The less you apply thought to what you're feeling, the more of a mystery it becomes. This seems to me like a good thing.
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So many people are perfectly sure they know what drives them, yet they can never seem to go the direction they "want". Warring passions.
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If a feeling doesn't immediately compel you to act a certain way, there's a good chance it's not *a* feeling, but several.
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I don't have a good answer for how to get to the bottom of a situation like that, but I know it isn't to start telling stories in your head.
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People with unskilled or abusive parents have it even worse, as many of their appropriate emotional responses have been blunted or mislaid.
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I'm 24 and have only recently started to granularity of anger between suppression/denial on one hand and blackout rage on the other.
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I did not have a particularly bad childhood, but my parents made some early mistakes as I was a very temperamental kid. Lasting consequences
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Something that helped me with anger, and seems to help with suppressed feelings in general: focus on the body, over thought.
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Thoughts are endlessly seductive and will explain any phenomenon using any "cause", but body sensations are few and clearly differentiated.
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Anger, sadness, gladness etc. all have different sensory underpinnings, which can be learned, recognized, even memorized.
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My anger always feels more or less the same way, unless I get so angry my whole body fills with the same numbness as after sharp pain.
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True.They're called 'feelings' because they're experienced in the body viz. 'gut feeling'. We translate them into thoughts to our detriment.
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Yet sadly, when asked how we feel, most reply "such and such because this and that", not "my stomach burns and my pulse is elevated."
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