these crazy somatic responses that can lead me into a life of hell.

So over this.....

Anyway, here is an example.

Annihilation Anxiety =
Disorientation + Confusion + Physically Lost.
Anxiety = Uncertainty X Powerlessness

Once I was able to dissect the feeling, it was much easier to deal 'in the moment' with the fallout.

If I suffer from this annihilation anxiety feeling, and I am driving, then stop the car. That takes away from the physically lost feeling. This helps me get a grip on myself in the moment. Which, if you knew me, you would understand how imperative this is for me to pull myself back together without needing the support of others.

The confusion component of this is generally solved by my essential oils. Something about the olfactory really helps me calm down. So I carry a roller that has rose, vanilla, lavender in it and throw some on my wrists and *if the feeling is overwhelming* under my nose. This takes care of that component. I can safely say, if I have gotten this far in remediation, I have de-escalated from Annihilation Anxiety to Disorientation.

Disorientation being left as a simple (rather than complex) emotion is pretty easy to correct. Decide where I want to go and go there. Now my 'orientation' is under my control. Once I physically set out to go there the feeling dissipates on its own.

I Truly don't believe that these run of the mill charts work for me. They are more helpful if I am dissecting a complex emotion and I have the break it down into multiple emotions. I have yet to decide what to do with that.
 
I Truly don't believe that these run of the mill charts work for me.
They never have, for me.

My personal view is that emotional wheels, charts, etc.? Tell us a whole lot about how the person who created it feels things, but how much we resonate with anyone else’s feelings? Is not only going to vary a whole helluva lot, from person to person... but is probably pretty durn indicative of how much we’d like them. Because HOW we group things / organize ourselves? The more closely aligned, the easier -IMO/IME- to connect with them.

Just as one example of type? Does feeling small evoke/pair with excitement / wonder / possibility / joy, or disgust / powerlessness / fear / anger? Now, the disparate nature of the emotions involved doesn’t mean that people who feel almost the exact opposite emotional chorus can’t or don’t get on. Sometimes those chords blend beautifully together, creating a whole new third thing, between them. Other times it’s this discordant cacophony that drives them apart. And sometimes a person can so admire another person’s view that they change their own tune.

So, personally, I view these one size fits (all. most, some, few, none) charts as a tool to explore where one agrees & where one disagrees. Still a good tool for getting to know yourself, just not the guide of where one should be, or all that is.
 
Still a good tool for getting to know yourself,

Agreed, and that is exactly what I am up to these days. I think I started with the simple emotions on the wheel (did I feel happy today? Oh, yeah, I did. Well go figure THAT?) and then looking at more complicated feelings. Like feelings that feel overwhelming. And pretty consistently I found that pretty overwhelming feelings were overwhelming to me because they were a mixture of a whole bunch of feelings.

How the hell do I figure those overwhelming feelings when I can't even figure out the simple feelings. Happy to say I can now - with some real work - unpack the complex feelings and then, when the feeling starts to creep up on me again I can go 'Hey, wait a minute! You are feeling disoriented - so let's stop and orient. And confused. So let's pull out the EO's and sniff hard (and perhaps often). It's one of the reasons I want to look into these emotional equations some more as well.

Because the overwhelming feelings were getting me into deep, deep shit. And they were ruining my life. And I couldn't go anywhere and do anything. And that was going to stop. One way or the other. So time to educate myself and start unpacking this shit. That, I think, is where this comes into play....

evoke/pair with excitement / wonder / possibility / joy, or disgust / powerlessness / fear / anger
Because what I didn't know walking into all of this is that there can be a mixture of feelings - conflicting feelings and.or nervous system jacking feelings - that was screwing with me and I needed to get a grip. So for me I was looking at the emotional wheel the wrong way. I wasn't going to be able - after a terror attack - to find something to describe it on the wheel. No. That was my mistake when I started this thread. Instead, I needed to identify calm moments to - as you say - to get acquainted with myself again. I needed to start thinking in terms of simple and obvious emotions. This putting those emotions together in equations - to me - after all of this work is just the perfect next step for me to keep untangling this clusterf*ck that has become my life.

I was diagnosed with conversion disorder. That means that emotions get lost to my brain and play out through my body. Subconsciously. I need to re-convert to get them under conscious control. I am NOT living like this the rest of my life. So I am going to keep dogging this 'identifying emotions' thing.

Thanks for your thoughts Friday. They were helpful.
 
You know, there is a word I used to use for my mother. Indifferent. I hated her indifference. Don't get me wrong. She was passionate about so many things, so it wasn't a character trait. Her indifference was all about me.

Decades after her death I was able to see the adoption reports. After I came to my adopted family (at 2 years old and after 20 foster home placements), she would take my sister and bail every weekend and leave me with my father. It was obvious she was in too deep. Which is fine. I get it. I was a disaster after all I had been through.

But here is the thing. My birth parent's Indifference was the reason I had been abandoned - that was clear through the documentation as well. And indifference is something that throws me in an instant. I am working on it. Perhaps I should be drawing a line. People online; people I don't know; people who have no attachment to their own emotions? That I can see as being a go to display of their lack of emotion. Just one of many options and I think that is wrapped up in their own type of attachment disorderedness.

But indifference from loved ones? That is a whole different ballgame. That means betrayal. And that is perhaps where I need to look at my own behaviours. I need to stop walking into one betrayal after another. And I will.

And here is where I am at on that today. I am watching the TV today. A guy named Carl Carlson. Killed his wife in a house fire in CA back in the 90's. Perhaps killed a bunch of family treasured Belgium horses in his barn in Upper state of NY. But then.....

He killed his son. Or was the cause of his son being crushed by his own car while it was up on lifts being repaired in the barn. I am not certain if anyone really knew whether he was there when his son was killed or whether he just set his son up to be killed and have it look like an accident. I am watching - not quite certain what I would call that level of evil. And then the narrator went on to give me the answer.

Depraved Indifference.

Now there it is. f*ck yes. Depraved Indifference. That is a phrase that will help me to be mindful of and to deal with properly those that I attract into my life that have the potential to bring this back into my life. Up to me to crush this pattern. I swear to you, if I live another month or another 40 years - I am taking full responsibility for NOT ALLOWING this bullshit back in again.

There is no room in my life for people like this anymore. This draw to sadism I think is not about enjoying pain (masochism). It is more about being unaware of when I m setting myself up for pain and that has been a challenge througout my life because by and large I was very unaware of my relationship to pain. I think most of us who are traumatised have some sort of a funky relationship to pain. We either like to inflict it or we feel we need to take it. Perhaps many other stops along the line between the two extremes.

The thing that has bothered me the most about how my kids have handled this homeless thing and me is that it seems to me that this has been a big lesson to them on how to be indifferent and even enjoying watching the tremendous pain and hopeless position I was in up until recently. All but youngest son. And perhaps that is where people do go naturally when they are overwhelmed with the pain of others. But the laughing..... no no. That is something different. That is where the sadism comes in.

I can't tell you the betrayal in that. And i didn't have a name for it but now I do. Now I can take it outside of myself; spin it around in the palm of my hand; inspect it from angles of my choosing and when I am ready - make adjustments to my life - to my relationships - to myself - internalize the new model and live a decent life again.

Depraved Indifference - go f*ck yourself and the people you are housed in. That's their battle to fight. I am out. Don't care who you are.

And that, my friends, is how self love becomes possible. Putting words to shit and drawing lines in the sand. That was the problem with being overwhelmed so when I was preverbal. There were no words to describe what had happened and without the words it was just a 'feeling' that I didn't know how to deal with. It was a mistake I was consistently making due to a very real and understandable set of life circumstances when I was so very young. And I am never going to make it again.
 
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But indifference from loved ones? That is a whole different ballgame.
How are you defining "loved ones"? People we love? People we think love us? People we think are SUPPOSED to love us? (Like "supposed to" makes any difference.) I ask because I think (now, after a fair amount of thought and experience) that, be definition, a person who is indifferent to you doesn't love you and we should probably not waste our time and effort loving them.

I suppose there are a lot of reasons someone might feel indifferent. Probably sometimes it's not anyone's fault, it just is the way things are. But I think it always tells you something valuable about the person who's exhibiting it. (It pretty much tells you that they aren't on your side and don't expect anymore from them, no matter what the relationshipt is "supposed" to be.)

Glad to see you here @shimmerz ! Been wondering how things were going for you. Be well!
 
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