Posted by Dinah on December 11, 2002, at 10:19:09
In reply to Re: On anger... » Dinah, posted by Eddie Sylvano on December 11, 2002, at 9:56:05
I see the emotional divorce as being a totally different phenomenon as the distance between my emotional self and my logical self. The former is a self protective mechanism that relates to certain people.
The latter came about by my attempts to distance myself from the less pleasant emotions and is not at all specific. By separating myself from the "bad" emotions, I separate myself from all emotions. Naturally such a separation is not perfect and leads to leakage of undifferentiated emotions or the flood of certain emotions when, say, the anger door is opened.
I've come a long way in therapy with the emotional separation. When I first went into therapy, my therapist thought that I was schizotypal due in part to my flat affect. He thought my range of emotion was extremely limited. Now he says he would never come to the same conclusion. That my range of emotions is fine, but that the separation between my emotional and rational states keep me from experiencing the emotions as I should. I still have a lot of work to do in the area, especially since the work has to be done around my not infrequent crises related to my mood and anxiety disorders. But I do see the *possibilities*. So far it's mostly been the bad emotions that have been accessed, but even that seems pregnant with possibilities.
Have you done therapy for this specific purpose? It took a long time to access that level of my being, and it still disappears from time to time. But I'm improving, and the therapy work has become deeper in the last year maybe. It is painful and destabilizing, but it's worthwhile I think. Of course, I'm a bit concerned that the destabilizing effect won't go away, and that the experiment might have to be abandoned. And the work depends to a large extent on my hard won attachment to my therapist.
By the way, my fear of anger is also pathological, as are all my reactions to anger. :(
poster:Dinah
thread:33113
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/social/20021206/msgs/33212.html