How to feel my own feelings? Suggestions?

[daughterandmom]

Hi everyone. I posted this in the Personal Inventory board but then I thought maybe that was wrong. I am fairly new to this board- well actually all boards and I am afraid I don't know how things work exactly.

Here's a quick summary of why I am asking this question: I started therapy for the first time a few months ago after a lifetime of not feeling normal, not feeling like I understood what everyone else is doing or why and always feeling on the outside looking in. I managed to function okay, albeit with extremely high constant anxiety until my last of four children grew up and moved out. Then I shut down and got really stuck. Depersonalization, which I have had since childhood, got really bad. Spent nearly a year doing basically nothing. Fighting with myself to do basic household chores or take a shower. Finally knew I needed help and found a therapist with the goal of getting unstuck and working again. My belief was that I had maybe generalized anxiety or something and I just needed to get a hold of myself again. It was a complete surprise that after a few sessions he established that I had severe ptsd from sustained childhood trauma. I always knew my mother was crazy, but until this moment I did not know that it had anything to do with my current problems. I'm sure many of you can relate?

Anyways my question is this. My therapist keeps asking me how I feel when I am relating things. I don't know. The only feeling I can identify is anxiety. He says I don't feel my own feelings, but I take on those of others.

I don't really know what this means or what to do about it.

I've really been trying to look inside and identify my feelings, but usually I am either very anxious, or less. Or depressed. When other people are sad though, I feel that deeply and carry it all day and worry and try to fix things. When other people are happy, especially my kids, I am happy for them.

Does anyone relate? Has anyone found a solution?

[Growing a pair]

Hello Daughterandmom, after a lifetime of "dealing" with your BPD mom it's no wonder that you can't feel your feelings! My older sister is the BPD in my life, and I was never really allowed to express my feelings ( or even know what they were!) my whole life! BPD's take up all the space, attention, and emotions in the room. It's great that you are in therapy. My advice is that you share with him exactly what you shared here. He is there to guide you thru this process. Good Luck!

[Flintridge]

I get what you're saying. I'm still getting to know myself in terms of my own needs, after taking care of everyone else for so many years I didn't even know what I wan. My needs were always other people's needs, my feelings were other people's feelings. So you're not alone in this. I don't think this is something that changes over night. I think what comes first is taking care of yourself. It'll feel super unnatural for a while, but the more you do it and put yourself first, the more you'll very slowly get to know how you feel about things. I've realized I'm actually more of a homebody than I thought. I'm more introverted than I thought, I like quiet time. I didn't know any of this before because I was too busy running around trying to make sure everyone else's needs were taken care of.

Parents who have personality disorders make it their children's "job" to take care of their emotions. Which is parentification at its best. The roles are reversed. I used to very easily take on others emotions. What's helped me is to  focus on something I really enjoy. I just happen to love Disney, so I'll immerse myself in anything Disney. It becomes a cue, when someone is upset around me, I go to my "happy place" and so their emotions don't have anything to do with me because I'm busy focusing on myself and something I love. In fact, sometimes I even forget their angry,lol

[Confused#2]

This is AMAZING! You describe me! I live alone and am the same way. I have thought for years that it was just the depression but I did not know how to say that I felt there was nothing to me! It is like if I close the door to my house I do not know what to do or act! I might as well be a robot that is turned off when no one needs me.  I sometimes want to look into other peoples house to see what they really do! So funny in a way. If someone would ask me what I wanted to do all I can say is I do not know.  Until I read this board I did not think it had anything to do with my uBPDmother. But this is how I have always felt--empty inside. Now that I know it has to do with this maybe I can work on it!

[Sarah girl]

Yes, I can totally relate to not being able to identify feelings. There have been times in my life where I couldn't even form an opinion about something that my mom felt very strongly about or that represented too many painful implications or crippling anxiety. For instance, when my parents split, (I was an adult at the time), my mom severed all ties with my dad and expected me to also do so by proxy (which I very gladly did at the time). When people asked me how I felt about never seeing or speaking to my dad again, I sincerely had absolutely no feelings about it - just total indifferent numbness. It was as though I knew I had no right to have feelings about my dad and so had denied myself access to the part of my mind that would even fathom such a thought.

When I started to become aware of how my mom's BPD was toxically impacting my personal family life, feelings started rushing in. These days, I have trouble managing them because I feel flooded by memories that I now do have very strong feelings about. It is overwhelming. I was always so emotionally disassociated and I thought it was a normal way to be. I remember as a child, feeling like the moment I was in was not real or feeling like I was not a part of the moment - like a ghost or spectator. I even had dreams where I was a ghost. I read about disassociation and found out that it's a side effect of PTSD. Now I know I have to seek help about that. I went from idolizing my mom to coming to terms with the fact that I may have had PTSD for years. It will take some time to get my mind around it and learn to feel connected again. As I mentioned in an earlier post, what is helping me is unconditional acceptance and validation of my own thoughts and feelings. Once I accept them, I can intelligently deal with them. I also learned that if I'm having a traumatic or disturbing memory but cannot have feelings about it, it's because I'm probably denying myself access for the time being. It doesn't mean that the issue was not important. Instead, I try to ask myself why, as an intuitive and sensitive person, I don't have feelings about the memory.