Do you intellectualize as a means of escaping your feelings?

[HereSince1628]

The part of me that can think about my problems this way is detached from my feelings.

I find this role/mode thing interesting... If I think about my problems in terms of music and poetry I can strongly connect to my feelings. Yet when I draw this sort of thing, there is no feeling at all. I suppose generalizing removes this from being very personal...

[Tobin S.]

1. I used to try to, but it turns out I'm not much of an intellectual

Maybe in a blue collar kind of way, but I didn't make it past my sophomore year in college. I learn from life experiences for the most part, with a good book thrown in here and there.

Maybe being able to look at things while detached from your feelings is a good thing. The Buddhists think so.

[HereSince1628]

2. I get very detached while doing this...which is no good in therapy

where you need to be emotional to deal with learning to tolerate and handle emotions. But, you've got to be in therapy for that to be a problem. Diagramming like this does provide me a refuge as well as some stimulus to reflect on what's up with my wackiness.

I've been kicking this around in my head since late last spring. It started out with what I think is a foundational belief that 'the rest of the world' gives a crap about what I think or feel, but is highly sensitive to behavior, especially social or public behavior that isn't appropriate. So I started thinking about where appropriate behavior comes or signals and got to self-control which I then saw as dependent on self-awareness AND social awareness...then questions about how that broke into further detail and after a while it was a complicated map that holds together about a dozen theoretical psychological constructs.

I suppose to some it sort of looks like gibberish, something like the secret messages decoded by John Forbes Nash (the guy the movie Beautiful Mind was based upon). It's probably not very practical 'in the moment' when I need to act with little introspection. But, it maybe helpful if the folks who do psycho-dynamic therapy, who believe self-understanding is key to getting better, are correct. I wonder if psycho-dynamic therapy is amenable to DIY?

[mopinko]

3. so the shrinks tell me.

[EFerrari]

4. Sure. One of the ways I learn most easily

is through other people, i.e., relationally through language.

Wanna makes something of it? :evilgrin:

[BrendaBrick]

5. I think what you are describing...

...might pertain to Depersonalization Disorder...maybe? Here is a link about it:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depersonalization_disorder

I recently read that DD is the third most common mental illness, right behind depression & anxiety, which surprises me a bit.

What I find odd is that to the the casual 'onlooker' a person going through this appears as if they might be taking themselves too seriously...when in actuality, the person experiencing this is doing just the opposite in not taking their feelings seriously enough!

No short cuts in getting in touch with our feelings...and you can analyze and think about them to kingdom come and try to detach all you want - no dice.

I read this recently: Feel - Deal - Heal. I think that sums it up nicely.

So far as the Buddhist practice of non-detachment and the relinquishing of ego etc... is concerned, I have struggled with this for many years and I eventually came to the conclusion that this is all well and good IF you have a healthy ego to begin with and I can see some benefits along those lines...but if you don't - then trying to follow this particular path can be confusing and counter-productive, I feel, because one of the main road blocks to attaining a healthy ego imo, more often than not lies (in large part) to repressed anger and other *shadow* feelings not readily accepted - and even frowned upon in many ways, in our society...hence, to ourselves as an extension/reflection of this society.

I also think - bottom line - it just may be a matter of (finally) giving ourselves the permission to feel whatever it is we need to feel and process it. To trust and validate oursleves....to ourselves.

Don't think that there is any way around it...and believe me - I've looked! :-)

Be well!

[knowbody0]

6. a medicine woman pinched me on my arm.

I said ouch and wanted to smack her. she smiled and said to me that NO ONE could ever tell ME how that felt.