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Choosing NOT to feel

deadgirlrunning

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In my normal state, I cannot "choose" not to feel something, but on antidepressants it becomes ridiculously easy. Usually the initial feeling will come, but then I'll forget about them. Considering I've been on these meds practically nonstop since I was 12, I think that it has interfered a lot with the development of my personality. When I discontinued them for a short amount of time I had this massive "emotional reflux". I basically went from being an INXP to an overly emotionally, mentally unstable ENFP. I felt sooooo much loss over the amazing people I'd never really given a chance and all the opportunities in life I'd passed up in exchange for good grades in tough AP classes. I went through a period of INTENSE depression and am now back on the nasty pills.
 

InTheFlesh

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Normally, I can rationalize or make it seem in my head that I should not feel a certain way. (I can only do this with negative emotions though) And when I do, the feelings just get bottled up and they build for a few weeks until I break down at seemingly random times. For example, I can get rejected for a date and I will be 100% fine with it at the time and a few weeks later I'll be at a friends house and I will start thinking about it again by no choice of my own, and I will start to almost cry or just be completely overwhelmed by sadness from it.

I'm working on not doing that that though.
 

luminous beam

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Is there a downside to stopping a feeling without replacing it with something else? Is that even possible, or are we always feeling something, even if we do not realize or recognize it? Can we stop too many feelings, such that we end up not feeling much at all?...

I don't have to share a book or a favorite food with someone else in order to experience and enjoy it myself. Why should sharing be necessary to experience a feeling?

The possibility:
I don't think it's possible to ever replace Feeling A with Feeling B. We cannot control how we feel. The only think we can control is how we react to these feelings - not necessarily just our actions, but how we choose to build upon these emotions.

In my opinion, from personal experience and hundreds of observations and encounters of, and with, people of many creeds, backgrounds and personalities, I do not believe that emotions can be 'shut off.' They are what they are, emotion is a state of being rather than an inanimate object that you can discard. They will be there whether you like to experience them or not because they are a part of you, an extension to you.

The downside:
Technically I recall hearing the term "learned apathy" being used.

I totally do this. To the point that to feel an emotion I have to tell my self to stop thinking, consciously relax, and allow myself to feel. I can feel excited, enthusiastic, logical, precise, happy...but to feel love or deep caring, I have to stop and allow that feeling to bloom up from inside of me. It is very beautiful-but not at all instant...

The down side is that if put into a very emotionally painful situation, which is rare, those walls can collapse and then I have a hard time processing the emotional overflow with Fi. It is too much, too fast and I try and retreat away from what caused the pain to process further-otherwise it overflows outwards.

You can become so out of tune from your emotional self that even if someone would knock you upside the head with one of them you wouldn't be able to tell whether you were happy, sad or upset...you may not even feel anything, just experience numbness.

The consequences would probably eventually result in a lessened capacity to love other people, or to even know what you were feeling in any given situation; a sort of emotionally deadened state where you would basically just be going through the motions. I would think it would not only make you feel less alive, but affect your relationships with other people. I also think that in Feeling types - I don't know about Thinkers - this could even result in a nervous breakdown if feelings were stuffed away for too long, and they would just start presenting themselves in odd ways at inappropriate times.

I agree with this, 'an emotionally deadened state.' How can you expect to understand how you feel or where those emotions are coming from if you never address them? It is my belief that even if you act like a robot or a zombie your emotional state manifests itself in other parts of your life, like "oh gee, I wonder why I'm depressed or have a lack of love for life?"

Hmm. That's a tricky question. Not becoming emotional over little things can be very good at times. For instance, not geting mad when you're cut off in traffic, is a benefit, because that emotion doesn't gain you anything. I read an article where the author suggested a method of turning 'road rage' into 'road compassion'. That's good example of substituting a positive emotion for a negative one.
Of course, that works because the emotion isn't the product of abuse or victimization. The negative emotions that are generated by trauma, physical assault, rape, mugging, violence, accidents, bullying, or anything that makes a person feel helpless, should not be avoided. Stuffing them down only makes them surface later in unexpected and destructive ways (isolation, addiction, anger, numbing, flashbacks, nightmares, etc).

How or where you can re-direct emotion depends on its intensity, you can choose to ignore them and tune them out. Some of them could be easily overlooked or dismissed and may even seem non-existent. However, there will be incidents where the emotion is so intense that you can't really ignore or mask it.
 

gromit

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Oh I had forgotten about this thread. I wanted to post some more/think about it some more, but didn't get a chance and then forgot. Well, in the meantime, here is a quote I read the other day that I've been chewing on.

Emotion is energy seeking expression.
-Robert C. Morris
 

Coriolis

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Energy? That's different. Yes, do post more when you have a chance. I would be interested in your thoughts.
 

luminous beam

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Oh I had forgotten about this thread. I wanted to post some more/think about it some more, but didn't get a chance and then forgot. Well, in the meantime, here is a quote I read the other day that I've been chewing on.

Emotion is energy seeking expression.
-Robert C. Morris

Emotions are energy that can get you to a particular state of being of happiness, sadness, envy, rage, etc etc.

This is just an example: Earlier I was really pissed off at someone's approach and expression in what I took to be close minded, controlling and unfair. But rather than me telling off this person and calling them an asshole, since they seem to be blind and oblivious as to how they are coming off (not in tune with themselves, not aware of how they appear in reality), I decided to cool off and not waste my breath by channeling my anger into music. I do this a lot, I 'become one with music' so to speak and find something that sounds heavy, noisy, screamy or angry to vent the negative energy for me. It usually works like a charm. So rather than me acting like an ass to someone else, I let music sound or act like an ass for me lol Some people would rather listen to mellow and peaceful music to comfort or put them at ease instead, but they are also channeling energy this way. It diffuses the situation and emotion is still allowed to process rather than be ignored, so there is no build up. I can go back to my own calm surroundings and things.
 

JocktheMotie

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I don't think you can consciously not feel something, but you can control how that feeling is used. You can control what that feeling means to you, what you should do with it, etc. This doesn't mean that we all feel the same things. I know I don't. The feelings are there or they're not. I can't have a general emotional response to certain things if I tried, and the things that make me happy/sad aren't the same things that make others happy/sad.

I find the downside to "ignoring" feelings is that you lose control far easier, than if you mentally indulge them and work out how they're going to fit into your mental deck of cards. So, you begin to not notice how they affect you if you just ignore them, than if you spend time monitoring what's going on inside you. So for me, I'm always keeping tabs on what's brewing beneath the surface.
 

cascadeco

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Prompted by Gromit's thread on whether we can choose to feel a certain way, I would like to consider what happens when we choose not to feel. By this I mean, not to replace feeling A with feeling B, but simply to stop feeling A. This could be specific and situational ("I don't like feeling defensive when I receive criticism."), or more general ("I don't like feeling angry, or giddy, or . . .)

This is kinda hard to answer, as I think certain types will be able to 'monitor' their emotional responses, or even change them (via changing perception), whereas others will not or won't even desire to do so. What might be beneficial and 'workable' for some might not be so for others. Anyhow, for myself, I can relate to adjusting perspectives such that, given your example, I can learn not to have an emotional reaction of becoming or feeling defensive in certain situations. So, where, 10 yrs ago, I may have gotten defensive in Scenario A, and experienced that emotion, if the same event happened today, I wouldn't experience that emotion at all. Things like that. So yes, I believe one can adjust ones thinking/perspective such that the emotion isn't triggered; however, this leads into very grey territory, as you then have to ask yourself whether it's even a wise thing to do, a necessary thing, what you would gain/lose from that... do some soul-searching.

Is there a downside to stopping a feeling without replacing it with something else? Is that even possible, or are we always feeling something, even if we do not realize or recognize it? Can we stop too many feelings, such that we end up not feeling much at all? Is there such a thing as an emotional vacuum? If we prevent it from being filled back up with emotions, is it filled by something else?

I cannot speak for others, but in my personal experience when I have tried pushing away emotions, they end up ultimately becoming a more powerful force than had I just accepted them and/or analyzed to figure out what the root of the issue is so as to resolve it. And, depending on the nature of the root issue and how deep it might go or how far it might extend, it may take quite some time to unravel. This took me a number of years to really figure out, but I eventually realized that trying to deny their existence meant I just stayed in that overall state longer than I would have had I just accepted them and either worked through them (if they required active working-through and problem resolution, in terms of external changes), or let them flow through me because by their nature they were short-lived and more of a momentary Mood.

I suspect though that it's possible to train your mind to approach the world in a very emotionless way. Would involve conditioning yourself, I suppose, and hardening yourself. It would be a full-blown thing; to do so I think would involve not allowing yourself to experience even positive emotions, because if you allowed yourself to experience positives, the inevitable absence of the positive would leave a more negative (or neutral) - the contrast itself would be noticeable and the neutral might feel negative in light of the absence of the positive. I would also expect sociopaths to have a similar engrained lack of..emotion.. in the sense most have it. But then, I am not knowledgable at all on that sort of psychology.

My initial thoughts... I'll probably ponder some more and edit a bit.
 
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I find it way easier to ignore BAD feelings than it is to ignore GOOD feelings.
Good feelings involve some powerful chemicals.
 

Coriolis

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I suspect though that it's possible to train your mind to approach the world in a very emotionless way. Would involve conditioning yourself, I suppose, and hardening yourself. It would be a full-blown thing; to do so I think would involve not allowing yourself to experience even positive emotions, because if you allowed yourself to experience positives, the inevitable absence of the positive would leave a more negative (or neutral) - the contrast itself would be noticeable and the neutral might feel negative in light of the absence of the positive. I would also expect sociopaths to have a similar engrained lack of..emotion.. in the sense most have it. But then, I am not knowledgable at all on that sort of psychology.
Thanks for the insightful comments, especially the above. It is true -- minimizing the experience of negative emotions goes hand in hand with experiencing positive ones less as well. I can see some of this in myself, when I specifically reflect upon it. For the most part, I find both equally easy to set aside, though the positive ones can be much more subtle and sneaky. I need to think on this much more, and appreciate everyone's input and shared experiences.
 

You

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most people wouldn't think that an INFP could do what I do... I cant show what I am feeling but the feelings are still there, when I see a family crying because they just lost there house I cant go over and cry with them. I cant show that I am scared when I am trying to save someone. I cant show that I am mad when we don't save a house. But all of those emotions are still there. I think those who say they can "turn off" some emotions have never felt them to their full extent

Me neither. Emotions just stayed there inside of me.

Because I'm a MAN! :doh:
 

Lark

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This is something that we all master you know, some of the best reading I've done lately has been of Karen Horney and people developing her theories which are really a development of Freuds, the central point is that we dont just repress infantile sexuality but affect and emotion, if its a pretty harsh sort of repression which is integrated/becomes adaptive then a neurotic trend can begin.

I've got a book in my to be read pile which suggests that most adult difficulties stem from the subconscious realisation that you've betrayed yourself and been a phony from the earliest years of childhood when you compromise your infantile rage in order to get the love of parents or carers.
 

alcea rosea

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Just read a book where it was stated that narsistic people can turn off their empathy. Would that be considered as choosing not to feel, turning off your empahty?
 

Coriolis

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I don't know. Would such a person still feel happiness, excitement, anger, frustration, fear, etc., but just not be able to sense those in others?
 

Wild horses

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Is that just replacing the feeling with apathy do you reckon? If it is, I'm very good at this. I don't know if it's just that I chose not to feel or simply numb the feelings that I do have but I certainly do this often! Not sure that I would say that I use it as a coping mechanism as such because I would say it's more widespread than that now but I probably started out that way
 

guesswho

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Prompted by Gromit's thread on whether we can choose to feel a certain way, I would like to consider what happens when we choose not to feel. By this I mean, not to replace feeling A with feeling B, but simply to stop feeling A. This could be specific and situational ("I don't like feeling defensive when I receive criticism."), or more general ("I don't like feeling angry, or giddy, or . . .)

Is there a downside to stopping a feeling without replacing it with something else? Is that even possible, or are we always feeling something, even if we do not realize or recognize it? Can we stop too many feelings, such that we end up not feeling much at all? Is there such a thing as an emotional vacuum? If we prevent it from being filled back up with emotions, is it filled by something else?

Choosing NOT to be human, won't make you any less human.
 

Poki

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Prompted by Gromit's thread on whether we can choose to feel a certain way, I would like to consider what happens when we choose not to feel. By this I mean, not to replace feeling A with feeling B, but simply to stop feeling A. This could be specific and situational ("I don't like feeling defensive when I receive criticism."), or more general ("I don't like feeling angry, or giddy, or . . .)

Is there a downside to stopping a feeling without replacing it with something else? Is that even possible, or are we always feeling something, even if we do not realize or recognize it? Can we stop too many feelings, such that we end up not feeling much at all? Is there such a thing as an emotional vacuum? If we prevent it from being filled back up with emotions, is it filled by something else?

Can you just stop thinking? I replace thought A with thought B, but to simply stop thinking. Can you stop a thought without replacing it with another? I can do that with feelings.

edit: this is abstract as I havent really tried or put much thought into it...busy at the moment. Just turning it around to thought. I do generally replace thought A with thought B though.
 

Coriolis

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Can you just stop thinking? I replace thought A with thought B, but to simply stop thinking. Can you stop a thought without replacing it with another? I can do that with feelings.

edit: this is abstract as I havent really tried or put much thought into it...busy at the moment. Just turning it around to thought. I do generally replace thought A with thought B though.
I find it very hard to stop thinking, but I know people who say they do that all the time, at will. They are surprised that I find it hard. Perhaps they find it similarly hard to stop feeling, while I find it easier.
 

Poki

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I find it very hard to stop thinking, but I know people who say they do that all the time, at will. They are surprised that I find it hard. Perhaps they find it similarly hard to stop feeling, while I find it easier.

Doing and interacting with the world around me is the only way I know how to get out thinking mode. I dont always feel.
 

coconut

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Frail? no, but the level that I can feel so deep that it creeps people out.

What do you mean? Is it the way you express what you're feeling that affects others this much?

I've always assumed that everyone felt the same thing on the inside, but just showed it to greater or lesser degrees.
 
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