I think it’s equal parts resentment and fear of the unknown. My parents were never loving towards me, and my mom said we were all accidents, but they chose not to man up and be parental figures. She never even home schooled me when she was supposed to be teaching me. I always dissociate when I listen to music, watch TV and movies. I have to protect myself from it. My life has been so chaotic and unstable all my life. I am scared to feel emotion especially sentimental feelings because I keep getting hurt and disappointed. I can’t enjoy art. And when you lack the skills to look after yourself it’s hard to not be numb and overwhelmed.
I have trouble connecting to my emotions. My life has been an endless parade of tragedies and the only way to keep going was to just ignore it all. Now, when something happens and it upsets me, I don’t recognize the feeling as upset. I think I have a stomachache, or a cold. I have been working on checking in with myself throughout the day and acknowledging what things have happened that might make me feel upset or sad. Then I take some time to allow myself to connect with the idea of sadness. It’s helping me, because my hallucinations always acted up when something bad happened and I wasn’t letting myself be upset over it.
5 Likes
This is one of the more difficult exercises for me, just letting myself feel bad about something and not trying to deny it or fix it somehow. Just sitting there and examining the feeling, how it hurts, how my body responds. I always feel so much better after I do it, but it is so hard.
4 Likes
It is my least favorite exercise, but definitely the most helpful.
2 Likes
Honestly, getting hit on the head has helped with this, because my emotions are stronger and harder to ignore now.
1 Like
Well, I’m glad there was some benefit?
1 Like
I wouldn’t recommend it as a course of action, but here are bright sides everywhere.
1 Like
Like many of you, I have a long history of abuse and bullying. My feelings were never acknowledged by others so it became difficult for me to be anything but numb especially when the bullying never stops. You have to build a wall to survive. Now, I catch myself getting mad about something or getting teary. Typically, I am alone as I have no one in my life that would allow me to be emotional and support me. Better alone than not at all. It is painful and vulnerable to be emotional.
1 Like
I have never been good at expressing emotion and do not enjoy it. (Unless it’s happiness) Crying in front of someone gives me the same amount of dread as throwing up. Our dad hates crying and would get us in trouble for it. Even my little sisters know not to cry and will try to smile as tears run down their face or else will hide. Similarly I have a lot of fear that expressing any amount of anger will cause people to leave me. That’s probably because I witnessed how strongly my dad’s anger made me hate him.
1 Like
all of you guys deserve somebody who will love love love you
as for myself i enjoy my emotions as much as i can because im not having them usually
i have to be drunk (before meds) or on weed (now) to feel emotions as deeply a i can
i like to cry
3 Likes
These days I’m not feeling much emotion, or not in the way I used to. I cry a little sometimes at a tv show or something, and that reminds me that I’ve lost part of me, the part that felt much more before this strange illness and meds.
Schizophrenia stripped me of emotions. I don’t have any. There is just flatness.
1 Like
Yeah it sucks. Almost killed myself today
Same. Emotions flare up for me from time to time but unfortunately I’ve been stripped of most emotion. Really makes life tough. </3
My emotions never feel like my own. I feel like I have a bunch of brothers in my head whose emotions I feel. And the emotions come in erratic. Either they come in very broken up and i barely feel them and get frustrated. Or they come in viciously hard and I have to ignore them.
Being emotional isn’t as painful for me as suppressing emotion which I do so that I can be “businesslike”. That’s an excuse. Music helps me identify some feelings.
My emotions are screwy. I mostly keep them apart from the people around me. When I was growing up there was something I had intense emotions about that I never could have expressed. I’m very self conscious. I have trouble asserting myself. I’m withdrawn. I learned about a lot of the emotional tricks I play on myself, but I can’t quit playing them.
I have deep emotions and have cried in private on countless occasions. Not so much in front of people. My step-mom slapped me in the face when I was little, my Dad laughed at me while I was crying when I was about 10 and my husband got really angry at me for crying when I was married 10 years ago. The world gets angry or laughs when I cry. I do it in private.
I very, very rarely get emotional anymore. But when I do, it’s embarrassing. I hate getting emotional. It’s mostly embarrassing to me. I’ve been known not to cry at my own son’s funeral and my own mother’s deathbed. But, there were slight tears in my eyes when I could not fulfill my sexual desires in my lover’s arms due to my celibacy vows. Now, go figure that!