How to be more in touch with your emotions?

[adrianmolesmole]

To cut a long story short, I've grown up with what an extremely angry/hypercritical/overcontrolling/narcissistic mother and I tend to be surrounded by extremely emotional people - sister DM, DP - yet I think I've always been lacking in that department. I've held my emotions in most of my life and I find it hard to make my feelings and opinions known to others. (I even have a form of selective mutism, which I don't want to go into but i know it's from my mum screaming at me when i was a kid).

But I want to change that. I just can't get in touch with my emotions though? I can recognise and name my obvious emotions but there are long periods where I'm sort of .. blank. I've always put it down to anxiety, but is it? I always disregard myself and I think it's become ingrained or something.

I'm so envious of people who are in touch with their feelings, they always seem so sure of themselves and what they want/need. They stand up for themselves more. Have they always had their emotions validated when growing up? They seem to be more in touch with their intuition too. Whereas I just can't even make a simple decision based on brain or gut. I just don't have that in me. Even in bed with DP I can't access my emotions, I'm always in my head. Am I a lost hope?

Sorry for the rambling. The older I get the more aware of the effects of my childhood I'm becoming (nearly 50), and I want to change things, just don't know how.

Wasn't sure where to post this by the way, mods if it's in the wrong section feel free to move.

I feel the same as you, OP. I've found Jonice Webb's writing helpful: drjonicewebb.com but still feel a bit stuck, emotion-wise.

Don’t confuse people ‘being emotional’ with actually being in touch with their emotions. I probably come across as being reasonably emotionally articulate, but since starting therapy this summer (I’m your age), I’ve realised that I only allow myself to feel a certain “approved’ set of feelings — anger, self-discipline, etc — and I turn fear and loneliness into anger and motivators.

My therapist asks me how I’m feeling about something, and I often realise that I have no idea, or that I immediately leap to impatience or anger with myself. She gets me to breathe, slow down, close my eyes, and try to identify what I’m really feeling and where it is in my body. I feel like an idiot because I realise there are huge depths to me that I don’t know at all.

She has also made me realise how much energy I put into covering up my actual responses to things, because I hate being vulnerable.