It is normal for traumatized people to avoid the sensation of emotion. TraumaTime taught us that it is too much to handle. Since we are not living in TraumaTime anymore and emotion is a big part of feeling alive and happy, it is time to get in touch with our feelings again.
The level of structural dissociation only makes a small difference here; we will have to negotiate our right to feel emotions with the parts of us who are more controlling, logical and distant.
Negotiations are different for each person/system, so I am trying to teach you how to do it.
Is it even safe?
Get in touch with the parts of you who believe that feeling emotions is not safe. Allow them to speak up and share their opinion. There is a reason why they exist, they have been major protectors in the past, so I want you to listen carefully and respectfully.
Write down all the arguments and concerns. We must not ignore this and try to feel emotions anyway. That will just create a power struggle.
Some of the most common thoughts on emotions are that
- we will somehow be punished
- we will look weak and get hurt
- the body sensation is intolerable
- what our parents taught us about emotions will be true
- emotions are overwhelming and will always be
- we will lose control
- there is fear of the unknown
- we won’t let go of negative emotions because they feel familiar and therefore safer
- emotions just hurt
- we can’t function when feeling emotions
- they don’t serve any purpose and are useless
- they just get in the way
- ….
- ….
When we have collected all the beliefs that tell us that feeling emotions is stupid and we should avoid it, we can take a break and get very grounded and oriented.
Usually the beliefs fall into one of 3 groups
- Misconceptions about emotions
- outdated information based on TraumaTime
- actual struggles with vehement emotions
Misconceptions
Learn about emotions. They are usually a reaction to an event. They have 4 sides (a feeling, a body sensation, thoughts and an impulse for action) that we can perceive and they are pointing us towards a need. By meeting the need we can dissolve the emotion. Comfortable feelings tell us to continue what we are doing, uncomfortable emotions tell us that we need to change something, so they are very useful guides. (More…)
Don’t mix up misconceptions and out-dated information, otherwise it will be impossible to negotiate. Emotions that are stuck in TraumaTime are not useful in this way, but they can be dissolved with the help of your T.
Without emotions we don’t feel alive. That is why feeling numb often leads us to self-harm; we need to feel something.
Feeling emotions also includes empathy for other people and a sense of connection with them. Scientists are pretty sure that the one thing that makes life happy and enjoyable are our relationships (together with meaning). We suck at relationships without emotion. Yes, some feelings are uncomfortable, but they do pass. In a weird way, those too make us feel alive and whole. So it is worth trying.
Outdated information
These beliefs have once been true, so we can’t just brush them off. But we have to put them in their place in the timeline of our life. They belong way back there, when we were children experiencing bad things.
It means that parts of us who hold on to these beliefs need to be grounded in the here&now tenaciously. We can adapt the classic discrimination exercise to explore what used to be true in the past and what is true now. Our own T calls it ‘the rules of war’ and ‘the rules of peace’. A part of us who is very grounded can help to confront beliefs that are stuck and maybe even provoke a little, if our relationship is strong enough to handle that. Point out the obvious mistakes in the logic where things are simply not true for a 5 foot something adult living in 2019. Often the parts of us who are suspicious of emotions are also parts who think very highly of their mental abilities and intellect. We can help them use this strength to double-check old beliefs. They are smart, they will figure it out. I personally feel indignant about being called out as illogical, so I will make an effort to see the truth I have missed before. Sometimes we have to be brave and try things under safe conditions to test if something is still true. Thoughts might not be enough, we might need a safe experience.
Vehement emotion
This is a reasonable fear that is often based on our experience in the here&now. Our trauma cycles of avoidance and being triggered reduced our tolerance for emotions while they are also feeling more intense. (More…) This experience is very real in the present and we can learn how to deal with it now.
The key to increasing our tolerance for emotions is mindfulness, containment and small steps.
In mindfulness we take an observing position that doesn’t add to the emotion. We are not avoiding sensations, we allow them to wash over us and pass. (Details here) It keeps us from feeling overwhelmed.
Containment is an imagery exercise where difficult experiences are put into a container, so we get control over when and where we want to look at them. We can adapt our container so it will give us a chance to control how much of a feeling we want to deal with. This could be done with a valve or maybe a ladle to take things from a big container to a smaller one we can focus on. Especially ‘old’ emotions need to be carefully contained until we can work through them with our T. Don’t try to do this alone.
Small steps are essential and without them all this will not work. We need to find the sweet spot where we are challenged but not overwhelmed. If parts of us demand that we feel everything fully NOW they need to be more patient. Boundaries can only be pushed from within our window of tolerance. If we rush this, we will make the experience we expected: that vehement emotions make us lose control. That’s neither pleasant nor helpful.
The parts who want to avoid emotion for this reason will have to be brave and overcome their fear and take the tiny steps. A spoon full, a drop, a breath long. It is not dangerous when we stick to the tiny steps.
If parts of us are not very brave they could watch other parts take the small steps and observe what happens. I personally think that it is not fair to keep other parts from making an experience just because I am not ready for it yet. If we can’t handle it, we can raise the dissociative barriers until we are ready to try. Especially in a DID system we need to keep good boundaries with each other and respect that other parts will be in a different place, have a different window of tolerance and can make their own choices concerning emotion.
You can stop your experiments any time and return to numbing. That option won’t go away. The hope is that over time you won’t need it that often.
Allowing ourselves emotions is one way of allowing the bad to get out and the good to come in. If we want to make different experiences from TraumaTime, we need to give ourselves the chance to have these experiences. Otherwise we will just be stuck with our negative feelings and we will miss the positive ones. The key to happiness and belonging is in living whole-heartedly. Without emotions we cannot feel fully alive.
More about emotional regulation
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