Emo Actions

My feelings and my actions are far too often too closely tied together. I will pull a knee-jerk reaction to something because I do not feel like it is a good idea whereas once I reassess and logically process through it, it totally makes sense.

Then again in an argument, I will get too heated because my emotions are ramping up and actions are tied up in my emotions. I will overreact at times when I do not need to and escalating when I should be slowing down and processing.

I will almost be listening to myself and cannot hardly believe I am so heated so quickly. Or I will ramp myself up while stomping about and then it explodes and I do not even know why.

All I should be doing is breathing.

Pacing myself.

Focusing.

Relaxing.

And logically processing my feelings through rather than emotionally processing my feelings.

How do you do with slowing down when your emotions are running high and logically processing what your feeling? How do you do at finding the source of your emotions? What can you do to better mediate the connection (or disconnection) between your emotions and your actions?

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Thought Life

I am an internal processor. I spend quite a bit of time alone with my thoughts trying to make sense of the world, listening to podcasts, reading little articles, and watching the world around me.

One of the unhealthy ways I process is by having conversations with people in my head. Whether it is reliving recent conversations and thinking of other things I should have said or having totally new fictional conversations with someone and totally taking them to task (of course I ‘win’ the conversation, I am in my head.)

I have done this as far back as I can remember. However I recently realized how unhealthy it is. I recently realized how bad it is for me and how much time I have lost just sitting spinning in circles in my head talking over and over. Running through conversations what would have no positive effect on the situation. Ultimately, these conversations only succeed in getting me worked up and mad about the same thing all over again. Then I am in a grumpy mood for little to no reason at all.

The worst of it, I am also missing out on whatever is going on around me. I am so deep inside my head I cannot even see what is going on in front of my face. I am missing out on the life around me because of the bits taking over my mind.

What is an unhealthy way you process your frustrations? How can you process your frustrations in a healthier way? Who can you talk to about your frustrations to help you get past the unhealthy bits?

Thinking,

–JT

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Mr. Thinker & Mr. Feeler

The recent personality exploration I’ve gone through have caused me to perform my self analysis with a new lens based on the information I was shown about myself. A piece of this information is how I’m wired in regards to thinking and feeling. I have an ability to think and feel on equal terms. When I make a decision or make a statement, I have to have my thinker come up with a couple options, then my feeler has to verify that I feel good about one or both of these options or revise these options. Then my thinker has to reprocess any changes the feeler made and my feeler has to approve the revisions continue revising. You can see that this process becomes a little tedious. It happens rather quickly considering all the pieces involved. However, it is very slow in comparison to people who are free to make decisions based on one attribute and not two. (I’m painfully aware of how long it takes me to make decisions.)

These pieces get interesting when one of my attributes is malfunctioning. An extreme life event of some sort such as the passing of a loved one. This life event might leave my feeler broken, overwhelmed with emotion, or just shut down and became incapable of processing. Overstimulated. 

So, my thinker stepped up, he said to the feeler, “Don’t worry bro, I got your back. Just sit down and heal up and we’ll pull you back in to the game when you’re better.” Very thoughtful of my thinker to take on the load for a bit. 

My feeler never stepped back up. He never took the reigns again. He was lost in the fray. Hiding. 

Scared.

Hurt.

He was incapacitated. He has been crying out and I haven’t been able to help him. My thinker has been overworking trying to maintain the load and my feeler just keeps feeling worse and worse all the time. My feeler eventually fell to the place where he was suppressed behind my thinker, depressed under the stimuli, and my thinker is angry because nobody is helping him. 

Six months later I’m falling apart because my thinker and my feeler are overwhelmed by it all and they cannot process a dang thing. And now I’m dealing with it. 

I’m looking my feeler in the face, making him process through the life events. I’m easing the load of my thinker. Letting him step down and only take care of the thoughts so my feeler can take care of his load only. 

How do you deal with unexpected stresses? How long do they affect you for?

Who helps you process your stress?