I Dont Know How You Feel About Me

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

The one condom generalization that tin be fabricated about all emotions is that they don't commencement out as feelings at all simply as physiological sensations. And so fifty-fifty when a person can't comprehend 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 strange numbness within them. For these "non-feeling," dissociative experiences also warrant being understood emotionally.

And then, continuing "stone common cold" with expressionless eyes peering at a deceased relative in an open up catafalque, patently devoid of emotion, nonetheless represents a land of feeling. Moreover, apathy may literally mean "without feeling." Yet, unquestionably, we've all experienced this curious "feelingless feeling" at some signal in our lives.

Let's take a closer look at why certain feelings can be difficult, or even impossible, to discern:

1. The feeling hasn't all the same crystallized. In these instances, you're just kickoff to experience something but it hasn't still come into focus. Information technology'due south not notwithstanding identifiable. Y'all may feel something in your body—say, your throat tightening, a trembling in your limbs, an accelerated heartbeat. Simply in the moment you've yet to connect such physical activation to what provoked it.

2. You're experiencing more than a single feeling, and they're oddly "fused." Hither yous're aggress by more than one emotion at once, and it may feel confusing for you tin't split up or distinguish between them. I've written two earlier posts on this subject area: "Angry Tears" describes being enraged and, simultaneously, extremely hurt past some keenly felt injustice. I emotion signifies a disturbing sense of unfairness about the provocation, the other a sense of helplessness or dejection in reaction to it. Consequently, your confront (and likely other parts of the body) registers both emotions.

The 2nd slice I've done on this occurrence is titled: "Can You Feel Two Emotions at Once?" And if you've ever had a bittersweet feeling about something (who hasn't?) then you already know something nigh what I call "bipolar emotions." In such instances, you're likely to vacillate betwixt the 2 emotions. And having emotions "vie" with 1 another for dominance can too pb not simply to a state of ambiguity but (understandingly enough) to procrastination as well.

3. It's a feeling—or amalgam of feelings—that can't be identified because the English language language has no name for it. The "what'south-this-feeling?" miracle is somewhat new to the literature on emotions, but it'southward become increasingly widespread. Consider these representative titles (and in that location are several):

"10 Extremely Precise Words for Emotions You Didn't Fifty-fifty Know Yous Had" (Melissa Dahl, June 15, 2016);

"21 Emotions for Which In that location Are No English language Words" (Emily Elert, Jan. 4, 2013);

"forty Words for Emotions Y'all've Felt, Only Couldn't Explicate" (Brianna Wiest, Feb., 16, 2016); and

"23 New Words for Emotions That We All Experience, but Tin't Explicate" (Justin Gammill, June seven, 2015).

Accept, for example, the Indonesian discussion malu, which—as defined by Tiffany Watt Smith in her scholarly work, The Volume of Human Emotions (2016)—means "the sudden experience of feeling constricted, inferior and bad-mannered effectually people of college status."

Or such neologisms as kenopsia: "The eerie, forlorn atmosphere of a identify that'due south usually humming with people only is now abandoned and placidity—a school hallway in the evening, an unlit function on a weekend . . . an emotional afterimage that makes information technology seem not simply empty but hyper-empty, with a total population in the negative. . . ." And also, opia: The ambiguous intensity of looking someone in the heart, which can feel simultaneously invasive and vulnerable" (from John Koenig's semantically creative website "The Lexicon of Obscure Sorrows").

4. Yous've never had this feeling before. Children often can't recognize what they're feeling considering they've not even so reached a level of development where they can transcribe their physical sensations into understandable feeling names.

Consider this poignant description of anxiety arousal in an viii-year-one-time:

It's 8AM and my heart's racing. It'due south that terrible, full-body sort of beat that makes your whole body shake and occasionally flutter from time to time from over-stimulation. For a 2nd it almost feels like excitement, until the belly flips start, my face heats upward, and my neck starts to hurt and I feel a piffling dizzy. My breathing's heavy and my palms and scalp are starting to sweat for reasons unbeknownst to me.

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

When you're young, anxiety is similar a fume monster: Information technology lurks behind you lot, this intangible thing that makes your center beat and your head akimbo. Information technology makes you wonder, nervously, "Why am I similar this? What's making me feel this way? How exercise I make it finish?" ("Here'due south What Feet Feels Like When You lot Accept No Thought What Anxiety Is," Alicia Lutes, June two, 2015)

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5. You're experiencing dissociation: a total detachment from your feelings. When you effectively disengage from a feeling, you're "dead" to it. Of all of Freud's many defence force mechanisms, dissociation is one of the most primitive. That's why information technology typically originates in childhood. Not however having developed the emotional resources to successfully cope with perceived threats, children are all too easily overwhelmed by external circumstances.

Unable to rationally talk themselves downward from what feels perilous, and often non able to leave the troubling situation either, they're left with no option other than disconnecting from their immediate reality. Desperately needing to flee from feelings experienced as intolerable, they contrive (however unconsciously) to escape the outer earth through somehow prompting their "essence" to wander off to another fourth dimension or place—even every bit, physically, they're obliged to remain in the scene.

But whether you're a child or non, when y'all dissociate y'all tin't feel anything. For all intents and purposes, you're simply no longer in that location. So if you've only been traumatized, or life's challenges have become more than than yous tin can bear, when you merely feel too vulnerable to actively cope with whatever is going on, your last-ditch ploy for protecting yourself is shutting down completely. And going numb renders you oblivious to the feelings masked by such emotional paralysis. In the moment, you're not even capable of identifying what underlies this self-defensively practical anesthesia. And it'south all automatic—in a sense, effortless. In some of its many "applications," it's also universal.

The best example here might be suddenly learning, without the slightest alert, that your dearest, long-term partner has just been killed in a motorcar crash. In that devastating moment, the excruciating hurting of your loss would go markedly across your ability to have in. So you simply dissociate: drop into denial or freeze mode. And in such dire circumstances, what could peradventure be a more powerful machinery for emotional survival? There are times when, psychologically, such radical abstention of reality can be essential.

Major depression involves a kind of numbing as well, so much and so that some individuals, by dissociating from their emotional distress—better described hither as apathy—may not fifty-fifty realize they're depressed. Additionally, people who "lose" themselves in compulsive, addictive activities oft do so in order to dissociate from burdensome feelings that otherwise might overwhelm their coping capacities.

6. The feeling has been internally censored: Fifty-fifty when you effort to access information technology, you draw a blank. It's not hard to imagine why many of united states of america learn to "blacklist" sure feelings. If, for case, yous grew upward in a dwelling where expressions of anger were forbidden and losing your atmosphere could lead to substantial punishment, y'all learned—well-nigh at a cellular level—that any outward displays of animosity could threaten your all-important parental bail.

Or, if your family unit gave yous the clear message that you weren't to show sadness (and certainly non to cry), y'all might take felt compelled to push all sorrowful feelings underground. Feelings of fearfulness and anxiety tin can be repressed as well if your caretakers permit you know that such responses were signs of weakness or inadequacy, and therefore unacceptable.

Since goose egg is more vital to a child than feeling securely connected to their parents, emotions that are disallowed must somehow be disguised or obliterated. I've seen therapy clients chuckle when they were sad, or appear nonchalant when information technology was obvious that, inwardly, they were trembling with fearfulness.

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 well-nigh to raise her vocalism, that impulse, likewise, got immediately extinguished. When I asked her whether her parents were okay with her expressing sorrow, without even having to recollect most it she emphatically answered, "No!" And she responded the same way when I asked about whether her parents' gave her any license to bear witness acrimony. Apparently, she'd been left in a double bind. Even though she could feel inside her each of these emotions stirring upwards, she'd very early on learned—cocky-defensively—to turn them off.

Therapists would phone call this abrupt emotional expulsion suppression. Simply going a level below this—where merely existence aware of the feeling is inextricably linked with parental disapproval, rejection, or abandonment—some individuals, feeling gravely threatened simply by having this feeling experience, are driven to eliminate it entirely. And doing so is what's chosen repression. Here not only tin can't they discharge the emotion, but they also can't fifty-fifty permit themselves to experience it. And that's why, when these people vaguely sense that something is struggling to surface, they 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 Yous're Alienated From

All our defenses are designed to stifle intolerable feelings of vulnerability. And most of these feelings originate in babyhood when we're at our nearly vulnerable. Although doubtless, they're pivotal in assisting united states of america to feel a more secure connection to our caretakers, they can notwithstanding carry some loftier, later-day costs to our personal welfare.

To be whole, to be fully connected to ourselves, besides as capable of forming meaningful, intimate relationships with others, we demand to discover ways of retrieving feelings that earlier nosotros felt we had to deny. Additionally, when we repress a feeling nosotros're probable to "act it out"—every bit in, unreasonably blaming others, or projecting onto them our bottled-upwardly, negative feelings; behaving deceitfully or passive-aggressively; sulking or giving others the silent treatment; or engaging in harmful addictive behaviors. And by oftentimes alienating those around us through such unconscious diversionary tactics, we tin can end up compromising—or fifty-fifty destroying—the relationships nosotros most need to exist meaningfully, joyfully connected to others.

Information technology'south crucial, therefore, to realize (contrasting with what nosotros learned before near escaping vulnerability) that as adults we can now learn how to make ourselves more "comfortably" vulnerable. Every bit long as—even despite ourselves—we've expanded our emotional resources, we can detect that it'due south actually not that dangerous to let others exist privy to who nosotros are: what provokes us, saddens us, embarrasses us, frightens u.s., even humiliates us.

I've written several posts about the "how'southward" of self-validation and self-soothing. And when nosotros've adequately developed these more mature abilities, we can begin to summon our courage to let out much of what, until now, we've felt compelled to concord in. Many of us may require professional assistance in unearthing long-repressed feelings and desensitizing ourselves from the painful threats long ago linked to them. Merely if, on our own, we desire to attempt to recover that which we once decided we had to disavow, consider the words of author and communications consultant, Peter Bregman:

How do you get to those [vulnerable] feelings [concealed by your anger]? Take a trivial fourth dimension and space to enquire yourself what yous are actually feeling. Go along asking until you sense something that feels a trivial dangerous, a little risky. That awareness is probably why you're hesitant to feel it and a good sign that you lot're now ready to communicate.

Information technology'due south counterintuitive: Wait to communicate until you feel vulnerable communicating. But it'south a good rule of thumb. ("Do You Know What You Are Feeling?" May eighteen, 2012.)

So, to briefly sum upwardly, we need to access our deeper, censored feelings and find ways in our lives to brand witting, mindful "space" for them. Or else nosotros'll never exist able to experience fully alive or develop rich, fulfilling relationships.

Nosotros can't truly empathize with another until we're able to identify—and accept pity for—our own feelings. Also, that in undertaking this long-delayed process of "unshackling" our disowned feelings, we're likely, initially, to experience more vulnerable. But in staying with (vs. exiting from) this long-dormant feet, we'll eventually feel much less vulnerable—also equally more powerful. . . . And at last, reunited with the child we in one case were.

Besides the 2 posts I pointed to earlier—"Angry Tears" and "Tin You Feel Ii Emotions at Once?"—other articles of mine closely chronicle to the present mail: namely, "Trauma and the Freeze Response: Practiced, Bad, or Both?", "The Power to Be Vulnerable" (Parts ane. 2. & 3).

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

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

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