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[MBTI General] Emotional Repression

Jstrazz

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I often have a problem with repressing feelings and having delayed emotional reactions to events. I also sometimes have trouble showing my feelings to others even when I'm aware of them.

I've noticed it's hard for me to get angry at people when I'm actually around them, even when I consciously realize something is unfair or my boundaries have been crossed. Then when I'm alone it will sink in and my anger will flare up, and a lot of it is self-directed for letting myself become this smiling marshmallow/human bean-bag chair.

Have you tried finding some way to reasonably disagree or voice your displeasure? Your anger may still flare, but you can merely get a word in to get them thinking about your feelings and boundaries. Maybe tell a friend and have them help you in the instance. It's obviously more complicated than that and more difficult but I think it would help you feel less anger towards yourself.
 

Jstrazz

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Well some of it. I just repress emotions I don't have the time to deal with, don't want to deal with, emotions that generally just get in the way of things. I had Aspergers as a child so dealing with emotions has always been a bit of a challenge for me because I don't really know what to do with them.

And over time, you find yourself not having/finding time to deal with any emotions, and pretty soon even the smallest emotions are not worth the time or effort to sort through and understand. The process has become the proverbial slippery slope. I'm not the one to tell you what to do with them, but I'm sure someone else knows and will be more than willing to help.
 

á´…eparted

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And over time, you find yourself not having/finding time to deal with any emotions, and pretty soon even the smallest emotions are not worth the time or effort to sort through and understand. The process has become the proverbial slippery slope. I'm not the one to tell you what to do with them, but I'm sure someone else knows and will be more than willing to help.

This is something that I can only help myself with. It is what it is.
 

Jstrazz

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I have to hide a lot of my emotions every day, all the time from people, and it is a constant strain for me. Sometimes, I can mask things by putting on a persona of confidence and ease. However, this will only work when I am in a relatively relaxed state of mind.

The mask works for a while (at least, we convince ourselves it does) but eventually the stress, angst and emotional weight seep into the cracks forming in the visage.

I also find it irritating as I enjoy being emotionally open with people; being able to share my feelings and thoughts without fear is the strongest way for me to bond with somebody. I have to hide my depression from my mum and dad for different reasons. My mum will just worry and think i'm going to commit suicide, because she doesn't understand what it is like to be depressed and won't spend the time to listen. She is also a big worrier and reads into things a lot. Whereas my dad...well apparently having feelings is an excuse for not working and being generally lazy. And of course, real men never cry, space out and get black. I get that from both of them.

Those who have not experienced depression can never fully understand it. Your mom chooses to respond to it with fear born out of her love for you. She may be fighting her own battles and does not have the ammunition to take on your struggle while dealing with her own. Your father sounds like someone who is also emotionally repressed and cannot seek to help you without compromising the values and lack of emotion he lays on himself. From the snippet you've given us about your family, I would suggest looking elsewhere for the bonding you mention. Your parents, like you, may not be equipped to easily understand and handle their own emotions.

So I am a deeply repressed guy. I don't really have anybody to talk to and there are big chunks of my personality - some of which are fundamental to the composition of my identity - that I can't share with others. It is a constant internal battle deciding how much to compromise with what other people expect of me, and how I want to be myself. It gets worse because in many ways, I also don't know "how I want to be". What reasons do I have to exist at all? Why am I here? Do I know?

That is the most difficult part of the mask charade: clinging desperately to a calm exterior to the point where you've forgotten what lies beneath and half of the people you know know the exterior and half know the interior, with the result being you don't know how to act.

(Sorry if this sounds a bit broody. I'm mainly upset because I'm not doing well with my work again. It's hard to feel motivated to do something insanely boring.)

This is the last place you need to apologize for sharing. It is good that you have chosen to challenge yourself while you continue your less challenging work.
 

Jstrazz

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I'm generally a happy person, but when something is giving me trouble I generally tend to open up to people about it and the emotions I'm feeling are very easy to read.

The two main emotions I never really open up to people about are stress and fear of the future. Stress because I know I'm the source of that problem, and fear of the future because I can never really find assurance from people that things in life won't pass me by since you can't really predict the future.

I think the emotions people can read in me easiest are love and anger.

I do get sad but I only cry on special occasions. Otherwise it's hard to tell when I feel sad.

I think it is natural to conceal anxiety, especially relating to those things most out of our control (namely, the future).
 

Jstrazz

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This is something that I can only help myself with. It is what it is.

It is what it is from your point of view. You do know the most about yourself and your struggle is unique to you, but I'm sure there are some resources to be used to better know how to deal with emotion. Whether that means going to another or reading.
 

á´…eparted

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It is what it is from your point of view. You do know the most about yourself and your struggle is unique to you, but I'm sure there are some resources to be used to better know how to deal with emotion. Whether that means going to another or reading.

I have my methods and I do the best that I can. I also know my limitations.
 

Mole

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Emotional repression (though one could argue we mean the more active suppression) is the daily, and eventually long-term, pushing down, dismissing, and/or compartmentalizing of emotions, whether pleasant or unpleasant (though, obviously they tend to be unpleasant).

I think the majority of the people responding are referring to the latter.

The correct word for this is supression of emotion. I know popular culture confuses repression and supression, just as popular culture confuses empathy and sympathy, but this is because popular culture is uneducated.

If we take our orientation only from popular culture, we get lost. And worse, we don't know we are lost, and we have the illusion we know what we are saying.
 

magpie

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I think we need to make the distinction between psychological repression (according to Freud) and emotional repression. From what I've come to understand, psychological repression, in the way you are using it, is the subconscious repressing of memories and emotions from traumatic or otherwise trying times, usually in ones youth, as a means of defense. Emotional repression (though one could argue we mean the more active suppression) is the daily, and eventually long-term, pushing down, dismissing, and/or compartmentalizing of emotions, whether pleasant or unpleasant (though, obviously they tend to be unpleasant).

I think the majority of the people responding are referring to the latter.

But we should also talk about the former.
 

EJCC

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Really useful. I am so grateful for the ability to set my feelings aside, get things done, and pick the feelings back up later. The only problem is that it's hard to motivate yourself to revisit the emotions, especially when once they're out of sight, you might forget about them, or figure they were never a big deal to begin with. And that's when they start to build and build, to the point that when they finally explode, you have no idea where they even came from.
 

Evo

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Really useful. I am so grateful for the ability to set my feelings aside, get things done, and pick the feelings back up later. The only problem is that it's hard to motivate yourself to revisit the emotions, especially when once they're out of sight, you might forget about them, or figure they were never a big deal to begin with. And that's when they start to build and build, to the point that when they finally explode, you have no idea where they even came from.

Story of my life.
 

Jstrazz

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But we should also talk about the former.

We can in a more philosophical way, but as the nature of Psychological repression suggests, would there be much of anything to talk about personally?
 

Jstrazz

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The correct word for this is supression of emotion. I know popular culture confuses repression and supression, just as popular culture confuses empathy and sympathy, but this is because popular culture is uneducated.

If we take our orientation only from popular culture, we get lost. And worse, we don't know we are lost, and we have the illusion we know what we are saying.

Thank you for the correction.
 

magpie

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We can in a more philosophical way, but as the nature of Psychological repression suggests, would there be much of anything to talk about personally?

There might be. It really depends on the person and in what ways their trauma is manifesting itself. Although arguably if the trauma does begin to manifest itself through nightmares or knee jerk reactions to certain stimulus, that means it's pushing itself towards the surface. Like it's still subconcious in that a person doesn't have control other their reactions but a person does begin to realize something is wrong.

Although I've found that it's impossible to know that you're missing a memory until you remember that it's missed. It's odd because the moment of remembrance isn't even necessarily of the event, it's just the realization that something is missing. And then there might be a bit of recovery of emotional and physical feelings and smells and things tangentially related to the event, but nothing very helpful. Like lots of missing puzzle pieces. And like time didn't exist linearly, so nothing can be put into any sort of order. But it's too difficult to try and puzzle out because thinking about it for too long is self-harming.

But the thing about it is whether it exists consciously or subconsciously, it is always informing your feelings and actions. It's doesn't exist - it's a whole or a gap, but it's inescapable. And the more it solidifies the less real it gets.
 

Jstrazz

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Do you think having a repressed memory (whether you are aware of it or not) would be a factor in whether or not you actively or passively suppress your emotions? Do you think there is some sort of correlation? Maybe the memory does not come back (at least not entirely or swiftly or even coherently) but the subconscious mechanism of repression manifests itself in the form of your suppressing of your everyday emotions (or whatever the frequency)?
 

magpie

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Do you think having a repressed memory (whether you are aware of it or not) would be a factor in whether or not you actively or passively suppress your emotions? Do you think there is some sort of correlation? Maybe the memory does not come back (at least not entirely or swiftly or even coherently) but the subconscious mechanism of repression manifests itself in the form of your suppressing of your everyday emotions (or whatever the frequency)?

I think it would affect how you express other emotions... or whether or not you do, I suppose I should say. But I'm not sure it would be the subconcious mechanism of repression that would manifest itself day to day. Obviously I am a subjective viewer of this process and my postulations are therefore narrowed down to what I know, or can assume to follow by my own line of reasoning, but to me repression of a memory is different than emotional repression in that the former is characterized by a lack of control and the latter is characterized by too much control. So I think having repressed memories would make supressing everyday emotions difficult, and would lead to a person feeling like they have an abundance of uneccassary emotion. Although I suppose someone who feels too much might try to get things under control by cutting themselves off from their emotions completely. So it could come full circle.
 

Arctic Hysteria

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Repression means that particular thoughts and feelings are hidden from ourselves. And usually they are hidden because experiencing them as small children threatened our survival.

Unfortunately we often carry these repressed thoughts and feelings into adulthood without examining them.

But if we do examine them as adults, we find we can now survive as adults even as we experience thoughts and feelings necessarily repressed as small children.

One of the psychological means of repression is psychological defence mechanisms.

And this is why mbti is so popular. Mbti is a psychological defence mechanism that gives us a feeling of control and safety at the expense of spontaneous thought and feeling.
I have to agree with everything you wrote here [MENTION=3325]Mole[/MENTION], though the heavy baggage that causes repression could be carried from one's either childhood or early adulthood, or along the way.

OP is an ISTJ, and so this question is going to stick with you as long as you still identify yourself as ISTJ, unfortunately. It's funny but being an INFP, I am often expected to "flourish" with emotions, thoughts and feelings while truth is we INFPs experience and understand emotional repression more than most.
 

Arctic Hysteria

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Really useful. I am so grateful for the ability to set my feelings aside, get things done, and pick the feelings back up later. The only problem is that it's hard to motivate yourself to revisit the emotions, especially when once they're out of sight, you might forget about them, or figure they were never a big deal to begin with. And that's when they start to build and build, to the point that when they finally explode, you have no idea where they even came from.

I really do not know how to do that, putting feelings aside to get things done and picking them back up later. I admire anyone who can. I just can't see how my feelings can be such a portable, removable, separate part of me that way. I always constantly consult my heart and if something is done without having my heart put in there, I'd doubt if I ever let things really "done" in a "cosmic" way. Not saying it's easy better that way though.
 

Arctic Hysteria

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On this topic, I think a quote from Tuesdays with Morrie, one of my early favorite books says it better than I can, with no fancy words.

“If you hold back on the emotions - if you don't allow yourself to go all the way through them - you can never get to being detached, you're too busy being afraid. You're afraid of the pain, you're afraid of the grief. You're afraid of the vulnerability that loving entails. But by throwing yourself into these emotions, by allowing yourself to dive in, all the way, over your head even, you experience them fully and completely. You know what pain is. You know what love is. You know what grief is. And only then can you say, "All right. I have experienced that emotion. I recognize that emotion. Now I need to detach from that emotion for a moment.”

Those are words from a real person, old and on his way to death, and so they hold accountability to me.

I have been accused of being cold or detached so quickly. Truth is, when I am there and then, I naturally feel everything so powerfully and do not even try to stop the feelings from invading me, even if that means being extremely happy, or being burned to the ground with pain. But it's surprising how being there feeling it all can lead you to detachment easily after it's all said and done. I was there wholeheartedly, and now I can be here, wholeheartedly.

I notice the ones who avoid feeling, or put feelings to the back of their mind, or who are not tuned with their emotions tend to hold onto old feelings and regret.
 
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