EMDR therapy.
I quit drinking. I’ve had anhedonia for several years now since I got sobe. I have no emotions except occasional anger, but it only lasts for a few seconds.
Dude. Are you me? I’m 3 years sober and I’m still struggling to enjoy things. I find that I get angry/frustrated very easily.
I hope it goes away eventually, therapy seems to be helping.
The box method of breathing for several minutes helps me in immediate situations. And I’ve found doing this on a regular basis helps it become a habit which in general helps me deal with emotions better.
As someone else posted, medication. If your psychiatrist thinks it is warranted.
Therapy can be a godsend. Don’t be afraid to hop therapists at the beginning either—find a good match.
And something that helps me immensely: I use this as a mantra: “I will not always feel like this. Tomorrow I will not feel like this. This will pass.” Treat these strong emotions as a wave you need to ride. But that wave will eventually subside and you cam comfort yourself with that fact.
Acknowledge them. Allow yourself to feel them, knowing they are only temporary. The more you try to suppress them, the longer it will take to work through them.
It’s less about the intensity of your emotions and more about how you deal with them.
Let’s say you got really angry in public. It’s fine to get angry, sometimes there are good reasons for that. But there are multiple ways to deal with that anger. An unhealthy way would be to run amok and harm innocent people in order to vent. A healthy way would be to calm down, reflect on what makes you angry, and then either make an effort to improve your situation or remove yourself from it.
You can’t help feeling a certain way, but you can choose how you react to your emotions. Try to pick the option that is the least destructive to yourself and those around you. If emotional regulation is hard for you, you can learn coping skills from a therapist.
Techniques to manage the intensity of emotions sit between the parts you’re describing.
I agree that Inbetween the feeling rising up and our reaction there’s a choice to be made. Highly intense feelings overwhelm and reduce our choices in the moment.
Understanding what’s underneath or behind our feelings is one excellent way to do this which sadly doesn’t work for everything, especially the most intense feelings
This is why I recommend dialectical behavioral therapy. It teaches mindfulness and radical acceptance to reframe your relationship with your emotions in a more healthy light, and also solid techniques for emotion regulation and distress tolerance. It helped me soooo much.
Edit to add: there is a lot of free DBT material on the internet that you can pursue without a therapist, if there are none available to you at the moment.
Breathing exercises
It’s crazy but emotions are those things that CANT get lowered or hidden from ourselves … they will always find a way to go through . They are essentially what we are, the only thing I can think of to stop them is death.
You.can absolutely mitigate emotions. It is not always healthy, but there are various ways to do it. The actual triggers and emotions are not a choice, but you have a toolbox would you wish to deal with them.
They will find always their way to get out
Yes, of course, and they should. The point of emotional regulation isn’t to suppress or hide them, but to lessen their intensity.
(not a serious response but a true one)
Antidepressants
Hey, came here to say the same thing!
Yay! Antidepressants!
Not even to begin discussing the effect they have on experiencing… other things… 😅
I find when I have a balanced life nothing in particular tends to make much of an impact. And when it does, those emotions are important and you shouldn’t try to douse them. For example if your mother dies, it’s normal and healthy to feel devastated.
What I mean by a balanced life is a meaningful job, fulfilling social relationships both romantic and non-romantic, hobbies and interests- intellectual and physical.
Stay far away from drugs.
I used to be very empathic, I cared so much about the world and everyone in it. Making sure people were taken care of, and hoping for the best for everything. I would get depressed when bad things happened and I couldn’t do anything about it. But as I’ve gotten older and the world has gotten so much worse and it keeps getting worse and worse. I find I’ve adopted an “It is what it is” attitude about nearly everything. I have zero faith in humanity and it’s ability to over come the downward spiral we are in, and doubt we will still be here in 100 years, and frankly have gotten to the point were I feel that might be for the best. Time for the universe to hit reset and start again.
We’re not special. Some of us tried, but after a few decades on this earth I am not sure we collectively deserve it.
Exercise
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After Newports, one supposes :-)
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Hold it inside until I can get home and take an hour long bath immediately after work or have a manic breakdown the moment I get through the door in front of my s/o
Forgiving myself for feeling them.
Realizing that my emotional reaction is 1) human and 2) understandable and 3) a reaction, not an inevitability, can allow me to mentally (and physically, if necessary) step back. A sharp emotion is not yet a sharp word, and my initial reaction to a situation can be both normal and wrong, but I’m not locked in to that initial feeling. I can interpret and interrogate and change my mind.
It’s hardly easy to do that in high stress situations, but as a general rule it doesn’t help to fight high emotion with another high emotion like shame. Awareness of what causes them, knowing yourself and how you react and nurturing the patience to give yourself time and space to process can go a long way to making you feel less volatile.
Read up on stoicism
Do you have any good recommendations to start from?
A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy https://a.co/d/7hSGeJF
This is where I started. I didn’t even end up finishing the book, but the concept changed my life.
Med. I. Cation. Specifically Prozac. It works great for me, but we’re all different. Since I’ve been on it, it’s changed my life. So many things were attached to my mental health that I never knew.
I tried a bunch of different antidepressants. Lexapro, Zoloft, Prozac, Lamictal, Abilify. None of them helped, just kinda made me feel number and more tired. I gave up for a few years. Then I tried Celexa and it worked. It was like night and day. Holy shit, life is so much better now.
So try not to feel discouraged if you’ve tried medication and it didn’t help. There’s a ton out there, and more being developed all the time.
Yeah, I went through a bunch. I haven’t tried that one yet, but it turns out I’m very sensitive to medication, because Vraylar made me feel insane.
Now they want me to do some sort of drug test, “geo mind” or something like that, which will help me narrow down what medications to try next.
But 20Mg Fluoxetine is taking really good care of me rn. It gives me a bump like Adderall, which is great for my ADHD, and I feel so calm and not like I wanna just piss everyone off all the time - which is how I have been my entire unmedicated (or heavily self-medicated with alcohol) life.Like I said, things I never knew we’re related to mental health are better now.
Thanks for sharing your story, I really hope a younger version of me sees this, and decides to talk to a psychiatrist instead of drinking too much.
