Do you downplay emotional problems? | Page 4 | INFJ Forum

Do you downplay emotional problems?

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Is there no outlet for you? Some way you can purge the emotion from your body? Wouldn't want for you to get an ulcer or something.
I feel like I can't talk about things bothering me because everyone I'd talk to has their own very real problems and I don't want to heave my pile onto them. It takes a lot to really get to the point where I will call someone up. I used to write a lot. Writing helped immensely in the past but I don't have the time to sit and really devote to do it. Thanks @Ginny

So I notice I tend to focus on day to day things instead until it all rears its head in the form of migraines or getting sick to my stomach. It's not a good thing and I know I'll have to figure out a better way.
 
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I feel like I can't talk about things bothering me because everyone I'd talk to has their own very real problems and I don't want to heave my pile onto them. It takes a lot to really get to the point where I will call someone up. I used to write a lot. Writing helped immensely in the past but I don't have the time to sit and really devote to do it. Thanks @Ginny

So I notice I tend to focus on day to day things instead until it all rears its head in the form of migraines or getting sick to my stomach. It's not a good thing and I know I'll have to figure out a better way.
Maybe you need to learn to love yourself more, you matter. Your issues might not be resolved by just talking about them. I have been so physically ill as a result of bottled up emotions that my body was giving up on me. People thought I was going to die, and so did I. Personally I experienced I had too much anxiety, too much fear and hate inside. I had to learn how to love and forgive myself and others. I am still learning. Maybe you should try to evaluate if there are reoccurring emotions or thought patterns when or before u get your migraines and stomach aches. Are you an empath? When I feel I'm getting physically ill or anxious, I do breathing exercises on the spot. It slows my breathing and heart rate, usually helping get calm and collected again. Don't suppress emotions too long. I thought I could and ended up in the hospital. Take care
 
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Found a cool saying the other day. "Emotions are like waves. You can't control them, but you can choose which one to surf."
It's important to me, because I tend to be overwhelmed by emotions, also I can bottle up and then explode. So I'm working now on tidying up in my head and taking space to process. To not just push emotions aside, until it's no longer possible.
 
Maybe you need to learn to love yourself more, you matter. Your issues might not be resolved by just talking about them. I have been so physically ill as a result of bottled up emotions that my body was giving up on me. People thought I was going to die, and so did I. Personally I experienced I had too much anxiety, too much fear and hate inside. I had to learn how to love and forgive myself and others. I am still learning. Maybe you should try to evaluate if there are reoccurring emotions or thought patterns when or before u get your migraines and stomach aches. Are you an empath? When I feel I'm getting physically ill or anxious, I do breathing exercises on the spot. It slows my breathing and heart rate, usually helping get calm and collected again. Don't suppress emotions too long. I thought I could and ended up in the hospital. Take care
Maybe. I don't feel like I don't love myself but when it comes to my own worries I was raised to be stoic because "someone else always has it worse, so push on!" Plus it may also be pride as in people come to me for assistance-- I am the Pillar of Strength! Like I said above though, writing and journaling, even writing poetry was the most healing outlet for me. It gave me control over my feelings and I was able to craft them into something as well as work out on paper what was going on. In that way I was my own confidant. But I've had a lot of big changes in my life that don't leave me the time I used to have to write. But I do know I will need to find the time...
 
I don't know how much of what I experience could be boiled down to type. It's hard to fully separate who I am from what is trauma based behavior.

I've been disassociated from my body and feelings my entire life .

I was raised being taught to be as little of a problem as possible and that my needs and wants were mere inconveniences. I was rewarded for not having emotional reactions and not expressing my needs. Punished for doing the opposite.

So, habitually, if I experienced an emotion I would detach from it. I was very detached from my body, too. I tried to be this robot. I did a lot of denial and avoidance.

As a healthier person, I now absolutely have to express my emotions. I still feel my emotions in my body before I know I'm experiencing an emotion. Usually if I am alone I'll break down crying for seemingly no reason and I'll realize I'm going though something emotionally distressing. Once my body lets me know I'm having an emotion I will journal about it to work through it. I also like to listen to music that expresses the emotion I feel; I have to fully immerse myself in the experience of the emotion before I can move on from it. If I try to just move past it, it will continue to resurface randomly until I confront it.

After fully feeling the emotion, I then must understand what caused the emotion, and work though that. A lot of the times there are boundaries that then need to be set up to protect myself, or I make a fairly profound realization about myself that I then modify my life and future behavior to accommodate. Very rarely is it that I experience an emotion that I don't learn something from.

These emotions are the intense ones, though. On a day to day basis there are plenty of emotions I feel that I "talk myself" out of. It's basically learning to recognize if my thought patterns are going in a direction I don't like and taking control. The unconscious mind will rule your life if you let it. I did not used to have this skill but now practicing it on a regular basis it's easier, more second nature to me. I think the act of journaling when I experience an intense emotion and the process of reasoning I guide myself through on paper, over time, has organically started to occur in my brain so I don't have to sit with the emotion for as long. Most of experiencing the emotion for me was in order to understand why it was happening and where it came from.

So I'm not entirely sure if this really answers the question. It's a mixture of both, perhaps?

An example about a time I talk myself out of an emotion:

I was feeling upset that my friend had made comments about my art that didn't make sense and I didn't agree with. I started to spiral into wondering if she was right and that the critique she gave was true and I suddenly stopped my train of thought and was like: wait a second. I don't agree with what she said. This is my art, not her art. Why am I upset with what she said when I personally don't agree with it? Why would I change my behavior if I don't think I should?

And with that thought train the emotion went away and I felt fine.
 
I was raised being taught to be as little of a problem as possible and that my needs and wants were mere inconveniences. I was rewarded for not having emotional reactions and not expressing my needs. Punished for doing the opposite.

Well that was my childhood too. Trauma friends! High five! I have to work to express what I'm feeling verbally. It's a process but it's better now.
 
a non-hypostatising person might say 'right, I'm not going to give any weight to this silly thought. I'm going to avoid saying it out loud or thinking about it, and at some point it will just evaporate'.

This would give me insane levels of anxiety and I'm not an anxious person to begin with. It actually astonishes me that people can do it.

If I have an emotional problem, I have to deal with it. If it involves another person and they aren't engaging me about the matter, I will provoke fights and even explode until they do. If there isn't another person involved, I'll deal with it on my own.

But ignoring emotional problems of that sort and pretending they don't exist feels like having a large parasite inside of me.
 
I seldom have any where to go with emotional issues as I don't trust many people enough to share them. At the moment I am in that space, where there is no one around me I can lean on. .what little support I had, I left in Tucson
 
As a healthier person, I now absolutely have to express my emotions. I still feel my emotions in my body before I know I'm experiencing an emotion. Usually if I am alone I'll break down crying for seemingly no reason and I'll realize I'm going though something emotionally distressing. Once my body lets me know I'm having an emotion I will journal about it to work through it. I also like to listen to music that expresses the emotion I feel; I have to fully immerse myself in the experience of the emotion before I can move on from it. If I try to just move past it, it will continue to resurface randomly until I confront it.

I do much the same thing .. except the music part. Some of those emotions are etched deeply within me and it's like unravelling a big ball of string to get to the truth of how I am "truly" feeling about something. Sometimes I go through a process and think I've knocked it on the head, but then come up with another idea of what it could be and start working on that to completion, then it happens all over again. Part of knowing yourself better I would think but it annoys me that I just can't "know myself" as others seem to be able to.
 
Is INFJ a personality type or just the result of childhood trauma??? Lol

I've often thought the same thing. Whether a different upbringing might have brought forward a different type. Particularly relating to the introversion part. Whether an upbringing that wasn't dysfunctional and was supportive and more extraverted might have had an effect on my introversion. Also whether being told to keep quiet made me look inside more and forced me to develop that side of me more.

We will never know I suppose, but I do wonder on it a bit.
 
I've often thought the same thing. Whether a different upbringing might have brought forward a different type. Particularly relating to the introversion part. Whether an upbringing that wasn't dysfunctional and was supportive and more extraverted might have had an effect on my introversion. Also whether being told to keep quiet made me look inside more and forced me to develop that side of me more.

We will never know I suppose, but I do wonder on it a bit.
As I work though my trauma I'm more and more extroverted to the point that I've tested ENFJ a few times now. Our identities are are so based in our behaviors and the brain is so malleable that we can essentially behave however we'd like to behave if we consciously put in the effort. So type then gets even more convoluted when you're purposefully manipulating your behavior to get to the state you enjoy living in.
 
As I work though my trauma I'm more and more extroverted to the point that I've tested ENFJ a few times now. Our identities are are so based in our behaviors and the brain is so malleable that we can essentially behave however we'd like to behave if we consciously put in the effort. So type then gets even more convoluted when you're purposefully manipulating your behavior to get to the state you enjoy living in.

Embracing the "dark side"? lol