01-05-2019, 04:30 PM
I went deeper into the whys today for my fears. Usually that feels like a rabbit hole that leads nowhere, but I have to understand why.
It's all come full circle. The same realizations I had a few years ago. I am a sensitive person, this left me predisposed to developing a number of issues in my life. My mom could be quite distant at times which I interpreted as her not caring about me so I learned to switch off from my feelings. Any perceived hurt or rejection stung really bad due to my sensitive nature and as a kid I didn't have the higher cognitive ability to think about what I was feeling. I just felt it deeply. And it hurt, was overwhelming, and the only way I could survive was by numbing myself out. My father would have some emotional outbursts at times when he was stressed out. This caused me to be overly cautious in my behavior, what I said, and made me very afraid of making mistakes that could set him off. Dumb stuff like spilling a cup of juice, dropping a plate, or even me and my brothers getting into an argument.
I love both of my parents deeply. They're only human and given their own pasts they provided me with more than I could ever ask for. It's unfortunate that at that age my coping methods were highly dysfunctional.
Which brings me to why this is all important. It's becoming more and more apparent I have very poor emotional regulation. I'm either swimming in chaos or completely shut off from myself. There's never any in between. But that in between is really important. And I never developed that. And as I got older I got more and more dysfunctional as I became more and more avoidant of those emotions inside of me.
So I guess you could say my biggest fear, the one I've been battling for a while now, is bridging that path into my emotional core. I feel things with such intensity, my fears lie in the fact that I don't want to experience those same painful emotions I felt as a child. I know keeping myself closed off like this has left my life feeling very bleak, drained, and empty. Cutting myself off from it stopped the negative, but it blocked the positive as well.
I know for most people it doesn't seem like any of this would amount to the struggles I face in life. Hell, I didn't believe it could. But by overlooking this and continually seeing fear as this amorphous blob that just needed to be destroyed, I completely neglected responsibility in evaluating what perpetuated my behaviors. The fear is always there for a reason.
It's all come full circle. The same realizations I had a few years ago. I am a sensitive person, this left me predisposed to developing a number of issues in my life. My mom could be quite distant at times which I interpreted as her not caring about me so I learned to switch off from my feelings. Any perceived hurt or rejection stung really bad due to my sensitive nature and as a kid I didn't have the higher cognitive ability to think about what I was feeling. I just felt it deeply. And it hurt, was overwhelming, and the only way I could survive was by numbing myself out. My father would have some emotional outbursts at times when he was stressed out. This caused me to be overly cautious in my behavior, what I said, and made me very afraid of making mistakes that could set him off. Dumb stuff like spilling a cup of juice, dropping a plate, or even me and my brothers getting into an argument.
I love both of my parents deeply. They're only human and given their own pasts they provided me with more than I could ever ask for. It's unfortunate that at that age my coping methods were highly dysfunctional.
Which brings me to why this is all important. It's becoming more and more apparent I have very poor emotional regulation. I'm either swimming in chaos or completely shut off from myself. There's never any in between. But that in between is really important. And I never developed that. And as I got older I got more and more dysfunctional as I became more and more avoidant of those emotions inside of me.
So I guess you could say my biggest fear, the one I've been battling for a while now, is bridging that path into my emotional core. I feel things with such intensity, my fears lie in the fact that I don't want to experience those same painful emotions I felt as a child. I know keeping myself closed off like this has left my life feeling very bleak, drained, and empty. Cutting myself off from it stopped the negative, but it blocked the positive as well.
I know for most people it doesn't seem like any of this would amount to the struggles I face in life. Hell, I didn't believe it could. But by overlooking this and continually seeing fear as this amorphous blob that just needed to be destroyed, I completely neglected responsibility in evaluating what perpetuated my behaviors. The fear is always there for a reason.
INFP
