Reverse Engineering Emotions

I read a lot of other people's blogs.  Many have a variety of experiences with counselors/psychologist/psychiatrist.  I decided that I was very fortunate with my first counselor.  His ability to talk my language was amazing.  He knew that my back ground was engineering and computers.  He would use examples from that part of my life to help me make heads and tails of emotions.  Lifebegins45 wrote in her post about the challenges of dissociation and reconnecting to emotions.  http://lifebegins45.wordpress.com/2013/01/07/i-know-its-not-easy/ She discussed the value of validation.  KavinCoach validated my emotions.  He also explained that I reacted so rapidly that I totally missed the emotion I was feeling.  In my life, reacting in split second timing was the difference between appeasing my abuser or getting back handed.  He actually spent an entire session helping me reverse engineer an emotion I hadn't realized I felt.  As a kid growing up, emotion was a luxury I couldn't afford wasting my time on.  If I did say I felt a certain way, I was told that was not how I felt.  Please understand, it did not matter what emotion it was happy, sad, excited, gloomy, my mother decided for me what I should feel and she would tell me that what I thought I felt was wrong.  Unfortunately, I did some of that myself to my kids.  I worked at doing things differently but didn't know where to begin.  Now, I can validate my kids emotions and mine.  Interesting thing for me it was easier to analyze the negative emotions.  Anger brings feelings of discomfort.  KavinCoach taught me to recognize anger.  Then he taught me to look for the feeling that came before the emotion anger.  If it was mild, the emotion probably applied to the moment.  However, if my emotional response was significantly out of proportion to the event that caused it then KavinCoach encouraged me to search my memories to the original hurt, fear, or frustration,  the original trigger.  I didn't think it was possible but I discovered through repeated experience that when I found the source of the toxic discomfort.  When I acknowledged and validated what I felt, it alleviated the emotion about the current event.  Now, I acknowledge feelings of discomfort much sooner.  I am willing to go on emotional safaris hunting down which emotions I am feeling.  I recognized that some times I was feeling a veritable soup of varying emotions at the same time.  For instance, anger masked hurt, fear and/or frustration.  Sometimes hurt and fear played off each other. Many times I felt frustrated by my fears and why couldn't I get past them.  I also started recognizing many other emotions that are subtle and less demanding then anger and its cohorts.  I discovered that I battle feeling lonely.  Being raised in a family of 5 kids plus others in one house, raising 6 kids with DH, I am accustomed to noisy hubbub of constant action.  So the TV comes on to keep me company at night when I used to visit with my kids at the end of a day.  Now the interesting thing for me is years of understanding or accessing my feelings I learned the value of all my emotions.  Sadness has its place right next to joy.  Contrasting emotions bring a richness and variety that I deeply appreciate.  The rug in KavinCoaches office was the example he used to illustrate to me the value of all the emotions.  I no longer classify emotions as good or bad.  I will say comfortable or uncomfortable, enjoyable or red flags, but for me all my emotions have value.  I do not feel a need to eliminate any of them to have a healthy life.

My rug at home adds beauty playing off the light and dark colors. 

    

I often stared at the rug in KavinCoach's office.