Apparently I am supposed to physically feel my emotions and respond to them instead of not knowing what happens to them most of the time which indicates that I am partially emotionally detached according to a scale of “woah excitement is in my fingers” to “my response to you asking me something about myself is I don’t know”

Discovering feelings in the body

The other way you know if you are emotionally numb is if you don’t have oodles of people that both hate and love you, that is because the numbeness is a gift that allows you to protect yourself from too much dislike, just gotta learn to get comfortable with dislike in order to maximize the amount of people that like you.

  • sad_detective_man@sopuli.xyzEnglish
    60·
    5 days ago

    A huge part of beginning work with a therapist is learning emotional vocabulary because many people are just made ignorant of what our emotions even are. That thing you feel when something bad happens to somebody you don’t like? There’s two or three different words for that but you can’t be expected to handle it healthily if you don’t even know what it is.

    That’s an extreme example but there’s also a whole bunch of different kinds of sad that some cultures (looking at you America) just refuse to acknowledge because being sad isn’t being a hard worker and that’s bad for the economy ☹️

    Anywho, emotional vocabulary. Important stuff. They make worksheets and tools to help you explore words. I highly recommend for everyone but especially for men because they keep us stupid on purpose.

    • Madzielle@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
      22·
      5 days ago

      My son has a small slew of mental health issues. He’s 12 now, and been in therapy since six.

      We tackled the problems together, and learned the language and coping together. Learning the language to describe how we are feeling has helped my son understand himself more than anything. The progress these last 6 years is astounding.

      Language, and finding a way to represent your emotions using it, then knowing how to communicate that to those around you, is by far one of the strongest tools.

      EDIT to tie it back to the article: Describing it initially as they do in this article, helped me explain things like anxiety or anger to my son. He often clenches his fists when he’s angry. Today, I only have to point out, Hey I noticed your fist are clenched, are you okay? And he immediately unclenches them, I see his body relax, and he’s able to talk more calmly about what’s bothering him, instead of just, self destructing. He’s been able to recognize he clences his fists when he’s angry/overwhelmed. Just in noticing that, behavior change has followed. It really is beautiful.

      • Maeve@kbin.earth
        5·
        5 days ago

        That’s great, I’m glad you’re taking an interest finding time to actively participate in therapy and “homework,” especially in a society that demands every moment be about everything but us and our families!

        I know a lot of people hold a range of emotions in our jaw (teeth clenching), neck and shoulders (headaches, tight shoulders/upper back, even muscle spasms). A few deep breaths, held and released, has helped me relax tensions and respond rather than react, even if the response is to ignore intended triggers and just look at the speaker or calmly walk away.