Which feelings are you trying to avoid?

[Ecdysis]

So, I'm going to start this thread about the topic of "Which feeling are you trying to avoid right now?"

I know there's threads about "What are you feeling right now?" etc, but I'm starting to think that "the feelings we avoid/ repress" may be an even more important category.

I'm attaching a couple of those "feeling wheels" or "emotion wheels" below.

So, previously, I've used those to try and identify "What am I feeling right now?" (cos that can be a task, in and of itself, with PTSD, right?)

But I've re-started meditation practice recently and one issue that has come up is that we will all feel ALL of these feelings, over and over, throughout life. All of them. Whether we do a, b, or c or d.

And I dunno if it's just me, but I feel like in our western/ capitalist system we're taught this idea that "If you do (all the right things) then you will be happy and content and successful and blablabla..." As if there's a deal where if you just behave "right" then you will be able to avoid all the "negative" or unpleasant feelings in life...

And, uh, obviously, that's just seriously a fallacy... No matter what we do/ don't do in life... We all will be feeling ALL of those feelings, over and over and over again.

So... maybe it would be more useful to befriend "all" of the feelings? Or at least to expect them? And prepare for them? Instead of trying to avoid the "negative" feelings "as much as humanly possible"?

And I guess another aspect of this is that I often feel like I've "done something wrong" or have "failed in some way" if I'm going through a set of negative/ uncomfortable emotions... Like if I'd just done a, b or c, then I wouldn't be having these negative emotions...? So maybe realising that they are just going to keep on being part of the full spectrum of life and all its feelings... will lift that sense of "having failed" at having "positve emotions"... Sigh...

Anyway... I will post this and then go and have a think about what feelings I'm trying to avoid right now...

Here's one feelings wheel:

The Benefits of Using a Feelings Wheel — South Denver Therapy

Discover the benefits of using a feelings wheel. Learn how this tool can improve emotional awareness, communication, and help you better understand your emotions.

www.southdenvertherapy.com

And here's another:

https://www.davidhodder.com/emotion-and-feeling-wheel/

So, edit to add:

I think I'm currently trying to avoid feelings in the "fear" section of the emotions wheel... something along the lines of "helplessness" in terms of "not being in control"... I go to hospital for 2 days this week for exams/ treatments and I'm definitely trying to suppress feeling nervous/ scared about that... Trying to tell myself "it'll be fine" and trying to stay "in control" of the situation by doing lots of tasks even tho that's just an "illusion of control" and I should really be accepting that nope, I don't have control in this situation, I am dependent on others (dependent on the hospital staff doing their work well, dependent on chance/ luck of the procedures working out, etc) .... So yeah, trying to avoid those feelings of "helplessness"...

And I guess I'm also trying to avoid feeling in the "sadness" section... Trying to keep depression symptoms at bay... Trying to keep feelings at bay that have to do with aging and with feeling a certain kind of "pointlessness" that comes with accepting that death is coming closer as I age and that the stories we tell ourselves when we are younger... that they begin to frazzle and unfurl and you sort of do start to see the cosmic pointlessness of everything we do/ don't do in a different intensity...

So, I guess I'm going to try and sit with those and try and allow them to be there and accept that they are a real and natural part of life and that they're not present because I've done anything "wrong"... And that learning to deal with them mindfully and with acceptance is probably the most useful/ sane thing I can do...

 

[Dark.Green.Feathers]

Distress/fear/overwhelmed.
I need to stay functional, in a self-sufficient way (as much as that's possible for me) until I have a safety net. I'm scared of triggering something and becoming helpless/losing my functionality.

 

[Mach123]

Idk i’d like not to be male anymore, or transition into something in between. But I avoid dwelling on that because I like it so much and I don’t like it so much. I know I could pick up the phone and find a quack Doctor Who would start giving me the injections and my insurance would pay for it. I had an opportunities you know when I was younger I went to places, but there were a lot of gay people and I had an opportunity to be gay plenty of opportunities actually but I didn’t like them. You know I just plain old-fashioned did not like the gay men. It wasn’t something that I wanted to be part of. And it’s a good thing because right at that time was when aids hit. So I’ll probably be dead right now if I had to acted on any of those feelings, but I didn’t really have those feelings that was what was so confusing about it. I don’t feel like a gay man. I feel like a girl. I know I’ve said this over and over but when I was 12 years old and I was getting my hormones and I was standing there looking at myself in the mirror and I was like somethings really wrong with this picture because I look like a boy, but I feel like a girl. I don’t think any of this is natural by the way this was caused by sexual abuse, but that’s just my opinion. So yeah, in my father of 6 37 years married suburban lifestyle? I don’t think about it that much. Or like the OP asked which feelings would you like to avoid and there’s a lot more that’s just one segment of it. But thanks for posting the thread. It’s a good one.

 

[jaccat]

Anger. It's alright for my T to tell me that everyone feels anger and you don't have to act on it, but growing up in a household where anger was the only accepted emotion and knowing that I have that in me makes it feel a hell of a lot more risky. Some times I can just feel it and accept it, some times I want to break things and I don't care what things.

 

[Ecdysis]

So, after childhood trauma I was flooded with fear/ anger/ sadness/ dissociation a lot of the time. But I was capable of love and joy too.

Since my adult trauma, love, joy, peace, connection have become inaccessible, in a way that I never ever realised that they could.

If I see someone that I know I love (because I loved them deeply before this trauma) my brain just shuts it down along the lines of "They will die, so loving them is pointless". Which I know makes no logical sense. Or if a situation would previously have filled me with joy, my brain shuts it down saying "Feeling joy is pointless as you will suffer profound losd, grief and pain." Which is also illogical. But my (new/ updated) trauma brain finds it exquisitely, perfectly, utterly logical.

It's a horrible situation to be in.

So something in me (it doesn't feel like it's me (conscious me)) is massively, categorically avoiding joy and love.

It feels nuts to write that, but it is what it is.

So... umm... what do I do? Stare at the feeling wheel to try and kickstart some sort of dormant memory that joy and love is part of life, even if something in me is refusing to go there? I guess that would be a start.