One reason I’m finding it hard to give advice is because though it does feel like there’s a generalizable “shape” of this problem, it’s got a lot of degrees of freedom and I have seen the detailed way in which my own history has filled those in.
That aside, two guess on “if you have it”. If you have strong feelings/beliefs about what sort of emotional reactions you should have to things, that feels relevant. Depending on the person, this might not even feel like a guilty should. I have held that I’m “not an angry person.” Digging into that you’d find that I hate when people are overtly angry, it can make my blood boil, and “I’m not an angry person” is some top down, “people who get angry are sub-human, obviously I’m better than that.” This seems relevant because this has been the fuel/motivation for me to ignore my emotions.
Also, if you ever explicitly go, “I’m just not going to feel this way anymore” that might be relevant. As mentioned, mine was not a secret under the radar ignoring emotions. I was aware of doing “something”, I just thought that something was “being in control and shifting my mood.”
The thing that originally set me off on the noticing path that lead to now, was realizing that I’d shut off a lot of my ability to organically want. This became apparent from times when I’d go, “cool, I really don’t have to do anything this weekend, what do I want to do?” *crickets*
On the most abstract level of “what to do”, I’d say try and make your mind a safe place. Do things in the self compassion space. When I went to CFAR, someone gave a lightning talk where they demoed going through some compassionate self talk in front of us, and that had a strong impact on me.
One reason I’m finding it hard to give advice is because though it does feel like there’s a generalizable “shape” of this problem, it’s got a lot of degrees of freedom and I have seen the detailed way in which my own history has filled those in.
That aside, two guess on “if you have it”. If you have strong feelings/beliefs about what sort of emotional reactions you should have to things, that feels relevant. Depending on the person, this might not even feel like a guilty should. I have held that I’m “not an angry person.” Digging into that you’d find that I hate when people are overtly angry, it can make my blood boil, and “I’m not an angry person” is some top down, “people who get angry are sub-human, obviously I’m better than that.” This seems relevant because this has been the fuel/motivation for me to ignore my emotions.
Also, if you ever explicitly go, “I’m just not going to feel this way anymore” that might be relevant. As mentioned, mine was not a secret under the radar ignoring emotions. I was aware of doing “something”, I just thought that something was “being in control and shifting my mood.”
The thing that originally set me off on the noticing path that lead to now, was realizing that I’d shut off a lot of my ability to organically want. This became apparent from times when I’d go, “cool, I really don’t have to do anything this weekend, what do I want to do?” *crickets*
On the most abstract level of “what to do”, I’d say try and make your mind a safe place. Do things in the self compassion space. When I went to CFAR, someone gave a lightning talk where they demoed going through some compassionate self talk in front of us, and that had a strong impact on me.