Experiences with emotions (do you feel them often, and how to feel more emotions?)
This might be a strange topic, and I'm not sure if others can relate, or if I am 100% strange here. Feel free to remove(?) this if it's not relevant.. This is just something I'd love to learn the experiences of others about and get some ideas, as I imagine everyone is so different.
So, I have a very annoying problem: I don't experience emotions very strongly (e.g. while some folks get moved by films or art, or maybe get worked up with joy or frustration in life, I seem to be far more emotionally neutral, even in very extreme situations.) This can be very useful (emotions can be misleading and lead to poor decisions), but also problematic and limiting (emotions can feel nice, help with creativity, it's a good way to express love to people, etc).
Occasionally, I do feel little bits of emotion, but they tend to go away very quickly. I really wish I felt more, but I don't know how.
I'm curious about the emotional experiences of others. Do you get naturally emotional? Could you cry from watching a movie? For those like myself who have underwhelming emotions - what does make you feel emotional? Do you have any tips or tricks for feeling more emotional, or, hanging on to emotions when you do get them? Has anyone ever been able to "overcome" this issue of not feeling emotions?
Thanks for any insight.
EDIT: If this is not the correct group for such a topic, please do let me know, and I will remove it.
You're not alone. I'm fairly neutral, though it can depend on my stress levels. I don't have a lot of advice to offer, but if you read Brandon Sanderson, you might find his piece Outside interesting-- he's wired similarly.
I honestly find it more distressing/disorienting when emotions kick in hard, probably because I just haven't got the reflexes to deal with them. I do practice just sitting with them sometimes, trying to fan them a little higher, while not actually in a situation where there's even more I have to be paying attention to, because that's overstimulating and too much to keep track of.
Wow, thanks for this article. I have never put my personality into words before, likely because the flat emotions don't call on me to express them, heh heh. This article is pretty much me. I FEEL SEEN!
Right? I started keeping a 'mood' entry in my daily notes and I'm struggling to have much in it on any given day but "neutral / null / a bit flat / mild." I need to recalibrate to my own baseline, I think. Ran across that article not long ago and immediately stuffed it in my reread-when-feeling-like-a-weirdo file.
Thanks for the link. I like the thought about just sitting with emotions when they become distressing; I saw a TEDx talk a couple years ago that talked about something similar, only it was specific to unpleasant feelings. Emotional Mastery: The Gifted Wisdom of Unpleasant Feelings | Dr Joan Rosenberg.
That's essentially what she was talking about: sitting with unpleasant feelings. I guess the topic is a little different, but sort of the same (if I understand, you're talking about the emotions themselves causing you to feel distressed, whereas she is talking about emotions that are inherently distressing like frustration, etc.) I started doing this, and I really love it, and have found that I've learned some incredibly valuable things from doing so. But I always lose site of this, so I appreciate you mentioning that you do something similar.
I wish I knew how to put this all in better words.
Yeah, even good emotions can unsettle me, sometimes more than the bad ones. I'll definitely have a look at that TEDx talk-- I don't think it's really a different topic, since I suspect it's mostly that I had some pretty off-kilter/lacking training in emotional management as a kid, and expression of emotions themselves became problematic. Learning emotional intelligence as an adult has been a very slow journey.
And words are hard! Words for emotions, even harder. I don't know how "normal" people do it.
You aren't alone, and I suspect it's very common. Like @aksi, it feels like I started to really shut down emotionally during my teenage years. My conclusion as to why is that I did not feel safe to express the emotions I was feeling because when I did express them, they were dismissed by the people around me.
I remember being really sad about certain (appropriate) things when I was a child. The first time I caught a fish and then had to kill it, it caused me immense sadness at the fragility of life, and at the fact that simply by being a predator I had the power to choose whether another living animal were to live or die. My dad / grandparents' response was essentially to laugh and proclaim "get over it".
I experienced other incidents which were not outright abuse or assault, but came pretty close, and they screwed with my idea of what bodily autonomy I was entitled to as a young man - the idea that to some people I could just be a piece of meat for them to gratify themselves with and my own emotions on the matter were irrelevant.
It is natural when we're young to reach out when we're hurt - both physically and emotionally - but if you reach out when you're in pain and are then caused more pain by the responses of those you reached out to (e.g. because your caregivers deem your emotions misplaced, overly dramatic, or irrelevant), you learn very quickly that outward expression of your emotions comes at a cost. You learn this when you're growing up because it keeps you safe, but in adulthood the definition of "safe" changes.
As a child, "safe" is literally being not eaten / killed by predators. It's not being neglected by your parents before you're able to fend for yourself. Realistically we live in a society, so these animal instincts are mostly misplaced because in general children are not allowed to be neglected / abandoned / killed.
The techniques that are "programmed" into us by our interactions with those around us as children, and that we use subconsciously to keep ourselves safe can actually be pretty damaging as time passes, and for me this is absolutely where I struggled.
Side note: I like the term programmed because it removes blame. It's easy to think that damaging behaviour from caregivers and peers places the blame squarely on them, but the reality is that everyone, unless they become aware of their own patterns, is guilty of this in some respect. Parents who emotionally traumatise their children are almost always just repeating the same emotional damage that was inflicted on them by their own parents. Everyone tries to not pass on the damage that they are aware of to their children, but that leaves the damage they are unaware of, and sometimes they even flip so far in the opposite direction to their own parents that they end up causing a bunch of emotional trauma anyway.
Not being able to feel strong feelings makes you incredibly effective within high stress environments (work, leadership, emergency situations etc), but it also makes you a brick wall - some level of vulnerability is necessary to connect with others but if you have been taught that emotional vulnerability leads to pain or shame then you won't ever be able to truly connect with people, or express your needs. Even being able to identify that you have needs might be an issue.
You mentioned in one of your other replies around finding emotional safety, and that was absolutely key for me. It started out by finding a therapist that I clicked with, where I could share everything I was struggling with, with no judgement.
It continued by trying meditation and grounding techniques. I believe emotions are simply another sense - an input to the ego, or the conscious "you", but it also feels like there's a feedback loop there. Emotions can trigger physical "symptoms" that come from e.g. anxiety, or arousal, or excitement. By consciously re-acquainting yourself with what you can feel through touch, heat, sound, vision, smell etc it can help you to become more aware of the physical ways that you feel in response to something - that something might be an emotion that itself you can't feel (because you're suppressing it) but the physical symptoms are right there.
For me this was really important to identify that I was actually anxious and hyper-vigilant a lot of the time, even though I felt calm and collected - it was almost my natural state of being. The "persona" that I put out into the world was a mask, a curated version of myself where my inner life was protected by a shell that was actively managed.
Turns out that over long periods of time, curating a persona is incredibly tiring and you can't uphold adult relationships if you're constantly controlling what you put out into the world in fear that others will find you "too emotional" or "too soft" or "not manly enough" or anything like that.
After talking to my therapist for around 6 months, the things I had learned and read (including about attachment theory) started to naturally come up in conversations with other people - and for whatever reason I started sharing things with those people that a year prior I probably would've been sick even thinking about doing so.
There was a threat that my feelings would be dismissed again, and that has happened since, but the overwhelming response from almost everyone that I've entrusted my fears / emotional vulnerabilities to has been empathy, caring and compassion - and that has gone a very long way to helping me to find that emotional safety innately.
I now feel, personally that I am pretty emotionally resilient - my feelings and emotional experience matter to me and that is what makes them valid - sometimes people are not able to meet me at the level I need, but that is a statement about them rather than whether my own emotional needs are valid or not.
I still have to remind myself a lot not to over-analyse, and to try and live in the moment, and to actually feel feelings, but whereas a couple of years ago it might take me 2 or 3 weeks to realise why a particular incident made me feel shame, or hurt, or anger, I can now pretty reliably identify it at the time or shortly after.
Good luck on your own personal journey - it is not easy at all (particularly the decision to start therapy if you're anything like me - proud, stubborn and brought up to believe that every man is an island), but it is some of the most rewarding self-improvement I've experienced.
Damn... I can not thank you enough for taking your time to write this out. This seriously spoke to me, every bit of it. I don't even have the words... it actually gives me so much more to think about...
Much like me before finding out about attachment theory!
If you're looking for some reading material, "The Power of Attachment" by Diane Poole Heller was life changing for me.
hey thank you. i actually saw your comment about that attachment book in the thread about the most recent thing that's improved your quality of life (before i posted this). i was going to respond to you in that thread, to have a good luck on your journey but i deleted it before i hit "post" haha (i tend to be more a lurker and get a little nervous to post, i just don't want to muddy up the waters i guess.) so it is cool that you ended up posting here instead and sharing that with me. i will check that book out for certain. damn your post really did resonate with me and it's just cool that you have shared that. p.s. i wish you good luck on your journey
i am very glad you have found positive changes with all this stuff. you know, i was mulling this over after i read the comment, and thinking now about how yes this stuff really is so programmed into people... i really do feel stupid or like a massive loser if i were to cry or anything. and even though i recognize that's not healthy, i can't shake the feeling it's so deep. and i realize now that probably has a whole lot to do with it. it's funny because actually earlier i was talking to my mom about this problem (also why i posted this thread, this problem is really on my mind at the moment...), and for a moment during that conversation, i did feel, strangely overwhelmed, choked up, but i made sure to hold that back because the thought of it felt so overwhelmingly embarrassing and stupid. like i would die if i cried on the phone haha or especially in front of my mom, even if it was just a tiny bit. so down the hole it went... i think the feeling of vulnerability in itself is just something that feels crappy and even somewhat dangerous in a way. which probably deserves some thought. and it's true... when you are vulnerable, that really is when people can shit on you, break you, hurt you, do whatever to you. so i guess it makes sense why a person would not want to be in that state.
i don't know... just random thoughts i am spilling out, but who knows maybe someone else reading them will also resonate and could be helped by those thoughts so there they are... anyway just yeah wanted to say thanks again.
Ah you're welcome, thanks for sharing! Part of my own healing process at the beginning was finding out that there was a bunch of attachment theory / trauma subreddits (specifically /r/dismissiveavoidants for me), and reading about other's struggles that felt so familiar really helped me to understand that I wasn't even close to alone, even though I felt like it to start with.
It was almost like a model of emotional safety over the internet, perpetuated by total strangers, and full of such compassion and empathy that it made me see how far my own existence was from being truly "safe".
Me speaking about this in some senses is paying that compassion and empathy forward, because of how important it was to me at the beginning. It's also pretty cathartic and the more I talk about my own situation, the more I understand things about myself further. In that sense, there is a sort of selfish aspect to it, but I justify that by the thinking that we need to be emotionally available and regulated for ourselves before we can be emotionally available and regulated for others.
In a sense, we are all in this together, and that is why sometimes you also need to focus on yourself first.
You mention vulnerability in itself feeling crappy and dangerous - this is almost like a core belief for avoidant people. "If I am vulnerable, I will be hurt".
When you're a child, this makes perfect sense - watching my young nieces, they seem to experience physical and emotional hurt very similarly - crying, sadness, maybe some shame and looking for a caregiver figure to seek comfort from - whether that is from falling over and scraping a knee, or my inadvertently telling one of them that she hasn't quite got the timing down yet for a good "floss" (dance).
When you're young and you can't separate the cause of the hurt into "actually dangerous to life" vs "uncomfortable but survivable", your brain ends up treating them all the same - creating neural pathways and learned, subconscious behaviour that form the core of your beliefs around safety, and what you do in response to that. Avoidant people learn to avoid that emotional pain by suppression, just like you might avoid burning yourself on a hot pan by not touching the hot pan.
They essentially become emotional reflexes, and that is why they're so deeply ingrained and hard to work with.
This really stood out to me, because it is something I would've said (or at least thought) a couple of years back, and it is true. People can do all of those things to you when you're vulnerable, and it fucking sucks when they do. But there's other things they could do instead (and when you find the right people, they will). They could comfort you. Hold you. Listen to you. Cheer you up. Express their own positive emotions about how you enrich their own existence.
That is connection, and the fear that comes from not wanting to be vulnerable with others is completely valid, especially when you can look back at all the times in the past you were vulnerable with someone and you were hurt because of it.
What's key to remember is that as an adult, most people are good, most people want to connect, and most people struggle with connecting with others as well (something like 60% of the adult population are classed as insecure attachers). Those who hurt you in the past probably didn't do it maliciously (abuse aside of course), rather they were unaware of their own toxic patterns.
Connecting with others involves some level of risk of hurt, even if all parties have no deliberate intention of causing hurt to the other. Accepting that good people can hurt each other, and be hurt by each other, even in the context of a functional relationship or friendship really helped me to reach over the fear I had of being vulnerable.
Anyway I'm rambling now and I could talk about this sort of stuff for days (and have!). Thanks for the great topic and for interacting with all of the replies so positively.
I have similar troubles myself and I am seeing a therapist for it. I am sure that people experience emotions much differently and at various levels of intensity. But personally I started shutting down emotions during my teenage years and I have just continued with it. It's not that they don't exist, I just shut them down or plainly can't recognise them for what they are.
If my inner self is a bit like a highway, I have essentially ruined the on/off-ramps for emotions so my inner self just bypasses them. I am now working to amend that and I hope it is possible, albeit quite a slow process.
Another insight is that we can't really compare emotions just by looking at others. Technically you might experience the same level of emotion, it is just expressed differently. There's a vulnerability to showing emotion that I am personally struggling with. Jumping out of joy or crying makes me feel foolish and that triggers a lot of the shut-downs.
Overall it's very confusing and I am just trying to get more comfortable in myself so that I one day can express emotions in a better way.
One tip would be to stop in a moment you are feeling something and recognise how it physically feels in your body. Write that down and keep doing this exercise. It has helped me to a degree with understanding and recognising emotions when they happen.
Thank you for sharing so honestly. I didn't want to elaborate too much in my post, but my experience is similar. I actually did used to feel emotions, but I went through a sort of situation where I think I essentially shut down, it was sort of an assault situation and there was no escaping tbh and so my brain just kind of went offline to endure it until it was over. I've had a very difficult time getting emotions back since then, it's been many years.
Want to share an article I recently found on this topic, that was really insightful for me (I hope it's useful to you or others): https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4300857/
That article was enlightening for me because it explained a lot about what's actually going on in the nervous system and brain that can cause these things (emotional shutdown, etc.) to happen. Having a better understanding makes the puzzle seem solvable.. For example: rather than just fight or flight, there is also "shutdown" in dangerous situations, which can happen when essentially you recognize that fighting and flighting are both futile. I saw comparisons to an animal playing dead when there is no other recourse (maybe by playing dead, the predator will give up and go away) It seems this sort of emotional shut down / dissociation might be along those lines, syncope as well (fainting). (I'm unclear if there's 100% agreement on this, so please do take it with a grain of salt.)
I have been seeing a therapist to try and overcome this, but I've had little to no improvement in 8 months, still just as unemotional as ever and it's like emotions are behind a wall of glass. It's just gotten less and less and less over time, which is very disheartening. I will keep trying though..
I appreciate you sharing the being aware of how it feels in your body. I have never really done this, and it sounds like a useful exercise. I will try it. (maybe the emotions are there, just don't recognize it.)
The one thing that's been very helpful to me (maybe this will be helpful to others): recognizing that the current situation is safe, and that I'm not in danger. (Both the therapist, and even that scientific paper I linked, stressed this). I guess when these things happen, your brain can kind of stay on high alert, always anticipating danger (even if the dangerous situation has long passed), in an effort to protect you. This can go on, even if you don't realize it. Sometimes now I look around and remind myself "I am safe, I'm just in my home, it's not dangerous right now", and I really internalize that, and sometimes when I do that, I do start to feel some emotion again. It kind of makes sense if you think about it; emotions cloud your judgement, and in a dangerous situation it's useful to be free of them. So maybe if the brain is on high alert for danger, it's putting emotions to the wayside.
Thank you for the article! I will read it when I have some time over.
I just wanted to write a reply on this specific part:
There's a few things I want to say to this.
Hopefully that's some help.
Thanks for sharing. This is is all really helpful actually... It's also good to hear about the timeline it's taken you. I have nothing to compare this to, so unclear how quickly things should work. Your mention of layers to peel strikes a cord with me. I guess just like a large project, where there's lots of layers to work on, it is probably similar. Thank you for this reminder and gives me some ideas.
This is interesting. If I understand you correctly, it seems like for you, the ability to express the emotions (whether that be from writing them down, or speaking about them outloud) is almost tied together with feeling the emotions themselves. (like you can't have one without the other in a way.)
In a sense yes, but it also depends on who I am talking to, the context, and how deep it cuts.
If I am telling a story about how I was mistreated by my dad as a kid, I might be fine vocalising it from an objective and more detached view. Using phrases like "it probably made me feel" or such. It's like I can skim the surface of my interior feelings and then logically explain it a bit. If I were to try and explicitly say: "I felt" that's much harder.
In general though, vocalising it is much harder for me than writing it down. It's like it becomes more real if I actually say it instead of just writing it down. Some things I write down and share I just can't vocalise, because the feelings then actually bubble up and it makes me feel out of control and I just shut down.
thank you. i think i share this same experience about it being difficult to vocalize emotions, and in general, about how when you say things it feels more real somehow. in fact you express that in a way i have been unable to. this is actually great food for thought, because i don't think i've ever really stopped to think about it. maybe, as i'm trying to experiment (of trying to identify emotions and how things feel physically), if i'm finding it difficult to say it out loud, i can try writing it or vice versa. this is very helpful
Hi there. I wonder if you and/or OP (/u/kbzbr) saw my post a few days ago on mental health? I also have PTSD. I've found some relief. I wrote about it. Maybe you would benefit as well?
I relate so very much with what you wrote. I spent my late childhood/early teenage years having my feelings mostly invalidated and, at worst, ridiculed. This caused a great deal of my PTSD.
hey thank you very much. Sorry, I am just seeing these replies. I will be looking at this. Yes, I think I likely do have PTSD from this experience, and I know that plays into it, though I'm still trying to wrap my mind around it. I would love to see what others did to overcome this.
Why do you care?
Some notes from my struggles with feeling emotions and giving/receiving empathy. I feel similar to you in that I see:
Hedging at the start of your post, in case you're too different + logical thinking.
The feeling that you lack emotion, when your post is littered with emotion (anxiety, annoyance, curiosity, desire)
Part 1: Mismatching emotions
As a younger kid, I was often called "robot [miyu]" by my peers, spoken with monotonic voices and the occasional poor rendition of the dance. That bothered me because I felt singled-out as different, and the feeling of difference felt isolating.
I similarly panicked about why I lacked emotions. My school had a robotics program, and where others saw excitement in building an animated, lively being, I saw gorgeous cold metal and the product of our young team's unity. While others cried over graduation, I felt I was starting yet another summer before transferring to yet another school. I worried whether this meant I was a sociopath incapable of bonding with others. I'd occasionally think "maybe a psychadelic would fix me".
But I was feeling emotions; the above paragraph describes panic, the love of community and belonging, fear, and, sure, indifference/apathy. Those emotions simply didn't match those of others, and I got flak for that (as young people who don't know what they're doing do to each other), causing me to write off myself. I could speak to what I felt, but I couldn't feel what others felt.
So, my emotions were simply different than others'. That didn't mean I lacked emotions.
Part 2: A struggle with empathy.
Where I do struggle is empathy, which in young people terms is basically your ability to vibe with people while reflecting on something deep. I sucked at that in college. My brain's super logical, and there's frankly no getting away from that, and it's definitely a bit isolating at times. But I really can't find a logical reason to worry about changing things - in the past, I'd figure my logicalness was the reason of, say, isolation, but then objectively there'd been many moments in life where I wasn't isolated, so perhaps that wasn't a great excuse :)
Anyways, I see two parts to empathy: 1. input and 2. output. On the receiving side of emotions, I struggled early on because I generally tried to diagnose and problem-solve others' feelings, rather than simply giving others space to express themselves. On the output-side, I was so logical that I had a speech impediment that stopped me from sharing my emotions with others; I'd frequently freeze mid-sentence for 30 seconds, overly self-analyzing my words to avoid misspeaking.
I pretty much solved #2 by pre-writing statements (to get the long freezes and decision paralysis out of the way) for the first time. In time, I could naturally answer questions comfortably, without canning responses. Additionally, I gradually realized nothing I fixated on really mattered, so I could give less of a shit more often :)
Also a fun final 2c: for people like me, it was hard to find romantic partners because I was so unlike others online. The landscape nowadays is far easier - there are many dating apps that are much more focused on finding others with shared interests, rather than just vibing with others :) My other half is far more logical than I am, somehow, and that can be really funny!
I appreciate this write up and sharing your experiences here. I think the point of "the emotions are there, just different than others", is really important. I think it's likely that emotions are there, I am just unaware of them. P.S. I am also very logical persona, and I relate to that a ton.
I think I probably should have been a little clearer in my post (I didn't want to write too much.) I do feel emotions from time to time, it's just they are very, very dull. You know, a tiny drop of water where another person might get a whole splash in their face. So yes, frustration, even bits of joy exist, it's just, really really really minimal.
For me personally, it's something I'd like to change just because I think emotions are part of the human experience and I just want to experience that more (for various reasons). Just a preference here... I'm not saying life can't complete or fulfilling without them. Others may feel differently about them and that's fine.
I appreciate your thoughts on empathy. Empathy is such a huge deal to me; I have so many thoughts on empathy in general, and it's a topic of great interest to me. It's interesting you brought this up, because I actually think empathy (at least for me now) is a very logical process, rather than an emotional one. I really don't feel what others feel (as I don't even really feel much myself lol), but I make it a point to take on their perspectives as much as I can. I find the result is the same. With regards to not finding any logical reason to empathize: I can understand that take. So I will share my thoughts on it. The reason I empathize with others is the following: I feel if we all did it frequently, especially with those we dislike or don't agree with, the world would be a more pleasant place for all of us. I can only control myself, and so if I wish the whole world would do this, well I am part of that world, so I am effectively working towards that goal when I do it. So the logical reason, for me at least, is that it's a collective thing: i think it would make the world better for all of us.
I'm a very logical and barely emotional person myself and I'm fine myself and I generally don't care about and get along well with it, but the part I struggle with is:
When I'm surrounded by people having a hard time it's really hard for me to feel bad for them or oftentimes to understand their pain. My brain goes immediately into (re)solving the issue/situation at hand instead of trying to understand. If I'm upset after a fight or something along those lines, I'm pretty much a mute until I've "solved" the issue and I'm ready to move on (which is not a great trait in a partnership as you can imagine).
I've tried looking up literature about emotional intelligence to help me understand others and their feelings better, but to my surprise there was no good book available to learn and understand. Apparently you can find books from dealing with depression over atomic habits to how to raise your kids, but no one is really willing to explain emotional intelligence in detail :) If anyone here has a good read about it, feel free to share it with me! I'm more than willing to read a book or two about it that helps me in any shape or form.
Your point on "resolving the situation at hand" absolutely resonates with me. I debug code for a living; if others experience bugs, then it's reflexive for me to try to patch that, so I need to fight against that.
Likewise, if I have a mathematical equation I'm stuck on, it is difficult for me to get it out of my head until it's solved, even if I'm out and about doing social things. It takes intentional effort for me to be "in the moment". I have a dog and he keeps me in the moment. Also, I'm not encouraging it since it's highly personal, but my first experience with weed also forced me into an extreme where I could only be in the moment, which revealed a new side of me that I could now self-analyze and blend into my regular personality.
My other half is like that. She's has remarked that she can be "hard to love" because of this, so I understand what you're going through and have been on the other side. When we argue, she often clams up for the day and is incapable of dropping things and moving on, whereas I'm good at shelving fights and going on to do the next thing. I sorta get it... it's not so different from my math-solving fixation that I described above.
I don't think it's bad. I think it's different, but part of a successful partnership is about building on top of each others' strengths and differences. The strength here is that you want to be logical about your argument and work towards the precise logical outcome that would make you happy. This is a strength over others who might not so thoroughly process their feelings to understand their emotions.
Our workaround has been to use "10 minute rules", where we take a break to gather our thoughts and maybe write them down. We occasionally put off discussions to another day as well, to remove the immediacy of an argument and give ourselves time to process our thoughts.
I absolutely hate this term. I get it's well intentioned, but it negatively implies a deficit or stupidity and probably puts people on the defensive. You are clearly intelligent, you just struggle to feel as others do at times.
For the longest of time, I did not accept how I thought. My brain worked one way, but I was trying to get it to work another way (to be more intelligent). That was counterproductive.
My personal approach has moved towards 1. mirroring others through active listening (which takes time to do correctly without being really awkward, but eventually feels natural and passive) and 2. opening up with others on how I struggle to grok things sometimes, and probing to better understand their emotions.
#1 - active listening can actually be a really logical process. It's ultimately about trying to understand what others are saying and ensure they understand you understand them.
I feel #2 actually works quite well when done naturally - most conversations involve people wanting to talk about themselves, so it invites others to further express how they feel. And it gradually taught me to understand how others feel through my logical brain.
And yeah, occasionally people find #2 awkward, but it's no more awkward than being silent or not understanding (at which point people think you're not even listening to, engaging with, or interested in them). The expected value of the action is just better.
I did a quick Ctrl+F for p*** in the comments but didn't find anything. If you consume regularly, abstain for at least 3 months, and see if you experience a difference. I know many people who have done this that have reported a difference (and an overall increase in happiness and decrease in stress from not having to hide their consumption or cover their tracks), but I don't have any studies or anything like that to cite. Happy to answer any questions in DMs, but I won't be replying further in this thread. Good luck OP with however you decide to move forward 🤞
I am the opposite in that I tend towards being a little too emotional. Yesterday I cried at a kids cartoon. I have been known to cry at adverts (much to my husbands amusement).
I am far from a mental health expert but a couple of things struck me about your post. Someone else mentioned depression, which is a possibility. It might also be societal influence, particularly if were raised as a boy and/or live in an area where emotion is seen as weakness. But it might just be the way you are - there’s a spectrum of “normal” here, and you might just be closer to one end than the other.
A few questions that you don’t have to answer to me but might want to think about for yourself:
Just want to say I love your user name.
Crying at an advert makes me think of that scene from Dumb and Dumber, lol
Hey I really appreciate you sharing this. And I love hearing about someone experiencing a lot of emotion. :) I'm not gonna lie, the idea of crying at an advert gave me a chuckle (not in a making fun of you way, I hope it doesn't come across that way. just a, I would never think about that and damn humans are cool that we experience things so differently kind of way.)
These are great questions, and I will ponder them all. You and a couple others have mentioned about even just being more aware of emotions themselves. This is a really interesting thing to think about really. Maybe we are all feeling emotions, just not aware of them. It's not something we talk about a whole lot in society I guess, about what are you feeling, what it feels like, etc. which is unfortunate.
I wouldn’t have thought you were making fun :) do you find yourself anxious about how people receive you a lot? That might be another thing to think about! Anxiety about how we’re perceived could make you subconsciously dampen down your big emotions until you eventually feel them less. Just a layman’s thought, as I said I’m no expert.
It’s a good point about not knowing how other people experience emotion. Two people might feel sadness as deeply, but only one has the outward display of it by crying. But like I said, I think it’s a spectrum, and feeling something less deeply doesn’t always mean there’s something wrong - although of course it can be a symptom of depression so it’s worth exploring that too
I actually do do this (worry both about how people perceive, as well as the impact my actions/words could have on others). I often hold back on expressing my true thoughts, for fear it could be perceived negatively, or hurt someone, etc. With worrying about how people perceive me/possible ridicule, well, I realize this is pointless... logically, I don't care if someone thinks I'm dumb or weird, or whatever, and yet I still worry about it, which is weird. For worrying about my words/actions negatively impacting others: it's much more difficult.. our actions can deeply hurt others and I'm always worried about doing that inadvertently. I go down these rabbit holes in my mind trying to prevent it. In the end, sometimes i feel the best move is not to play so I say nothing. Tbh, it never dawned on me that could be playing into this emotions problem, but now that I think about it, it makes so much sense that would.
That sounds a lot like anxiety, and specifically social anxiety (guess how I know!) which is definitely something you can get help with if you want it. Therapy and/or medication if those are accessible for you, but also some self help things like consciously getting out of your comfort zone and some CBT techniques that you could google. There are probably even some apps that might help!
A very difficult topic to discuss with strangers and by exchange of text. This response is just to give you another datapoint to consider.
For me, I am not moved strongly emotionally. It has let me become a debugger of people of sorts, at the very least I can de-escalate a lot of situations because I don't react. I am able to work with a lot of traditionally "oh they are so hard to work with" types of people because I can get past their emotional presentation (thanks to lack of my own) and try to deal with the "person".
A lot of people I know can't do this because the emotional exchange takes the whole situation somewhere else. I get mad, but it takes a LOT to make me mad. Like you have to cross a significant line, and even then, I will use increasingly stronger language as opposed to yelling. Also, by that point I've debugged the person enough that I can use a couple choice words that makes them feel a bit exposed or silly for acting the way they did in the first place.
Also, I tend not to be ashamed to much. I am just fairly confident in who I am and what I bring to the table. I have a broad sense of people having the same weaknesses, and so it all boils down to an emotional framework that is tempered somewhat by a cognitive filter. This is in the context of relating to others. I'm always learning, and pride myself in my ability to grow and adapt, so what's there to ever be ashamed about? Pull down my pants in public. Why be ashamed? Do others not share the same body parts as I?
More primally, at funerals I tend not to cry. Do I? Sometimes, but not always. There's definitely some emotional blockage there, and it would make sense to cry. If I lose something, or didn't get something I really wanted, yes there's definitely an emotion there.
Interestingly, physical pain (in a combative situation, let's say getting kicked hard in the shin during kickboxing) gives me a sense of pleasure and instead of retreating from it, it makes me "wilder".
Lastly, I can VERY EASILY name emotions and the reasons for what they feel in other people, but it's really hard for me to say what I'm feeling sometimes. I literally have to go, "Am I mad? No... that's not it. Am I sad? Mayyybe? But... hmmm...".
I'm SURROUNDED by feelers and criers and people who are easily offended, so for awhile I thought as you might be doing that I was somehow wrong or broken. I've since simply come to accept that I am who I am, and that I'm always trying to learn and uncover more of myself. I try not to be a jerk about things and so I'm probably on an OK path.
Oh man, I can relate to this so much...
Yes, I am just like this, and I find it's difficult to find others like this so can be difficult to relate with people. I just... don't get riled up, and I can't really think of anything that offends me... even if someone is insulting me, shouting at me, whatever, it has no impact at all... it's like I just see that cloud emotion surrounding them and I see it in a logical way. "ok they are emotional because of this topic; the emotions are preventing us from communicating clearly, I want to communicate with them beneath that cloud" so I am constantly calm in my reply. Sometimes (most the time) the other person is eventually receptive; they start being nice back when they realize there's no insult/emotion being tossed back at them, and we end up communicating better with each other. (but sometimes it just doesn't happen and I end up having to leave the conversation, but that's kind of rare.) tbh, it didn't dawn on me until just now that maybe the reason I do this is because of that lack of emotion. Now it seems so obvious, but it just never occurred to me.
Interesting. I think I might be this exact way. Several people on here mentioned an exercise of trying to identify what you're feeling, even seeing how it feels physically and writing it down, as a way to become more aware of this and start to distinguish emotions more.
Someone I know that shares a similar emotional disposition recently started seeing a counsellor who specializes in trauma counselling. Not because they were traumatized per se, but that was the counsellor's background.
We joke about one of the counsellor's frequent queries, which is, "Where did you feel it in your body?" The premise being that learning to feel emotions manifesting in the body is a pathway to helping to feel the emotions plainly.
I've since come to actively practice this... when I'm in a difficult conversation or situation, I'll take stock and realize oh yeah, I'm NOT liking this. Well, I don't seem to mind it, but my stomach is definitely wanting this to end. Or I'll be ready to head out and I'll sense the heaviness around my shoulders (which I honestly never really noticed before) and I'll say out loud, "Wait... I don't want to go. I know I have to go and I'm going, but I don't WANT to... why don't I want to... oh, hey... I think it's anxiety! Holy crap I think I'm anxious! HEY GUYS! I'M ANXIOUS!!!" The discovery of being anxious is literally low-key celebratory.
AND THEN... it hits me... WOW... some people feel like this ALL THE TIME. OMG, must be crippling.
And then I am OK that I am the way that I am, because feeling normally on top of everything and learning to discover emotions seems to be a lot easier than feeling everything and learning to how to harden myself from it.
that is so interesting hearing about this stuff, and appreciate you kind of an example walking through what goes through your mind when you do this exercise. i honestly just never thought about the physical feeling i get with emotions, and the concept seems so bizarre to me. I'm really curious what's going to come up when I start doing this, because if it's helpful for enough people, I know there's gotta be something significant to it
You're describing Emotional flatness and you should talk to a therapist/psychologist about it. Could be a symptom of depression, but you'll have to help your psychologist figure that out.
hey thank you for reading my thread and sharing your thoughts. i'm sorry, i'd written out a reply here, but later deleted the comment. i think it might have been a bit too personal what i wrote and sort of veered off the rails.
Haha that's fine. It's good to write your thoughts out anyway.
I relate to this a lot. A lot of people in my life who are on the spectrum have told me that it might be due to that, since they seemed to understand what I was talking about, but my therapist/doctors don't seem to agree, so I dunno.
I find that my emotions are very convoluted and vague. It's hard for me to understand what I'm feeling at any one moment, if anything at all. Sometimes I get "phantom" feelings where I think I'm happy/sad/whatever but there's literally no reason for the emotion.
Also, having started HRT semi-recently, I'm noticing "new" emotions. I already have a hard time conveying the emotions I'm familiar with, so experiencing completely new ones can be terrifying. I care for people in a way that I never have, for no discernable reason. I've been self mediating with cannabis, and I find it helps somewhat. At the very least, it's easier to steer away from trying to figure out my emotions.
Overtime I've learned that no matter how numb I get, I should always remember and appreciate empathy. It's very easy for me to "forget" that other people are... People, and that they have a world of complexity inside. I reduce them into little boxes of things that I happen to remember about them but I have no idea how to define what kind of person they are. So, with this in mind, I try to push myself to be empathetic towards everyone even if I don't really get along with them. It seems to work, since throughout my life despite being a VERY easy target, I never got seriously marginalized or bullied.
I'm glad another person mentioned empathy. I agree, empathy is so important, at least I believe so. I actually find empathy to be a really logical process rather than an emotional one (both in the experience of empathy, and motivation for it). I don't really find emotions necessary for it. I would love to know if it is the same for others.
This is something that's changed recently for me. For a lot of my life empathy was very mechanical and calculated, but now it's an emotional response. In a way, it's the only one of my emotions that I can very concretely recall and isolate. Hopefully the rest will follow suit soon.
very interesting. thank you for sharing this.
I actually have this issue currently, and I’m in therapy/psychiatry for it. As mentioned in another comment in my instance it’s referred to as emotional flatness.
I want to make sure I’m just speaking to my experience here, but I’ve had blunted emotional responses since I was a kid. There are other things that come along with it like fatigue, loss of interest/inability to stick to things, lack of motivation, etc. I lived like this for a long time and I’m only now beginning to realize that I needed therapy and medication to nudge myself in the direction I wanted.
After a lot of work, I feel like I’m making progress which is weird because it just means I’m feeling things more authentically now. With that said, I’m still working to learn how to deal with my emotions and motivations.
I want to make sure it’s clear that this is what worked for me, and doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a catch all solution. If you see it as a problem, it might be worth just meeting with a therapist and really digging into the origin of this state of mind.
Do you mind sharing if there's been any things in particular that have been helpful in your progress? (If this question is too involved, feel free to decline answering. I don't want you to feel pressured to make some long write up or anything. Just didn't know if there were any simple things you've found that were helpful.)
For me, I think there is a boiler plate answer in that I went to therapy and got on medication, and started to break down the underlying causes of the emotional flatness. I’m a firm believer that all of our experiences play a role in shaping our behavior, emotions, and thoughts. In my case I found a lot from my childhood really set the pace for a lot of my future, and I had unknowingly slipped into habits that I would go on to keep for years afterwards. It sound cliche, but definitely my experience.
Beyond just that boiler plate answer, I would say just having conversations with yourself (This could be recording yourself, writing, just talking) was a big thing for me. Giving myself the space to talk through problems and issues I was having. I think the easiest emotions for me to understand were anger and sadness. It was quick for me to realize how I was overlooking my own sadness and anger in everyday life. I was trapped in this loop of invalidating myself.
The final thing I will say is have patience, and understand if your goal is to feel more, that doesn’t mean you won’t have times where you are numb to the world. That is normal, and expected. There is no one clear cut answer or perfect ending to the story. Your goal is understanding yourself, your needs, and breaking habits that don’t help you.
I hope this is what you are looking for and feel free to ask more questions if you have them.
thanks this is well described and yes exactly what i was looking for. i actually really like this idea of having conversations with yourself. i think i have done... like some half assed version of this before, and it actually was helpful. (it was more like just letting my thoughts vaguely wander about some problems to blow off steam, but not going so far as to really articulate it in my mind with internal dialogue.) i think this is a brilliant idea and i will be putting it into practice right away. thanks a million for this. i felt really reserved posting this thread initially but i am really glad i did now. grateful you folks have shared all these experiences and ideas.
OP can I ask your age?
I have found that as I age I'm definitely feeling my emotions more.
oh, i am a little nervous to post my age in public (i hope that's ok). but i think unfortunately in my case my ability to feel emotions has only diminished with each year. it's actually really cool that you're finding that you feel it more with age. it sounds like you are a healthy person in that regard and that's a good thing.
i'd love to know more about your experience, do you have any thoughts why you feel emotions more with age? is it just, you have richer experiences, or you've grown more comfortable with yourself? no pressure if you don't want to answer that, just curiosity here.
No worries. I am in my 40's but I felt that when I was younger I typically didn't "allow" myself to feel my feelings. It may be a blend of aging, getting sentimental/nostalgic, and getting comfortable in my own skin. Also, having children definitely changes your perspective on things... I find myself lately trying to model the behavior I'd like them to have. Not always successful, mind you.
Thanks for sharing this. It actually gives me some hope, and also rings true to what a lot of other folks have put in here. I do realize that I am very bad about not allowing myself to feel certain things, or thinking less of myself if I do so. Perhaps the more I am aware of this, and the more comfortable I get in my own skin, the less this will be a problem.
P.S. About not sharing my age and personal details. I genuinely didn't mean to come off rude. I've experienced folks in real life stumbling upon an online profile that I hoped to keep private, and figuring out who I was based on comments. That experience always stuck with me, and I'm just so hyper private these days online because of it.
Totally not rude. No offense taken and it's perfectly reasonable to be careful online.
I had (and have) a similar issue. However the way my feelings manifested themselves was in an escalating amount of anxiety and depression.
My therapist helped me figure out a term I hadn't heard before: childhood emotional neglect. For me, my parents weren't abusive, but they did not nurture my emotions or give me an emotional foundation. My feelings didn't matter, so I am a champion at shutting them down.
It's taken a long time and I still have problems identifying feelings, but we started doing internal family systems therapy recently and that has been a really powerful method for peeking into "the barn."
hey thank you, and for sharing the comic. it is helpful to know these terms, i will further look into this stuff. also congrats and finding progress in this area, and i hope you continue to do so
It's interesting that after many years of reading Internet forums from Slashdot to Reddit and never posting, this thread finally got me to share my thoughts and experiences. I don't know if it's because the topic resonated, or because the Tildes environment gives me more comfort with sharing.
I'm mostly comfortable with the level of emotions I experience, but they do seem flatter than many other people's. I feel joy from accomplishments, happiness from relating to my partner or being around trees. But these emotions are not very strong, they are more of a background than a focus of my experience. I see other people get upset or angry, and escalate their emotional engagement quickly, while I usually react to setbacks with annoyance rather than anger, and focus on trying to think myself out of the problem.
I never really considered this to be a problem, but recently I've been worried about how to emotionally connect with my 7-year old kid. He seems to experience emotions more frequently and strongly than what I'm used to - all his emotional responses, from excitement and joy to anger come quickly and with great intensity. While I don't mind the joy, the anger worries me. For me anger is rare, with a slow buildup, and usually lasts a multiple days during which I'm focusing on whatever is making me angry; he gets angry very quickly when facing setbacks, but then it dissipates just as quickly. I know that as a parent I need to show empathy and support him in whatever emotions he is feeling, but that's hard to do when my first feeling is "There's no reason to get angry over this trivial thing". But you can't parent by telling kids their feelings are invalid and I'm not sure what how to do it.
I really like Dr Becky from the good inside podcast and whenever I have a question about how to handle emotions I look for her advice. I think her advice would be to acknowledge the emotion. You have life experience to judge that something is trivial and not upsetting, but to your kid this is a really big thing! So I think your instinct to not invalidate their emotions is 100% correct.
One “parenting hack” that she shared is to just repeat what your kid is mad about, in an understanding tone.
“I want chocolate milk!”
“You want chocolate milk.”
This takes you from a you vs them situation and puts you more on the same side. It “softens” the kid, getting them out of fight mode and opens them up to more critical discussion.
Thank you, I will check out the podcast! This is good advice that can probably be applied to many adult situations as well.
Can't moderate yet. Too new. But this screams "mental.health". Would someone kindly add that tag? Maybe even mental.health.ptsd? Improving discoverability of information == good.
You are getting a lot of experience about causes and treating it, and I want to answer your question about if it comes back.
I learned to shut down my emotions as a kid because I would get punished if I showed anything but a smile. It took about a year and half of me working with a therapist and tracking my emotions 3 times a day, but they did come back. Oh man, they came back.
For about a year after that I was an emotional mess. In the best way. Like a commercial would come on and show a kid hug a grandpa- I would burst into happy tears. I cried at everything. It was freeing.
So don’t give up hope. I see you’ve been in therapy for 8 months, this would be a great thing to work on with them.
this is incredibly reassuring to hear. I'm also so happy you got your emotions back. I really hope one day this happens for me. I used to be so upset at myself if I felt emotions, now I really wish for stuff like that, even negative emotions. I had really kind of given up hope yesterday, posted this thread in hopes I might get some ideas, and seeing these replies has given me a lot more hope. Maybe I'm just being too impatient.
This is Tildes, not some other forum. If this is not the correct group for your topic, someone will come along and helpfully move your topic to the appropriate group for you. :)
But, you posted in the correct group. No problem!
ok good haha I'm a newbie so didn't want to come in and muck things up