Ever since i was a little kid, I've been conditioned to respond to anger or being hurt by distancing myself from the person responsible and acting cold and distant to them. Lately I've been working on this. I know what makes me respond that way and I know what I could do instead but when it comes to actually doing that, I fail every time.
How do I control my emotions better? I want to be well-adjusted and happy. I feel like I'm so close, I just can't do this last step.
>>29788102
You're a grown man brobot... How the fuck are you 'getting hurt'?
>>29788102
Why would you want to get closer to anger and pain? One'd think those are things you shouldn't "embrace".
>>29788117
Lack of father/masculine figure.
Raised/coddled by mother too often
>>29788171
Yup. Lack of father figure, but not coddled by mom at all. She was dating, and I would get attached to a bunch of different potential father figures who ultimately left every time. At the same time I was in an abusive high school relationship with a crazy manipulative girl for two years, and I know that it shouldn't matter, but I was just emotionally stunted by everything going on in my formative years. Now a lot of things that shouldn't hurt me, do, and a lot of things that shouldn't make me angry also do. I don't know what to do to change the way I feel about them.
Autism/retardation inbound if I explain what they are. I am well aware I shouldn't care about this stuff. I just do.
>>29788148
Yeah, but embracing them is not my goal, dealing with them like an adult is.
>>29788102
Any robots who can tell me about their experiences with therapy? How much did it cost? What kind of medication did they give you? Did it help at all, or do you regret it? Did it make you shut down as a person or is there an antidepressant that doesn't do that?
>>29788102
Shameless self bump. Some anon please come talk to me. I need your wisdom, robots
>>29788258
>dealing with them like an adult
the way to do this is
1) evaluate whether your anger or hurt is justified (did the person mean to be hurtful? was what they said true? am i holding them to a higher standard than i hold myself? am i acting entitled? is my response disproportionate to the offense? were they just kidding around? am i being too sensitive to criticism?)
2) if the emotion is objectively justified because someone has done you wrong, being as unemotional as possible, confront the person in a direct, honest and productive way. state your needs for future interactions and state your boundaries for what you are willing to put up with in a relationship. if the person refuses to respect your needs then the relationship is not worth being in and it's best to cut ties. obviously this would only be for extreme wrongs and abusive behaviors.
3) if your emotion was unjustified or just not worthy of a confrontation give yourself time to cool off, do something distracting until you feel better and then come back to the relationship without any passive aggressive behavior. as a motivation to get over it always remind yourself that you make mistakes too and that nobody is ever going to give you everything you want all the time. to think otherwise is unrealistic and guarantees unhappiness, drama or loneliness. also remind yourself that regardless of anyone else's behavior, you are responsible for your own. it's not an excuse to be shitty just because someone else is. and being cold and distant without giving the person an explanation counts as being shitty.
this is the most autistic way to explain proper adult behavior i could think of. it will definitely take practice before you can do it all the time if you haven't been good at it before.
>>29788412
That's been my process the entire time, since I realized what my fucking problem was. I always fail at step 3. How do I do step 3?
Thanks for this.
>>29788486
maybe your issue is that you're just not able to take responsibility for your emotions. i resisted the notion that my therapist insisted on, that no one can "make us" feel any way. eventually, i came to see that it's true in a way and it really helped.
yes, you have very little control over your initial, natural emotional "shock" reaction. some people are just more emotional and more sensitive than others.
the next part is realizing that you have two choices. you can choose to continue being hurt and embracing unproductive feelings that allow the other person to have the unrestricted power to make you feel negative emotions. or you can put it in perspective, choose not to dwell on those feelings and move on from it. this is much more productive. the more hurt you've been in the past, the harder this will be but it's a skill like any other that you have to practice.
one good thing to do is use those physical feelings of upset to do something positive. whether it's going for a run or cleaning your room or punching a punching bag, getting out the tense energy by moving around is better than laying in bed or sitting in front of your computer because it's too easy to dwell that way. and i've found that the more physically tired i am, the less intense the emotions will be. plus, if you do something productive with that angry energy you will feel even more in control and better about yourself and it will make it easier to make good decisions about your emotional choices. hurt/anger are threat based. they come from a feeling of being helpless to protect yourself. doing something that makes you feel competent is a way to combat that.
basically, the point is to reduce the amount of time that a negative emotion has center stage in your mind and to boost your good feelings about yourself. yes, you might come back to it now and then until it's run it's course but it's all about whether you allow it control your actions and negatively affect your self-image.
>>29788667
It's something automatic in me. I might not be trying as hard as I believe I am to keep my cool, but the way my mind works it's just hard as fuck to manage this shit.
I'm afraid. I feel like I'm going to lose everyone close to me because of this. I also feel like an outlier, because no one around me seems to view life as dramatically as I do. Like, I guess I overcomplicate my own mind, or something, and in doing so, an I allowing myself to be negative? Am I making excuses why my negativity is justified? And is it really this simple to change the thought processes involved? As in, can I beat this with external actions rather than internally trying to solve it?
>>29788732
it's a mixture of both things. the external helps make the internal less intense so you can look at it more logically.
i'm extremely emotional too but at some point you just have to weigh the consequences of what you're doing against the benefits of not doing it anymore and jump in. i see it as deciding to be the adult. when it's really hard, i frame it as being a better person than the other person (which allows me to be slightly bitter but in a productive way haha).
no, it won't be simple or easy but nothing that makes your life better ever is. it will take consistent conscious effort at first but it will come more naturally eventually as the healthier thought processes become the more natural reactions.
i already gave you as much as i could in terms of both how to think and how to act yourself out of the emotional reactions. it's a matter of actually using the strategies in the moment, regardless of how intense the feelings are.
other than this, if your emotions are really regularly this out of control, you may want to see a therapist. as long as they don't try to put you on meds, it can't hurt.
i know that one reason i'm probably so emotional is because i was abused as a child. i don't know about your life but there are all kinds of unresolved trauma that people can have which cause them to overreact or lose control of themselves. talking to a good therapist might help you understand why everything hurts so much in the first place. if you can deal with that, the emotions might be easier to deal with because you will understand why (god help me for writing this) you are being triggered by something and you may begin to understand that you are not solely reacting to a current situation but a past situation where you were hurt deeply in a similar way.
and i always recommend meditation because it really can help people who are very emotionally reactive.
>>29788941
What's wrong with antidepressants? I've read up on bupropion (spelling?) and it seems good. It would also help me quit smoking, which is a plus.
Have you ever used them?
I need this stuff explained like I know nothing, sorry. I do not understand emotion at all, and it seems completely impossible to change it.
