GeniesLoki

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.

Yes good point, I am bad at expressing my desires for sure. I tweeted about something similar to this a while ago, I haven't really made much progress with it thoughhttps://twitter.com/sokindling/status/1299052215999574016 …

You could try just doing a bunch of free writing about stuff you'd like, ways you'd like your life to improve, etc? I like free writing as a way of digging stuff up.

Also, shot in the dark, but... do you feel free to express anger? I have a general suspicion that a lot of emotional reserve, especially but not exclusively in men, is learned out of a fear of hurting people if you get too emotional.

A very astute shot in the dark. I absolutely never express anger I think I see it as a kind of failure on my part of I do, like by losing self control I've lost some game.