You Dont Know What Im Feeling

Source: CCO Public Domain/Pixabay

Information technology might seem near unfathomable that someone might not recognize what they're feeling. Just the phenomenon is much more common than most people realize. This post will suggest no fewer than six causes to clarify why individuals can remain in the dark about what'south going on with them emotionally.

The one safe generalization that can be fabricated well-nigh all emotions is that they don't start out equally feelings at all but equally physiological sensations. So even when a person can't encompass their feeling experience, they're typically aware of what's happening to them physically. And this is true even when what they're feeling is a "blank"—a foreign numbness inside them. For these "non-feeling," dissociative experiences besides warrant being understood emotionally.

So, standing "stone cold" with expressionless eyes peering at a deceased relative in an open up catafalque, plainly devoid of emotion, yet represents a state of feeling. Moreover, apathy may literally mean "without feeling." Notwithstanding, unquestionably, we've all experienced this curious "feelingless feeling" at some bespeak in our lives.

Let's take a closer expect at why sure feelings can be hard, or even impossible, to discern:

one. The feeling hasn't withal crystallized. In these instances, yous're only first to experience something but it hasn't yet come up into focus. It's not yet identifiable. Yous may feel something in your body—say, your throat tightening, a trembling in your limbs, an accelerated heartbeat. But in the moment you've nevertheless to connect such physical activation to what provoked it.

2. You're experiencing more a unmarried feeling, and they're oddly "fused." Here you're aggress by more than i emotion at once, and it may feel disruptive for you can't separate or distinguish between them. I've written ii earlier posts on this subject: "Aroused Tears" describes being enraged and, simultaneously, extremely injure by some keenly felt injustice. One emotion signifies a disturbing sense of unfairness about the provocation, the other a sense of helplessness or blues in reaction to it. Consequently, your face (and likely other parts of the body) registers both emotions.

The second piece I've done on this occurrence is titled: "Tin You Feel Two Emotions at Once?" And if you've ever had a bittersweet feeling well-nigh something (who hasn't?) then you already know something about what I call "bipolar emotions." In such instances, you're likely to vacillate between the two emotions. And having emotions "vie" with one some other for dominance can also pb non only to a state of ambivalence but (understandingly enough) to procrastination also.

iii. It's a feeling—or amalgam of feelings—that can't exist identified because the English linguistic communication has no proper name for information technology. The "what'southward-this-feeling?" phenomenon is somewhat new to the literature on emotions, simply information technology's become increasingly widespread. Consider these representative titles (and at that place are several):

"ten Extremely Precise Words for Emotions Y'all Didn't Even Know Y'all Had" (Melissa Dahl, June 15, 2016);

"21 Emotions for Which In that location Are No English language Words" (Emily Elert, Jan. four, 2013);

"40 Words for Emotions You've Felt, But Couldn't Explicate" (Brianna Wiest, Feb., 16, 2016); and

"23 New Words for Emotions That We All Feel, only Can't Explain" (Justin Gammill, June seven, 2015).

Take, for example, the Indonesian discussion malu, which—as divers by Tiffany Watt Smith in her scholarly work, The Volume of Homo Emotions (2016)—means "the sudden feel of feeling constricted, inferior and awkward effectually people of higher status."

Or such neologisms as kenopsia: "The eerie, forlorn atmosphere of a place that's usually bustling with people merely is now abandoned and serenity—a school hallway in the evening, an unlit role on a weekend . . . an emotional afterimage that makes information technology seem not just empty but hyper-empty, with a full population in the negative. . . ." And likewise, opia: The ambiguous intensity of looking someone in the heart, which tin can experience simultaneously invasive and vulnerable" (from John Koenig'southward semantically creative website "The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows").

four. Y'all've never had this feeling before. Children often can't recognize what they're feeling considering they've non nevertheless reached a level of development where they can transcribe their physical sensations into understandable feeling names.

Consider this poignant clarification of anxiety arousal in an 8-year-quondam:

Information technology'southward 8AM and my heart's racing. It'southward that terrible, full-body sort of beat that makes your whole body shake and occasionally flutter from time to fourth dimension from over-stimulation. For a 2nd it nigh feels similar excitement, until the belly flips commencement, my confront heats up, and my neck starts to hurt and I feel a little giddy. My breathing'south heavy and my palms and scalp are starting to sweat for reasons unbeknownst to me.

And the author, further describing this emotionally alarming experience, explains:

When you're young, anxiety is like a smoke monster: Information technology lurks backside yous, this intangible matter that makes your centre beat and your head akimbo. It makes you lot wonder, nervously, "Why am I like this? What's making me feel this style? How exercise I make it stop?" ("Here's What Anxiety Feels Like When You lot Accept No Idea What Feet Is," Alicia Lutes, June 2, 2015)

Source: CCO Public Domain/Pixabay

5. You lot're experiencing dissociation: a full detachment from your feelings. When yous effectively disengage from a feeling, yous're "dead" to it. Of all of Freud'southward many defence mechanisms, dissociation is one of the well-nigh archaic. That'due south why it typically originates in childhood. Not even so having developed the emotional resources to successfully cope with perceived threats, children are all too hands overwhelmed past external circumstances.

Unable to rationally talk themselves downward from what feels perilous, and often not able to get out the troubling situation either, they're left with no option other than disconnecting from their immediate reality. Desperately needing to abscond from feelings experienced as intolerable, they contrive (yet unconsciously) to escape the outer world through somehow prompting their "essence" to wander off to another time or place—even as, physically, they're obliged to remain in the scene.

Simply whether you're a child or not, when you dissociate you tin can't experience anything. For all intents and purposes, you're simply no longer there. So if you've just been traumatized, or life'due south challenges have become more than yous can bear, when you lot simply experience likewise vulnerable to actively cope with any is going on, your terminal-ditch ploy for protecting yourself is shutting down completely. And going numb renders y'all oblivious to the feelings masked by such emotional paralysis. In the moment, you're non even capable of identifying what underlies this cocky-defensively applied anesthesia. And it's all automatic—in a sense, effortless. In some of its many "applications," information technology's also universal.

The best example here might exist suddenly learning, without the slightest warning, that your dearest, long-term partner has just been killed in a motorcar crash. In that devastating moment, the excruciating pain of your loss would get markedly beyond your power to take in. And so you only dissociate: driblet into denial or freeze mode. And in such dire circumstances, what could possibly be a more powerful machinery for emotional survival? At that place are times when, psychologically, such radical avoidance of reality can be essential.

Major depression involves a kind of numbing equally well, so much then that some individuals, past dissociating from their emotional distress—better described here as apathy—may not even realize they're depressed. Additionally, people who "lose" themselves in compulsive, addictive activities frequently do and then in social club to dissociate from burdensome feelings that otherwise might overwhelm their coping capacities.

6. The feeling has been internally censored: Even when you endeavor to admission it, you draw a blank. It's non hard to imagine why many of us learn to "blacklist" certain feelings. If, for example, y'all grew upwards in a dwelling where expressions of anger were forbidden and losing your atmosphere could lead to substantial penalisation, you learned—almost at a cellular level—that any outward displays of antagonism could threaten your all-important parental bond.

Or, if your family gave you the clear bulletin that you weren't to bear witness sadness (and certainly not to cry), you might have felt compelled to push all sorrowful feelings underground. Feelings of fear and anxiety can be repressed too if your caretakers let you know that such responses were signs of weakness or inadequacy, and therefore unacceptable.

Since cipher is more vital to a kid than feeling deeply continued to their parents, emotions that are disallowed must somehow be bearded or obliterated. I've seen therapy clients chuckle when they were sad, or appear nonchalant when it was obvious that, inwardly, they were trembling with fear.

My favorite example of such "vanquished" feelings comes from a workshop I once did. In it, a participant wondered aloud why whenever she felt the need to cry something "came over her" and the urge disappeared. Moreover, when something exasperated her and she was nearly to raise her voice, that impulse, too, got immediately extinguished. When I asked her whether her parents were okay with her expressing sorrow, without even having to think well-nigh it she emphatically answered, "No!" And she responded the same way when I asked nearly whether her parents' gave her any license to show anger. Obviously, she'd been left in a double bind. Even though she could feel inside her each of these emotions stirring up, she'd very early learned—cocky-defensively—to turn them off.

Therapists would call this abrupt emotional expulsion suppression. But going a level below this—where simply being aware of the feeling is inextricably linked with parental disapproval, rejection, or abandonment—some individuals, feeling gravely threatened just past having this feeling experience, are driven to eliminate it entirely. And doing then is what's called repression. Here non only can't they discharge the emotion, simply they too can't even permit themselves to experience information technology. And that's why, when these people vaguely sense that something is struggling to surface, they tin can't even recognize what buried emotion is trying to emerge. Rather, all they feel is an inner vacuum; a peculiar, unplumbed emptiness.

Re-Associating or Re-Attaching to Feelings You're Alienated From

All our defenses are designed to stifle intolerable feelings of vulnerability. And most of these feelings originate in babyhood when nosotros're at our almost vulnerable. Although doubtless, they're pivotal in profitable us to experience a more secure connexion to our caretakers, they can still carry some high, later-solar day costs to our personal welfare.

To exist whole, to be fully connected to ourselves, as well as capable of forming meaningful, intimate relationships with others, we need to detect ways of retrieving feelings that earlier nosotros felt nosotros had to deny. Additionally, when we repress a feeling we're likely to "human activity it out"—as in, unreasonably blaming others, or projecting onto them our bottled-up, negative feelings; behaving deceitfully or passive-aggressively; sulking or giving others the silent treatment; or engaging in harmful addictive behaviors. And by frequently alienating those around the states through such unconscious diversionary tactics, nosotros tin stop upward compromising—or even destroying—the relationships we most need to exist meaningfully, joyfully connected to others.

It'southward crucial, therefore, to realize (contrasting with what we learned earlier about escaping vulnerability) that as adults we can now learn how to make ourselves more "comfortably" vulnerable. Every bit long as—fifty-fifty despite ourselves—we've expanded our emotional resources, we can notice that it's really non that dangerous to let others be privy to who nosotros are: what provokes us, saddens us, embarrasses us, frightens us, even humiliates u.s..

I've written several posts almost the "how's" of self-validation and cocky-soothing. And when nosotros've fairly adult these more mature abilities, we can begin to summon our courage to let out much of what, until now, we've felt compelled to agree in. Many of united states may crave professional person assist in unearthing long-repressed feelings and desensitizing ourselves from the painful threats long ago linked to them. But if, on our own, nosotros want to attempt to recover that which we once decided we had to disavow, consider the words of author and communications consultant, Peter Bregman:

How practise you lot get to those [vulnerable] feelings [curtained by your anger]? Take a little time and space to ask yourself what you are really feeling. Proceed request until you lot sense something that feels a niggling dangerous, a little risky. That sensation is probably why you're hesitant to feel it and a good sign that you lot're at present ready to communicate.

Information technology's counterintuitive: Wait to communicate until y'all feel vulnerable communicating. Merely it'due south a skilful rule of thumb. ("Do Y'all Know What You Are Feeling?" May 18, 2012.)

Then, to briefly sum upwards, we need to admission our deeper, censored feelings and observe ways in our lives to make conscious, mindful "space" for them. Or else nosotros'll never be able to feel fully alive or develop rich, fulfilling relationships.

We can't truly empathize with another until we're able to identify—and have compassion for—our own feelings. Also, that in undertaking this long-delayed procedure of "unshackling" our disowned feelings, nosotros're likely, initially, to feel more vulnerable. But in staying with (vs. exiting from) this long-dormant feet, nosotros'll eventually experience much less vulnerable—as well as more powerful. . . . And at last, reunited with the kid we once were.

As well the two posts I pointed to earlier—"Aroused Tears" and "Can Y'all Experience Two Emotions at Once?"—other articles of mine closely relate to the present post: namely, "Trauma and the Freeze Response: Skilful, Bad, or Both?", "The Power to Be Vulnerable" (Parts 1. two. & three).

© 2017 Leon F. Seltzer, Ph.D. All Rights Reserved.

solomongoake1979.blogspot.com

Source: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/evolution-the-self/201702/6-reasons-why-you-may-not-know-what-youre-feeling

Share this post