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Dr. Bob is Robert Hsiung, MD,
bob@dr-bob.orgShown: posts 1 to 7 of 7. This is the beginning of the thread.
Posted by workinprogress on January 2, 2009, at 12:57:36
Does your T ever ask you to assign those things to your feelings? Mine does... and I hate it. She says, what color is it? What shape? What does it look like? Smell like? I sometimes get a vague "feeling" like pulling, or punching, or hollow, or something like that... but not much more. Am I terribly uncreative? Or totally checked out?
I feel like were I to answer those questions I'd just be making it up. Is that the point? Have any of you moved from where I'm at- this just not resonating at all, to actually getting it? If so how did you get there?
Would love to hear people's thoughts and experiences with this...
Posted by Dinah on January 2, 2009, at 16:26:43
In reply to Describing feelings: shape, color, smell, taste..., posted by workinprogress on January 2, 2009, at 12:57:36
I'm impressed with your therapist. I tried to explain things in those terms to my therapist, and he thought it was odd of me.
When I first started really feeling again, I could really only think of it in colors. I made a very detailed color wheel of emotions with the 64 crayola crayon set. Then I made a corresponding emotion word chart. So that if I felt the brownish red of brick, I could look it up and realize that I was feeling resentment. My therapist had that at the front of my chart until the agency closed.
Even now, when I'm at my most emotional self I tend to think in terms of colors, or images, or movements. I describe my feelings with arm gestures and limited vocabulary and my therapist tries to help me put words to them.
To me, the only way to describe my daddy when he was angry was ominously thick black with flashes of red. Or my husband as a pillar of crackling electricity shooting off occasional sparks. Or my mother as a volcano, erupting gobs of anger everywhere. I still don't think there are proper words for those things.
Still, my therapist obviously doesn't think that way. So it makes sense that some people do, and some don't. If you don't, I would think it is fair enough to tell your therapist that that just isn't your experience. We're probably all wired a bit differently.
Posted by obsidian on January 2, 2009, at 19:43:06
In reply to Re: Describing feelings: shape, color, smell, taste..., posted by Dinah on January 2, 2009, at 16:26:43
dinah,
what feeling do you think goes along with periwinkle?
-sid
Posted by obsidian on January 2, 2009, at 19:53:35
In reply to Describing feelings: shape, color, smell, taste..., posted by workinprogress on January 2, 2009, at 12:57:36
> Does your T ever ask you to assign those things to your feelings? Mine does... and I hate it. She says, what color is it? What shape? What does it look like? Smell like? I sometimes get a vague "feeling" like pulling, or punching, or hollow, or something like that... but not much more. Am I terribly uncreative? Or totally checked out?
no, my therapist does not.
Tell her it's a large black rhombus that smells like juicy fruit...just kidding
If I were to guess, I'd say she's trying to access something on a non-intellectual level??>
> I feel like were I to answer those questions I'd just be making it up. Is that the point? Have any of you moved from where I'm at- this just not resonating at all, to actually getting it? If so how did you get there?I tend to think in metaphors already. I'm with Dinah, maybe we are just wired differently.
>
> Would love to hear people's thoughts and experiences with this...
>
>
Posted by Dinah on January 2, 2009, at 20:21:01
In reply to Re: Describing feelings: shape, color, smell, taste... » Dinah, posted by obsidian on January 2, 2009, at 19:43:06
Happy, the warm peaceful sort. Not the giddy sort.
:)
Posted by onceupon on January 3, 2009, at 21:57:34
In reply to Describing feelings: shape, color, smell, taste..., posted by workinprogress on January 2, 2009, at 12:57:36
My therapist asks me these kinds of questions too. I know that she's trying to get me to connect more fully with my emotions, but I just don't experience them in that way. So, unless I' terribly uncreative too (which I won't rule out), I'm going to agree with the others and say that different people probably just process these things differently.
I also feel like I would be making things up if I answered those questions. Actually, I'm pretty sure I have just made stuff up before, and can testify that it doesn't help so much. That being said, I did have a therapist previously who introduced me to mindfulness meditation, and I did find that somewhat helpful in learning more about my emotions. Mostly she helped me to quiet down (to the extent that I could drown out the anxiety) to observe what I was experiencing. Have you tried anything like that?
Posted by turtle on January 4, 2009, at 12:50:35
In reply to Describing feelings: shape, color, smell, taste..., posted by workinprogress on January 2, 2009, at 12:57:36
My therapist asks those questions of me too. I can't say that I'm very good at it. I'm not always very good at understanding my emotions or telling them apart. My tendency is to ignore what is going on inside me. When with another person, I tend to stay intellectual and focused on managing the other person.
When my T asks these questions in session I rarely can answer very well and it does feel awkward. It feels like I'm forcing myself to grasp for an answer that I'm not sure of. The questions did catch my attention though. I've been listening to some guided meditations before I go to sleep and to my surprise those answers are starting to pop up. It's only after I'm relaxed, alone, and guided along to notice different emotions and body sensations that I can think in terms of color, smell, or shape. I am starting to notice that different emotions, and different expressions of the same emotion, will show up in my body in different ways.
The goal of those questions is to help you pay attention to what is going on inside and to learn subtleties that can help you distinguish differences. If those questions don't work well for you maybe something else would be more helpful? How do you tend to think of emotions? If you don't have a color, start with what you do have maybe in image, or an urge, or a body sensation, or something else and build on it from there.
I tend to think more in images. A few weeks ago I came home from therapy and when I lay down I immediately thought "I feel like a whale!" I literally had the sensation of throwing myself onto the shore. Cold, exposed, stuck, battered on the rocks, very alone. After each session I find myself back out in the water, but I'm drowning in it and stunned in what should be my home waters. Lately after my sessions I'd been telling myself to slow down next time, listen more, look where I'm going and be careful, but it wasn't happening. As soon as I would start to swim again, I'd run right back onto the shore during therapy in some unexplainable upside down mystery. I really needed to slow down but didn't know how.
From that image of the whale, I was able to start working out my emotions lonely, too exposed, vulnerable, uncomfortable, reckless, out of control And after I figured out what I was feeling I started working on why. I needed my T to interact with me more and give me the feedback I needed to feel safe as we went along. I shared these things with T the next session. We had a good discussion about how my T tends to interact and direct more when initiating therapy with a client, and less once the work moves into deeper material. We worked on changing this together and now it feels more like we are "swimming together".
It would have been great if I could have been aware enough of my emotions during the sessions to just speak up and address the issue at the moment, but instead I had to get there in a way that seems to me a little backwards starting with an image, noting how it feels, working out the emotions, then figuring out why. But at least I'm paying more attention now! I'm pretty sure your therapist won't be disappointed if you never come up with a color as long as you pay attention to what is going on inside you, however you do it.
Turtle
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