What about talking about some times when you weren’t able to control it. What are some examples of times when your feelings overwhelmed you?

like what happened; what made me feel so strongly?

Start with that, but I want you to focus on the feelings themselves.

well, when G**** died is an easy one.

Okay, let’s focus on that.

he was my best pal, so i knew it was going to be hard when he went. i would make jokes about it sometimes, to R******, saying how i would basically be incapacitated by it when i lost him. actually, as bad as it was, it wasn’t nearly as bad as when M****  passed away; probably because M**** was the first one that i lost, and he was so sick for so long, and i had to take care of him. with G****, it was so fast, just shock was the dominant reaction.

What about your feelings, though? Describe how you felt.

at first, it was just numbness, like i said, because of the shock.

Don’t analyze it and try to explain why you felt the way you felt— just describe the feeling.

this is the thing, though; the place where i always get confused. how do i talk about the feeling without analyzing it?

Stay on describing the feeling. Focus on having the feeling, allowing yourself to experience it, rather than immediate invalidating it by dissecting it and explaining it away.

i am having it, though. this is one of the things that i don’t get. i don’t doubt that what you’re saying makes sense— i know you know what you’re talking about, and i certainly know that i’m the one with the problem —but how can it be that i’m not ‘allowing myself to experience the feeling’? it’s not like like i’m pretending that there is no feeling. i’m identifying it, i’m acknowledging it. i’m taking it seriously, right, by trying to understand it. i’m not trying to pretend that it doesn’t exist, so how am i invalidating the feeling? i hope that this doesn’t come across as aggressive, but i’m honestly confused about this.

I understand what you’re saying. I think— 

i feel like i’ve tried to make you explain this before, actually. sorry about that.

It’s okay. It’s an important distinction. 

that’s cool, at least.

The difference is in how you are experiencing the feeling, how you’re handling it. Maybe ‘invalidating’ is a poor word choice, but what I mean is that, when you have these feelings, you don’t allow yourself to just feel them. Your instinct is to immediately move into analysis, to try to analyze them, understand them, critique them. And this invalidates them, in a way, as feelings. You don’t let yourself feel your feelings, because you’re too eager to move into intellectualizing them. It’s a safer relationship to your emotions than letting yourself feel them.

but i feel like i do feel them— what am i analyzing?

That’s the thing though— you’re treating your emotions, primarily, as artifacts to be analyzed. That’s not how it’s supposed to work.

fuck you, bitch. how can i move forward if i don’t understand my feelings? isn’t that the kind of thing most people go to therapy for; to get help understanding their emotions?

Of course it’s not bad to try to understand your feelings, but it’s also not good to use analysis to avoid really experiencing your feelings. 

i promise i’m not being difficult when i say this— i’m not trying to be difficult when i say this —but how do i ‘experience my feelings’? (again, i feel like i’ve asked this before.) do i just sit and think, like, ‘I’M SAD’ really intensely, or smash stuff, if i’m angry? because that’s just being stuck in place, right? fuck you, bitch.

No, it’s more about sitting with the feeling, experiencing it; not feeling like you need to move into understanding it, but letting yourself have the feeling. 

well, it’s not like, when i start analyzing feelings, they just go away. i still have the feeling.

Right, but you’ve stopped interacting with it as a feeling, because you’ve switched into intellectualizing it. It exists in the abstract now, more than the concrete.

but it’s a feeling— it was never concrete.

You’re right. What I mean is, the feeling is no longer allowed to just be, because it’s become an object of inquiry. Its existence is only important inasmuch as it helps you identify causes and understand other things. It’s more forensic evidence than emotion.

well, that’s kind of cool, tbh ngl. but i kind of see what you mean.

And it’s important that you feel your feelings. You become stuck on them if you don’t allow yourself to fully experience them. 

ugh. but how do you do that? i feel like we just keep coming back to this part, over and over and over, and you keep trying to explain it, but i don’t get it. how do you just feel a feeling? how do you, like, turn your brain off and not think about it at all?

It’s not about ‘turning your brain off.’ You focus on simply experiencing the emotion, noticing how it’s making you feel physically. What kinds of sensations are you having in what parts of your body?

but you don’t try to understand that.

You just allow it to be, and you pay attention to it.

all due respect, this is so fucking dumb. what do you do with that information?

Let’s just focus on trying to experience the emotions first. 

the only times i can remember feeling my emotions, physically, are the few times that i had a panic attack, but i don’t think that’s what you’re thinking of.

It can be, if that’s easier for you. 

but i feel like you’re thinking about smaller things, like the things that i fail to sufficiently ‘feel’ that build up and eventually lead to something like a panic attack, right?

How about this: when is the last time you were really upset? 

like, I cried?

It doesn’t have to be a time you cried.

i’m honestly not sure if i can think of anything besides that. which i suppose isn’t surprising, if what you’re saying is correct.

What do you mean?

well, if you’re saying that i refuse to engage with and actually feel my feelings, it makes sense that i can’t remember them, because i just intellectualize them and push them aside. so they don’t seem relevant, unless, you know, there’s some kind of freak-out or meltdown.

The fact that you characterize emotional displays as ‘freak-outs’ or ‘meltdowns’ is what I’m talking about: you devalue emotion, instinctively.

man fuck you, bitch.

See, you’re deflecting.

what about this, though: you keep wanting me to talk about stuff from when i was little, like “oh i lost the spelling bee and i was humiliated” or “a girl said something mean to me one time and now i’m 43 and i still can’t get over it,” like we’re going to find some magic explanation for why i’m such a loser by analyzing stuff that happened in the past. huh? what now?

It’s all a rich tapestry.

*leans back*