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Dr. Bob is Robert Hsiung, MD,
[email protected]Shown: posts 1 to 5 of 5. This is the beginning of the thread.
Posted by pinkeye on August 4, 2005, at 19:06:19
I was thinking of something today, and it came to my mind, why even smart people suffer so much in life, and why smartness doesn't help in having good emotions.
And I was thinking that the logical thinking that we typically do in day to day life - which is taught to us in schools and college, and which we use in work - is different from the logic that we need for emotions.
Some people dismiss all emotions as beyond logic - but I think that is not true. Emotions do have a logic - only that it is different from our logical logic.
Our common logic works by analysis, seggregation into groups, reasoning and verbalizing. Whereas our emotions work more by pattern matching, associating, suppressing, and visualizing. They do have a logic that they follow, but that logic is different from our logical logic. And the mistake I made before in life, was to try to solve emotional problems with common sense logic. Of course it would never work. There is an overlap between the two, but there are distinct differences between the two.
And it is the same mistake that many people I know make in trying to deal with emotions. And even my ex T made the same mistake. He followed the logical way of treating me and of course my emotions never understood it. I continued to suffer and repeat the mistakes after a while again and again. I continued to get depressed again and again. I would get better for 3 months, then go back to being depressed. But if he had applied "emotional logic" to my emotions, he would have made much more sense out of me. He would have understood the patterns, and helped me heal those patterns.
I think similar things are already discovered by many people. I was just making a similar observation.
Posted by Racer on August 4, 2005, at 20:32:45
In reply to Analytical Logic and Emotional Logic, posted by pinkeye on August 4, 2005, at 19:06:19
The first one is mostly agreement, with a twist: I don't think about Emotional Logic so much as Mammalian Instinct. (Then again, I'm an odd duck, I'e been told...) Most of what happens to us emotionally seems -- to me -- based on the same sorts of instincts that most animal behavior is. And we are, after all, animals...
The second, though, is that I make a different, but related, mistake:
I try to explain my emotions. I try to justify them. If I can't explain WHY I feel a certain way, I don't feel as though I'm allowed or entitled to feel it. I "shouldn't" feel it. Does taht make sense?
Then again, I come by it honestly. In my childhood, I was often asked to "explain" my feelings that way. If I couldn't explain, for example, how or why I was hurt by something someone else had done, then I wasn't really hurt -- I was just being "bad" somehow. Selfish, usually.
Anyway, I think we're talking cousins in terms of the concept, if that makes sense...
Posted by daisym on August 4, 2005, at 23:26:06
In reply to Two responses, for whatever they're worth... » pinkeye, posted by Racer on August 4, 2005, at 20:32:45
***I try to explain my emotions. I try to justify them. If I can't explain WHY I feel a certain way, I don't feel as though I'm allowed or entitled to feel it. I "shouldn't" feel it. Does taht make sense?
Then again, I come by it honestly. In my childhood, I was often asked to "explain" my feelings that way. If I couldn't explain, for example, how or why I was hurt by something someone else had done, then I wasn't really hurt -- I was just being "bad" somehow. Selfish, usually&*******
yes! Yes! YES!
EXACTLY.
But how do you "unlearn" this...I need to understand "why" -- I can't just accept that because I feel some way it is OK. I am full of shoulds and shouldn'ts.We had similar experiences as kids with emotions...my mom use to tell me, "don't whine about the problem, tell me what you want me to do about it." So not only was I not allowed to whine, I was supposed to know why AND find the solution.
Posted by Racer on August 4, 2005, at 23:59:42
In reply to Re: Two responses, for whatever they're worth... » Racer, posted by daisym on August 4, 2005, at 23:26:06
I can't answer your question. I am trying -- with varying levels of success, and a hell of a lot of anxiety over it always -- to try to feel it. Whatever it is. Just to feel it. Just to allow myself to feel it.
So, mostly, I can feel a bit of it, with a huge amount of anxiety. And it's horrible, and it's really upsetting, and I hardly feel functional, and I thank heaven fasting every day for the love of my good man, which allows me to experience that with few outside pressures right now.
It's hard as anything I've ever done, Miss DaisyMae, but it's possible. Trust me: if I can do it, anyone can %^D
I guess, bottom line and serious, I really am trying to sit with the feelings more. Allow them, even if I don't understand them. And I'm crying a lot. I think those things go together.
Do you get the horrors over feeling as though you're "wallowing in self-pity?" All that? Get over it. It's OK to wallow in it, and to scream and throw tantrums over how unfair all of it is. You don't have to share those tantrums, you know, unless you want to.
And look at those comments as an adult looking at another adult speaking to a child: wouldn't you stop any other mother who said that to a child? Daisy -- I have stopped women in the supermarket to say it to them.
Posted by daisym on August 5, 2005, at 9:47:32
In reply to Are you sure you're not my sister? » daisym, posted by Racer on August 4, 2005, at 23:59:42
I have no talent for knitting...though we do both love buttons!
This is a hard one, sitting with those feelings. It is the anxiety that is the worst - I have no real reason to feel anxious. I can understand sad, or even mad, but anxious? Where does THAT come from?
I think that is why therapy was so hard yesterday. I wanted to be at a solution, or at least closer to one, and I was still just a tangle of inarticulate feelings. And really old feelings. I told him all about the dark -- how many kinds of dark there are, and especially about the dark that is dangerous. You know, the dark that happens when you close your eyes and you peer into the darkest corners of your mind...
Not logical at all. Not constructive. And uninvited tears come out of conversations like that, instead of solutions.
I have wondered if the "tears won't help fix it" edict that I heard over and over again is one of the reasons that I can't tolerate comfort very well. I want it, I long for it, but I have no faith that I'll ever feel comfortable just allowing someone else to comfort me.
*sigh* This is hard isn't it? Maybe you should write a book - exercising your feeling muscle. I bet it would be a hit.
This is the end of the thread.
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