GeniesLoki

So for me the best hook for working on this was relationship stuff. I don't know if you have a partner (or partners) but relationships are really useful as a way of identifying concrete problems that emotional difficulties causes and tracing back from there to root causes.

Talking about feelings in general is also a good tool for developing them - even if your current answer is "I don't know" it can be helpful to have someone (partner, friend, therapist) to have that conversation with.

Key to this is cultivating a feeling of safety - that it's OK to talk about these feelings, that nobody is going to hate you or judge you for having emotions. This helps you feel safe in your own emotional state and gradually start addressing some of the fear.

Also sex is often a good hook in for this, because a lot of this work leads to directly improved sex life, and this helps make it fun rather than feeling like a giant unpleasant slog.

In general seeking positive emotions is good because positive emotions are fun and if you're just constantly confronting negative feelings you'll want to give up. You'll end up confronting the negative feelings too, mind, but "feel good" is more motivating than "don't feel bad"

Thanks for this I do feel quite comfortable talking about my feelings with my partner (or friends). But my emotional range just seems to be quite steady and unvolatile and I don't know how to have some spikes here and there (either positive or negative)

How do you go about seeking positive emotions? I feel my baseline happiness is significantly higher than it was a year ago which is great, but it hasn't got any less steady.

Hmm so a lot of this ended up centring around sex for me because I was kinda messed up in that regard so it was a source of easy wins. Identifying things that I want and admitting to needs is also helpful here? "Desire" is a fairly positive emotion that can be hard to admit to.