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It might seem almost unfathomable that someone might not recognize what they're feeling. But the phenomenon is much more mutual than most people realize. This post will suggest no fewer than half dozen causes to clarify why individuals can remain in the dark about what's going on with them emotionally.

The 1 safe generalization that can be made about all emotions is that they don't start out equally feelings at all but as physiological sensations. So even when a person can't cover their feeling experience, they're typically aware of what's happening to them physically. And this is true even when what they're feeling is a "blank"—a strange numbness within them. For these "non-feeling," dissociative experiences also warrant being understood emotionally.

So, standing "stone common cold" with expressionless optics peering at a deceased relative in an open up casket, manifestly devoid of emotion, still represents a state of feeling. Moreover, apathy may literally mean "without feeling." Yet, unquestionably, we've all experienced this curious "feelingless feeling" at some point in our lives.

Let's accept a closer look at why certain feelings tin be difficult, or even impossible, to discern:

ane. The feeling hasn't yet crystallized. In these instances, you're merely commencement to experience something only it hasn't yet come into focus. Information technology's not yet identifiable. Y'all may feel something in your body—say, your pharynx tightening, a trembling in your limbs, an accelerated heartbeat. But in the moment you've yet to connect such concrete activation to what provoked it.

2. You're experiencing more than than a unmarried feeling, and they're oddly "fused." Here yous're beset by more one emotion at once, and information technology may feel disruptive for you can't split or distinguish between them. I've written ii earlier posts on this field of study: "Angry Tears" describes being enraged and, simultaneously, extremely injure by some keenly felt injustice. 1 emotion signifies a disturbing sense of unfairness virtually the provocation, the other a sense of helplessness or blues in reaction to information technology. Consequently, your confront (and likely other parts of the body) registers both emotions.

The second piece I've done on this occurrence is titled: "Can You Feel Ii Emotions at Once?" And if you've ever had a bittersweet feeling about something (who hasn't?) and so you already know something about what I call "bipolar emotions." In such instances, you lot're likely to vacillate betwixt the two emotions. And having emotions "vie" with one another for dominance can as well lead not only to a state of ambivalence simply (understandingly enough) to procrastination too.

3. Information technology's a feeling—or amalgam of feelings—that tin can't exist identified considering the English language has no name for information technology. The "what's-this-feeling?" phenomenon is somewhat new to the literature on emotions, merely information technology'due south become increasingly widespread. Consider these representative titles (and at that place are several):

"x Extremely Precise Words for Emotions You Didn't Even Know You Had" (Melissa Dahl, June 15, 2016);

"21 Emotions for Which In that location Are No English language Words" (Emily Elert, Jan. 4, 2013);

"40 Words for Emotions You've Felt, But Couldn't Explain" (Brianna Wiest, Feb., sixteen, 2016); and

"23 New Words for Emotions That We All Feel, but Tin can't Explain" (Justin Gammill, June 7, 2015).

Take, for example, the Indonesian discussion malu, which—every bit defined by Tiffany Watt Smith in her scholarly work, The Book of Human Emotions (2016)—means "the sudden experience of feeling constricted, inferior and awkward around people of college condition."

Or such neologisms every bit kenopsia: "The eerie, forlorn atmosphere of a place that'south usually bustling with people but is now abased and quiet—a school hallway in the evening, an unlit office on a weekend . . . an emotional afterimage that makes it seem not just empty just hyper-empty, with a total population in the negative. . . ." And also, opia: The ambiguous intensity of looking someone in the eye, which tin feel simultaneously invasive and vulnerable" (from John Koenig's semantically creative website "The Lexicon of Obscure Sorrows").

4. You've never had this feeling before. Children frequently can't recognize what they're feeling considering they've not yet reached a level of development where they can transcribe their physical sensations into understandable feeling names.

Consider this poignant description of anxiety arousal in an 8-year-old:

Information technology's 8AM and my heart's racing. It'due south that terrible, full-body sort of beat that makes your whole body shake and occasionally flutter from time to time from over-stimulation. For a second it almost feels similar excitement, until the abdomen flips start, my face heats up, and my neck starts to hurt and I feel a little giddy. My breathing's heavy and my palms and scalp are starting to sweat for reasons unbeknownst to me.

And the author, further describing this emotionally alarming feel, explains:

When you lot're young, anxiety is like a smoke monster: It lurks backside yous, this intangible thing that makes your eye vanquish and your head akimbo. It makes you wonder, nervously, "Why am I similar this? What's making me feel this way? How do I make information technology finish?" ("Here'due south What Anxiety Feels Like When You Have No Idea What Feet Is," Alicia Lutes, June 2, 2015)

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five. You're experiencing dissociation: a total detachment from your feelings. When you lot finer disengage from a feeling, you're "dead" to it. Of all of Freud's many defense mechanisms, dissociation is one of the virtually primitive. That's why it typically originates in childhood. Not yet having developed the emotional resources to successfully cope with perceived threats, children are all also hands overwhelmed past external circumstances.

Unable to rationally talk themselves down from what feels perilous, and often not able to leave the troubling state of affairs either, they're left with no selection other than disconnecting from their firsthand reality. Desperately needing to abscond from feelings experienced as intolerable, they contrive (yet unconsciously) to escape the outer world through somehow prompting their "essence" to wander off to another time or place—fifty-fifty every bit, physically, they're obliged to remain in the scene.

Simply whether you're a child or non, when y'all dissociate you lot can't experience anything. For all intents and purposes, you're simply no longer there. And so if yous've just been traumatized, or life'due south challenges have get more you can bear, when you simply feel too vulnerable to actively cope with whatever is going on, your final-ditch ploy for protecting yourself is shutting down completely. And going numb renders you oblivious to the feelings masked by such emotional paralysis. In the moment, you're non fifty-fifty capable of identifying what underlies this cocky-defensively applied anesthesia. And it's all automatic—in a sense, effortless. In some of its many "applications," it'due south as well universal.

The all-time example here might be all of a sudden learning, without the slightest warning, that your beloved, long-term partner has just been killed in a machine crash. In that devastating moment, the excruciating pain of your loss would go markedly beyond your ability to take in. And then you simply dissociate: drib into denial or freeze manner. And in such dire circumstances, what could perhaps exist a more than powerful mechanism for emotional survival? There are times when, psychologically, such radical abstention of reality tin exist essential.

Major depression involves a kind of numbing as well, so much so that some individuals, by dissociating from their emotional distress—meliorate described here every bit apathy—may non even realize they're depressed. Additionally, people who "lose" themselves in compulsive, addictive activities often exercise so in order to dissociate from crushing feelings that otherwise might overwhelm their coping capacities.

6. The feeling has been internally censored: Fifty-fifty when you try to access it, yous draw a bare. It's not difficult to imagine why many of the states larn to "blacklist" sure feelings. If, for example, you grew up in a habitation where expressions of acrimony were forbidden and losing your temper could lead to substantial penalty, y'all learned—almost at a cellular level—that any outward displays of antagonism could threaten your all-of import parental bail.

Or, if your family unit gave you the clear bulletin that you weren't to show sadness (and certainly not to weep), you might have felt compelled to push all sorrowful feelings hugger-mugger. Feelings of fright and anxiety can be repressed as well if your caretakers let you know that such responses were signs of weakness or inadequacy, and therefore unacceptable.

Since nothing is more vital to a kid than feeling securely continued to their parents, emotions that are disallowed must somehow be disguised or obliterated. I've seen therapy clients chuckle when they were distressing, or appear nonchalant when it was obvious that, inwardly, they were trembling with fear.

My favorite example of such "vanquished" feelings comes from a workshop I once did. In information technology, a participant wondered aloud why whenever she felt the need to cry something "came over her" and the urge disappeared. Moreover, when something exasperated her and she was about to raise her vocalisation, that impulse, also, got immediately extinguished. When I asked her whether her parents were okay with her expressing sorrow, without even having to call up about it she emphatically answered, "No!" And she responded the aforementioned mode when I asked nearly whether her parents' gave her whatever license to show acrimony. Obviously, she'd been left in a double bind. Fifty-fifty though she could feel inside her each of these emotions stirring upward, she'd very early learned—self-defensively—to turn them off.

Therapists would call this abrupt emotional expulsion suppression. But going a level beneath this—where just being enlightened of the feeling is inextricably linked with parental disapproval, rejection, or abandonment—some individuals, feeling gravely threatened merely by having this feeling experience, are driven to eliminate it entirely. And doing so is what's called repression. Here non only can't they discharge the emotion, simply they likewise can't even allow themselves to experience information technology. And that'southward why, when these people vaguely sense that something is struggling to surface, they can't even recognize what buried emotion is trying to emerge. Rather, all they feel is an inner vacuum; a peculiar, unplumbed emptiness.

Re-Associating or Re-Attaching to Feelings You lot're Alienated From

All our defenses are designed to stifle intolerable feelings of vulnerability. And most of these feelings originate in childhood when we're at our most vulnerable. Although doubtless, they're pivotal in profitable united states of america to experience a more secure connection to our caretakers, they can notwithstanding deport some high, later-day costs to our personal welfare.

To be whole, to exist fully connected to ourselves, as well as capable of forming meaningful, intimate relationships with others, we need to detect ways of retrieving feelings that earlier nosotros felt we had to deny. Additionally, when we repress a feeling we're likely to "deed it out"—as in, unreasonably blaming others, or projecting onto them our bottled-up, negative feelings; behaving deceitfully or passive-aggressively; sulking or giving others the silent treatment; or engaging in harmful addictive behaviors. And by frequently alienating those around us through such unconscious diversionary tactics, we tin can end upwards compromising—or even destroying—the relationships nosotros virtually need to be meaningfully, joyfully continued to others.

It's crucial, therefore, to realize (contrasting with what we learned before about escaping vulnerability) that as adults we can now larn how to brand ourselves more "comfortably" vulnerable. As long as—even despite ourselves—we've expanded our emotional resources, we tin can discover that information technology's really not that dangerous to let others be privy to who nosotros are: what provokes united states, saddens us, embarrasses united states of america, frightens us, even humiliates us.

I've written several posts well-nigh the "how's" of self-validation and self-soothing. And when we've fairly developed these more mature abilities, nosotros tin begin to summon our backbone to let out much of what, until now, we've felt compelled to hold in. Many of us may crave professional aid in unearthing long-repressed feelings and desensitizing ourselves from the painful threats long agone linked to them. But if, on our own, we want to attempt to recover that which we once decided we had to disavow, consider the words of author and communications consultant, Peter Bregman:

How practise you go to those [vulnerable] feelings [concealed by your anger]? Take a niggling time and space to ask yourself what y'all are actually feeling. Proceed asking until yous sense something that feels a piddling dangerous, a niggling risky. That sensation is probably why you're hesitant to feel it and a good sign that you lot're now fix to communicate.

Information technology's counterintuitive: Wait to communicate until you feel vulnerable communicating. But it's a skilful rule of pollex. ("Do You Know What Y'all Are Feeling?" May 18, 2012.)

Then, to briefly sum upward, we demand to admission our deeper, censored feelings and find ways in our lives to make witting, mindful "space" for them. Or else we'll never exist able to feel fully alive or develop rich, fulfilling relationships.

We tin't truly empathize with another until we're able to place—and accept compassion for—our ain feelings. Also, that in undertaking this long-delayed process of "unshackling" our disowned feelings, nosotros're likely, initially, to feel more vulnerable. But in staying with (vs. exiting from) this long-fallow feet, we'll somewhen experience much less vulnerable—equally well equally more powerful. . . . And at concluding, reunited with the child we once were.

Too the two posts I pointed to before—"Angry Tears" and "Tin You Feel Two Emotions at Once?"—other manufactures of mine closely chronicle to the present post: namely, "Trauma and the Freeze Response: Proficient, Bad, or Both?", "The Power to Be Vulnerable" (Parts 1. 2. & 3).

© 2017 Leon F. Seltzer, Ph.D. All Rights Reserved.

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Source: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/evolution-the-self/201702/6-reasons-why-you-may-not-know-what-youre-feeling

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