Do any of you feel like your emotions are too overpowering?
Like sometimes I feel like they are consuming me like fire. I kind of want less of them. Not sure if anyone can relate. But if I feel bad or tired or whatever I wish they didn’t have an influence on my daily activities . Are there any people who are the opposite of this? As the title suggests, I am not in tune with my emotions nor connected with myself at all. Often times, I feel like I don’t know me, my wants or my needs. I don’t love me. I do recognize my good qualities, but despite that I don’t have a sense of security. I come from a family who never spoke of their worries, feelings, and the like. Most things were brushed under the rug and never addressed again. I carry these patterns of course. I believe I am an Avoidant (or Disorganized). This is such a bizarre thing—as a human, understanding yourself, I always thought would be the one thing you have a solid foundation of in the world. What I do know is that I have a deep insecurity within myself that I desperately want to fix.
Sorry for the rant but I was wondering if anyone could offer some advice or tips on how I can start making progress and being happy. What can I DO? I know therapy would be best, but in the meantime and while i build up the courage to be vulnerable, what else can I try? How can I get more in tune with my emotions?
I was raised to be very introverted and very logical in everything that I do. It's not usually a problem except I wish I was more expressive and fun to be around. All in all I just want to be a sexier person and being logical in the bedroom is not sexy. So how is it I can turn off the logical mind and be more in tune with a natural expression of emotions? How did you become more in touch with your feelings?
Question
I am a female and thus I have observed that my female friends find it easy to just know what they feel at any given moment about any given subject. Now, I don't know if this is an INTJ thing or if I should look elsewhere for advice but normally I feel nothing. "Void" is the word that comes to mind.
I do have feelings but they have to be strong in order for me to interpret them correctly. If, for example, I am feeling mildly upset about something it will take me some time in order to know that I am upset and what I am upset about exactly. So how do I become more in touch with my own feelings? I don't want to have feelings all the time because an INFJ friend once described how her day of "feelings" goes and I got overwhelmed. I just want to pinpoint what I feel about certain subjects.
Does any one go through this and how did you become better at it? As a teenager, when I would see that people only reach out to me whenever they need my help with something and never otherwise, I'd feel very sad. I was always the popular kid whom everyone seemed to love. But I could see through the facade of who really loved me for who I was and who loved me just because I was helpful to them. This would always make me question things about my social dynamics and why was I doing what I was doing. Now, if some people don't call me or check on me, I feel relieved that there will be one less interaction with someone who was not as earnest as me in whatever dynamics we held. I am able to set healthy boundaries with everyone around me. And thus interact with others in a more meaningful way!
As a grown up adult who has gone through her life and had her fair share of experiences with people at schools, offices, volunteering orgs etc., I feel I understand people way better than what I used to. I don't see the intention behind other people's actions. I don't feel any external need for validation for every small task (on most days). I am far too much in control of my emotions and how to manage them on my own. I can create my own reasons for being happy in my own very personal ways. I can help others be happy in their lives and be of service to them without actually thinking of why am I doing what I am doing, knowing the other person's intent (which was a bottleneck for me as a teenager). I used to feel extremely sorry for being such an emotional person. Because I would get hurt so soo often and so easily. Now I am thankful about my emotions because I realise how they help me see the world from a lens that makes the world more beautiful! I still have my fair share of hurts but I wouldn't trade the better part of me for not getting hurt. Instead, I learnt over time how to manage my hurt better! I've learnt a lot in life by analysing (also read as overthinking) my emotions and feel like a healthy person now more than ever! I would say, as a kid and a teenager I was a very unhealthy ENFJ- not in the eyes of others but as who I was as myself beyond what met the eyes of others. As a man I've never had trouble being in tune with my emotions. What I have had trouble with is finding anyone who cares about them.
I really hate how the dominant narrative today is that men are just not in tune with their feelings and if we only taught them a little more emotional connection then men would be so much better. The truth is, most men are more emotionally fluent than people think. It's just that we have learned over and over again not to show our feelings because it will only result in us getting hurt or those feelings used against us. Telling men to get in touch with their feelings isn't going to fix the very real problem which is that not many people really care about male feelings unless they are positive or rational, which feelings certainly aren't always. So I am now 34 years old and after suffering a burn out in 2019 I have started to address underlying issues. Now it turns out that my main "problem" (it's also a strength, hence the quotation marks) is that I am overly rational. I manage to rationalize everything. I do my best to only make decisions based on evedince based science or logic and have firmly held on to the philosophies that a) anecdotal evidence is not evidence at all and b) feelings are a terrible way to decide what you want other than what's for dinner and even then, I might want pizza every night but that would just be terrible for my figure so....Anyway, turns out my way of making decisions is a little flawed....so my therapist is encouraging me to get in touch with my feelings. I should check in daily to see how I feel. Problem is, I mostly feel nothing. Yes I feel intense love and pride for my child and when my husband again doesn't put his socks in the dirty laundry I can feel seething rage because c'mon! but other than that, I don't really know how I feel. Any tips on how to become more in touch with your feelings would be highly appreciated. How do you gain control over your emotions?
I feel like I'm frequently impacted by strong emotions moreso than other people. I get upset more easily than other people and if i consider you s friend, i love quick and hard (please let that joke stay where it is). What i mean by that, is i have a very well articulated idea of what a friend is and I embrace that role because Id want someone who is a friend to me to do the same. As you might imagine, this only leads to me being taken advantage of and hurt more often than not.
I care very much about what people think of me and this obviously leads to very much heartache. I jist dont know how to stop this.
How to change this? A few hours ago, I was participating in a coaching seminar on how to be at your top peak performance. Anyway, there was a session where we were told to relax and reflect that we've done a good job, we should be thankful or ourselves, yadda yadda. Everyone were very emotional and like "I'm gonna cry", "thank you myself", "I'm so touched", etc. And there was me, scrunching up my eyebrows, trying to FEEL. What the heck, I can't feel anything. Then, we were told to remember one of our proudest achievement and feel the memory again, feel the high when we reached our goal. Of course I remember it, but I couldn't feel those emotions again, how? I want to cry too. I want to be washed over by beautiful emotions. Probably it's my lack of Fi. Ugh, I'm disappointed. Will an ENTP get better on that? Do you feel like listening to sad music when you are sad? Does it in a way make you feel better when you listen to a few sad songs? This is not just your individual experience but according to some studies there are scientific reasons behind it.
• They are nostalgic and trigger old memories, helping us to enhance the mood and the bittersweet feeling.
• They remind us that we are not alone in experiencing these feelings.
• The lyrics, the tune can be appreciated more when we are able to relate to it. Songs mirror our feelings or situations which ends up giving a voice to our emotions helping us to resonate with it.
• Sad songs have a high aesthetic value which is helpful in distracting the person from their current circumstances. It helps to focus on the music and might lead to mood regulation.
• When lyrics express the exact emotion we are feeling, we feel a connection forming. This connection helps us to have empathetic listening to it.
• It helps us to channelize our emotions.
• Our brain releases prolactin hormone which is associated with crying and helps curb grief. This brings in calmness or peacefulness that helps us to deal with mental stress. So the next time your heart says Kun Faya Kun let the sad music wash over you and bring you the calmness you deserve. Just like John Elton said sad songs really do say so much. How do you convince yourself your feelings are valid if you're an incredibly empathetic person who typically sees all sides to a viewpoint? I have a problem. Emotions aren't really a major part of my life, and it's becoming a bit disconcerting (only slightly).
Since about the time I got out of high school (26 now), I've found my emotional capacity dwindling little by little. Movies don't really do it for me anymore, neither do video games seem to be too compelling. Interaction with people is pretty "meh"; can't seem to stay interested in things they do or say, and it's actually keeping me from making any friends. Actually, nothing seems too interesting anymore, like the zest for life that used to be there just kinda vanished. Almost everything is only interesting for a few instances, and then becomes boring and monotonous.
Maybe unrelated, but my sex drive is disappearing too. There is no level of hotness anymore, where a perfect 10 would walk by, where lust would be a factor without thinking hard about it. Shouldn't that come automatically, without effort?
Some bad shit has happened... really bad shit, but shit happens to everyone, and they come out less reserved. I do enjoy reading philosophy of mind stuff, science textbooks for fun (computer stuff especially, as a CS major), but I think that maybe I'm starting to deconstruct everything way too much. Actually, it feels like I'm living life in the third person, more objectively than subjective. It feels like I can't live life.
Also, I do exercise alot. I'm in the best shape of my life. If this were depression, wouldn't exercise even things out? I poked around the subreddit to make sure this wasn't super common and couldn't find anything in the past few years (please correct me if I'm wrong).
For years and years I had struggled with feeling "dead inside" and a lack of feeling emotions. Since I was very young people have called me cold, distant, detached, robotic, etc. I recently began seeing a therapist for the first time in my life and went in never having heard of Alexithymia. After a few sessions I stumbled upon the definition, and while I was afraid to "internet diagnose" myself with something, most of what I read sounded like what I've been living and struggling with my entire life.
I didn't bring it up to her and she independently pegged it as the exact same thing. So here we are. I don't feel emotions, ask me anything at all. I apologize if I'm unable to answer your questions, because if you ask me about feeling I won't be able to put it into words right. Try not to get frustrated. Do you find warm emotionally in tune people weirdly immoral sometimes ?
I'm not a hugely emotionally in tune person (I feel bad about when I inadvertently step on people's toes and cause pain due to this). So sometimes I depend on other more emotionally in tune people to read other people's emotions and social situations for me (even if it's just reading their books or something), however one problem I notice is that often some of these people get onto immoral bandwagons. They get involved in nonsense and sometimes do the most awful things that an INTJ would never wade out of their cave to do to people, I don't know it seems that we are just more stable in a way. It seems that they are often into putting other people in their place, manipulating them for their own profit, hurting them for their own career advancement or fixing them or some hierarchical/dominance sort of mentality. They have a hierarchical (dominate or be dominated) mentality. I don't know if it is them being more susceptible to peer pressure or what but I find myself confused that a person can seem so angelic in one dimension (when you are emotionally in tune you look like a nice person and can appear very warm and fuzzy) and yet they get into doing these awful things. Why ? Have you noticed this ? Do you find this weird too ? I just don't understand how a person can be so emotionally in tune, see perfectly with crystal clarity how they are hurting another person and yet hurt them this way knowing full well what they are doing. It's just so callous and I don't have it in my heart. I just don't relate. Maybe it's not that inexplicable, it's just me that's surprised because I never thought it through fully before.
Edited to add: I think what confuses me is that they traded one form of blindness for another. You know there is the blindness of not seeing other people's emotions, and then there is the blindness of not feeling other people's pain. (Though most of these people would be socially savy enough to argue that they feel other people's pain like their own they are the most empathetic people in existence etc.) Today I was thinking about the fact that I guess cognitive empathy (being able to tell people's emotions and be in tune) isn't the same as affective empathy (really feeling people's pain and being moved and motivated to help them). You would think (especially as an INTJ) that understanding that someone is in pain would pretty much lead to empathizing with and trying to help them but apparently "no so." I have known some incredibly emotionally in tune people who told people, "Oh you've had a very hard life. That's awful" and pretended to be the kindest people but they just didn't care at all (even though sadly they pretended to). I could never do this and on some level I don't understand it. Have you noticed this ? It's something to watch sadly. What do you think ?
Sorry for the rant but I was wondering if anyone could offer some advice or tips on how I can start making progress and being happy. What can I DO? I know therapy would be best, but in the meantime and while i build up the courage to be vulnerable, what else can I try? How can I get more in tune with my emotions?
I was raised to be very introverted and very logical in everything that I do. It's not usually a problem except I wish I was more expressive and fun to be around. All in all I just want to be a sexier person and being logical in the bedroom is not sexy. So how is it I can turn off the logical mind and be more in tune with a natural expression of emotions? How did you become more in touch with your feelings?
Question
I am a female and thus I have observed that my female friends find it easy to just know what they feel at any given moment about any given subject. Now, I don't know if this is an INTJ thing or if I should look elsewhere for advice but normally I feel nothing. "Void" is the word that comes to mind.
I do have feelings but they have to be strong in order for me to interpret them correctly. If, for example, I am feeling mildly upset about something it will take me some time in order to know that I am upset and what I am upset about exactly. So how do I become more in touch with my own feelings? I don't want to have feelings all the time because an INFJ friend once described how her day of "feelings" goes and I got overwhelmed. I just want to pinpoint what I feel about certain subjects.
Does any one go through this and how did you become better at it? As a teenager, when I would see that people only reach out to me whenever they need my help with something and never otherwise, I'd feel very sad. I was always the popular kid whom everyone seemed to love. But I could see through the facade of who really loved me for who I was and who loved me just because I was helpful to them. This would always make me question things about my social dynamics and why was I doing what I was doing. Now, if some people don't call me or check on me, I feel relieved that there will be one less interaction with someone who was not as earnest as me in whatever dynamics we held. I am able to set healthy boundaries with everyone around me. And thus interact with others in a more meaningful way!
As a grown up adult who has gone through her life and had her fair share of experiences with people at schools, offices, volunteering orgs etc., I feel I understand people way better than what I used to. I don't see the intention behind other people's actions. I don't feel any external need for validation for every small task (on most days). I am far too much in control of my emotions and how to manage them on my own. I can create my own reasons for being happy in my own very personal ways. I can help others be happy in their lives and be of service to them without actually thinking of why am I doing what I am doing, knowing the other person's intent (which was a bottleneck for me as a teenager). I used to feel extremely sorry for being such an emotional person. Because I would get hurt so soo often and so easily. Now I am thankful about my emotions because I realise how they help me see the world from a lens that makes the world more beautiful! I still have my fair share of hurts but I wouldn't trade the better part of me for not getting hurt. Instead, I learnt over time how to manage my hurt better! I've learnt a lot in life by analysing (also read as overthinking) my emotions and feel like a healthy person now more than ever! I would say, as a kid and a teenager I was a very unhealthy ENFJ- not in the eyes of others but as who I was as myself beyond what met the eyes of others. As a man I've never had trouble being in tune with my emotions. What I have had trouble with is finding anyone who cares about them.
I really hate how the dominant narrative today is that men are just not in tune with their feelings and if we only taught them a little more emotional connection then men would be so much better. The truth is, most men are more emotionally fluent than people think. It's just that we have learned over and over again not to show our feelings because it will only result in us getting hurt or those feelings used against us. Telling men to get in touch with their feelings isn't going to fix the very real problem which is that not many people really care about male feelings unless they are positive or rational, which feelings certainly aren't always. So I am now 34 years old and after suffering a burn out in 2019 I have started to address underlying issues. Now it turns out that my main "problem" (it's also a strength, hence the quotation marks) is that I am overly rational. I manage to rationalize everything. I do my best to only make decisions based on evedince based science or logic and have firmly held on to the philosophies that a) anecdotal evidence is not evidence at all and b) feelings are a terrible way to decide what you want other than what's for dinner and even then, I might want pizza every night but that would just be terrible for my figure so....Anyway, turns out my way of making decisions is a little flawed....so my therapist is encouraging me to get in touch with my feelings. I should check in daily to see how I feel. Problem is, I mostly feel nothing. Yes I feel intense love and pride for my child and when my husband again doesn't put his socks in the dirty laundry I can feel seething rage because c'mon! but other than that, I don't really know how I feel. Any tips on how to become more in touch with your feelings would be highly appreciated. How do you gain control over your emotions?
I feel like I'm frequently impacted by strong emotions moreso than other people. I get upset more easily than other people and if i consider you s friend, i love quick and hard (please let that joke stay where it is). What i mean by that, is i have a very well articulated idea of what a friend is and I embrace that role because Id want someone who is a friend to me to do the same. As you might imagine, this only leads to me being taken advantage of and hurt more often than not.
I care very much about what people think of me and this obviously leads to very much heartache. I jist dont know how to stop this.
How to change this? A few hours ago, I was participating in a coaching seminar on how to be at your top peak performance. Anyway, there was a session where we were told to relax and reflect that we've done a good job, we should be thankful or ourselves, yadda yadda. Everyone were very emotional and like "I'm gonna cry", "thank you myself", "I'm so touched", etc. And there was me, scrunching up my eyebrows, trying to FEEL. What the heck, I can't feel anything. Then, we were told to remember one of our proudest achievement and feel the memory again, feel the high when we reached our goal. Of course I remember it, but I couldn't feel those emotions again, how? I want to cry too. I want to be washed over by beautiful emotions. Probably it's my lack of Fi. Ugh, I'm disappointed. Will an ENTP get better on that? Do you feel like listening to sad music when you are sad? Does it in a way make you feel better when you listen to a few sad songs? This is not just your individual experience but according to some studies there are scientific reasons behind it.
• They are nostalgic and trigger old memories, helping us to enhance the mood and the bittersweet feeling.
• They remind us that we are not alone in experiencing these feelings.
• The lyrics, the tune can be appreciated more when we are able to relate to it. Songs mirror our feelings or situations which ends up giving a voice to our emotions helping us to resonate with it.
• Sad songs have a high aesthetic value which is helpful in distracting the person from their current circumstances. It helps to focus on the music and might lead to mood regulation.
• When lyrics express the exact emotion we are feeling, we feel a connection forming. This connection helps us to have empathetic listening to it.
• It helps us to channelize our emotions.
• Our brain releases prolactin hormone which is associated with crying and helps curb grief. This brings in calmness or peacefulness that helps us to deal with mental stress. So the next time your heart says Kun Faya Kun let the sad music wash over you and bring you the calmness you deserve. Just like John Elton said sad songs really do say so much. How do you convince yourself your feelings are valid if you're an incredibly empathetic person who typically sees all sides to a viewpoint? I have a problem. Emotions aren't really a major part of my life, and it's becoming a bit disconcerting (only slightly).
Since about the time I got out of high school (26 now), I've found my emotional capacity dwindling little by little. Movies don't really do it for me anymore, neither do video games seem to be too compelling. Interaction with people is pretty "meh"; can't seem to stay interested in things they do or say, and it's actually keeping me from making any friends. Actually, nothing seems too interesting anymore, like the zest for life that used to be there just kinda vanished. Almost everything is only interesting for a few instances, and then becomes boring and monotonous.
Maybe unrelated, but my sex drive is disappearing too. There is no level of hotness anymore, where a perfect 10 would walk by, where lust would be a factor without thinking hard about it. Shouldn't that come automatically, without effort?
Some bad shit has happened... really bad shit, but shit happens to everyone, and they come out less reserved. I do enjoy reading philosophy of mind stuff, science textbooks for fun (computer stuff especially, as a CS major), but I think that maybe I'm starting to deconstruct everything way too much. Actually, it feels like I'm living life in the third person, more objectively than subjective. It feels like I can't live life.
Also, I do exercise alot. I'm in the best shape of my life. If this were depression, wouldn't exercise even things out? I poked around the subreddit to make sure this wasn't super common and couldn't find anything in the past few years (please correct me if I'm wrong).
For years and years I had struggled with feeling "dead inside" and a lack of feeling emotions. Since I was very young people have called me cold, distant, detached, robotic, etc. I recently began seeing a therapist for the first time in my life and went in never having heard of Alexithymia. After a few sessions I stumbled upon the definition, and while I was afraid to "internet diagnose" myself with something, most of what I read sounded like what I've been living and struggling with my entire life.
I didn't bring it up to her and she independently pegged it as the exact same thing. So here we are. I don't feel emotions, ask me anything at all. I apologize if I'm unable to answer your questions, because if you ask me about feeling I won't be able to put it into words right. Try not to get frustrated. Do you find warm emotionally in tune people weirdly immoral sometimes ?
I'm not a hugely emotionally in tune person (I feel bad about when I inadvertently step on people's toes and cause pain due to this). So sometimes I depend on other more emotionally in tune people to read other people's emotions and social situations for me (even if it's just reading their books or something), however one problem I notice is that often some of these people get onto immoral bandwagons. They get involved in nonsense and sometimes do the most awful things that an INTJ would never wade out of their cave to do to people, I don't know it seems that we are just more stable in a way. It seems that they are often into putting other people in their place, manipulating them for their own profit, hurting them for their own career advancement or fixing them or some hierarchical/dominance sort of mentality. They have a hierarchical (dominate or be dominated) mentality. I don't know if it is them being more susceptible to peer pressure or what but I find myself confused that a person can seem so angelic in one dimension (when you are emotionally in tune you look like a nice person and can appear very warm and fuzzy) and yet they get into doing these awful things. Why ? Have you noticed this ? Do you find this weird too ? I just don't understand how a person can be so emotionally in tune, see perfectly with crystal clarity how they are hurting another person and yet hurt them this way knowing full well what they are doing. It's just so callous and I don't have it in my heart. I just don't relate. Maybe it's not that inexplicable, it's just me that's surprised because I never thought it through fully before.
Edited to add: I think what confuses me is that they traded one form of blindness for another. You know there is the blindness of not seeing other people's emotions, and then there is the blindness of not feeling other people's pain. (Though most of these people would be socially savy enough to argue that they feel other people's pain like their own they are the most empathetic people in existence etc.) Today I was thinking about the fact that I guess cognitive empathy (being able to tell people's emotions and be in tune) isn't the same as affective empathy (really feeling people's pain and being moved and motivated to help them). You would think (especially as an INTJ) that understanding that someone is in pain would pretty much lead to empathizing with and trying to help them but apparently "no so." I have known some incredibly emotionally in tune people who told people, "Oh you've had a very hard life. That's awful" and pretended to be the kindest people but they just didn't care at all (even though sadly they pretended to). I could never do this and on some level I don't understand it. Have you noticed this ? It's something to watch sadly. What do you think ?
