emotional tmi

oh god, you could tell?
yes

dito. i show i care about people in alot of ways. but vocalizing it is where i just have a very hard time.

haha - it's just that your post sounded exactly like my mom, who is a Virgo - her instinctual reaction when i was sad, was a variant of, "I could make you some nice toast with my really nice homemade rolls ... oh, and i have this really nice cheese that i got the other day. here, i have some kleenex in my purse, let me get it for you."

i even have an extra umbrella in my car just in case one of my students needs to walk home in the pouring rain. i would never say "hey, i care about you guys" but i will loan them my umbrella.

your mom gives you hilariously practical presents, right?

yes!!! like the huge container of hot chocolate mix that had been sitting in my cupboard for years. But after my break-up last year, it was the best thing ever -- i wanted something soothing and comforting, but being single I was concerned about my appearance, so I didn't want to eat a bunch of ice cream, and the hot chocolate mix was exactly what i needed.

My mom's response to the break-up: i can come up and take you out for a nice lunch, and then I will help you clean your kitchen, because having a clean home always makes me feel better.

i'm a pretty emotional person, but as someone whose dealt with friends and lovers who are in similar positions as you, ll, i'd say that the number one thing in getting to talk about emotions (of all kinds) is acknowledging the verity of those emotions at the time they're happening. a lot of more analytical people have trouble with this, but trust me, allowing them to happen instead of analyzing them is key to being a happier, more emotionally healthy person. analyzing them later, reflecting upon them, is also necessary...

i dunno -- as an analytical person, i can't really _not_ analyze things, but i can try and separate the two: the phenomenon and what it means/connotes/the best way of putting it in perspective and dealing with it, etc.

yeah, my general reaction to having emotions is: analyze, bottle up, put away
what i would like to do is: recognize, analyze, accept, move on

i'm not saying that analyzing them is bad! just that your general reaction patterns need to be changed.

acknowledging the verity of those emotions at the time they're happening
can you expand on this? i'm not sure what this means exactly.

Also, sometimes it takes a long time to work out what your emotions are! Like, I'll realise in the evening that I'm actually really angry about something someone said to me in the afternoon. I'll say so to the missus and she's all 'yeah, I've known that for hours'. But by that time it's not like I can go back and do anything about it without seeming like some kind of petty weirdo.

^ this

all the time I'm like "oh I was having emotions yesterday beep boorp bloop"

Amanda, for what it's worth, I know we aren't like best buddies or anything, but I have never thought of you as cold or standoffish, either! Quite to the contrary, in fact: you're often giddily brimming with enthusiasm about stuff. Not to say that your passion for things like music or food or movies or animals is a comprehensive reflection of your inner emotional world, since obviously it isn't -- just that I don't get that sense about you.

that's good to know -- i don't feel like i'm generally cold or standoffish but it would surprise you how much i have heard that very thing throughout the years from various...constituencies

i have ways of demonstrating that i am not a robot that some people can read, this i know. it's just that certain things i am unable to communicate, so i always exist in this area where i am comfortable and people don't have any idea what's actually happening in my head.

this is kind of disturbing because sometimes i don't know what i've said and what i haven't; i only know that there are things i'm not saying and i am very quiet about personal emotional stuff.

i do love music and food and movies and animals, though.

!!!!!!!

acknowledging the verity of those emotions at the time they're happening
can you expand on this? i'm not sure what this means exactly.

hey, what i mean is that when you're feeling an emotion, it's important to acknowledge that at the time, this is what you're feeling. it doesn't matter if it's reactionary or silly in later reflection or analysis, because that's the way emotions work. ignoring them isn't going to make them feel any better or worse, it's just going to make them dead.

can you give me an example? i'm not sure i get it. i need to what now? not being intentionally dunderheaded, i just don't always know what i am feeling at the time. it takes a while to realize what's going on. if i do realize it, then what? i just have to say "i am feeling a feeling" o que?

sometimes i find it easier to talk about emotions in spanish because i have to think harder about what i'm going to say (not my 1st lg) and i can express myself, but i have to be more creative about it. also it doesn't always feel like it's me saying its so i am less self conscious about the content of what i'm saying and more focused on the form.

LL you said something once about how sharing small secrets with people makes them feel more like friends. That some relationships are cemented a little more by a little secret sharing? Maybe I am paraphrasing this wrong, but I thought about that statement a lot. I think it's true, too. Why I bring it up is I think maybe "emotion sharing" has the same effect, to a certain extent, and can be approached in a similar way. A deliberate inclusion of "I am feeling a feeling" really is all you have to say. That's as much as you have to say, if you want.

FWIW I don't know you IRL but no way can I imagine you coming off as Data or something.

i don't feel like i'm generally cold or standoffish but it would surprise you how much i have heard that very thing throughout the years from various...constituencies

this might not be helpful but in the spirit of emotional tmi, i would like to share that i am mad at these constituencies >:[

Yeah A, I don't think of you as being cold or unemotional at all.

I kind of feel like I'm like this but I'm sure this is much more "acceptable" or even expected in men.

LL you said something once about how sharing small secrets with people makes them feel more like friends. That some relationships are cemented a little more by a little secret sharing?
this is totally a correct interpretation of what i said! i just don't usually talk about my feeeelings, so sometimes women (and men) think i am unemotional.

n/a i think this is a lot more acceptable in men than it is in women but i didn't start this thread to talk about gender differences, just about a discomfort sharing ~*emotions*~

i don't think you're cold either btw

the people who have said i am cold or standoffish are, on the whole, just way more open about their emotions than i am and usually they can't understand why i am not exactly like they are. either that or they are people who i have deemed untrustworthy with my secrets, and i tend to keep more things inside than most people thereby having more "secrets"

hey A, here's an example:

yesterday, my most recent ex (and still my best friend and occasional lover, what) said, "well, if [person] comes down here and doesn't even recognize that my life has been really hard for the past two years because of our breakup, then i'll get really upset and crushed."

and in my head, i was like 'you tried to play it off like it was all cool with me for awhile when all i wanted was recognition that what we had when we were seeing each other was something special,' i almost immediately realized that was more an angry loneliness speaking than my own self, who loves and cares for him with everything (and he feels/acts similarly towards me). i realized that there was a truth to my immediate emotional response, but that there was also something reactionary and rather stupid about it. so in response after a minute or so of munching on some mexican food, i said, "well, to be honest, you didn't recognize how hard it was for me. yeah, it was a different situation since we dated for barely a year and you and [person] dated for 3+ years, but it was still really hard to be around you when that was all i wanted to do. it sucks, but sometimes that's the way things happen, and i'm glad we are eating together and sharing our lives together in this way, as close close friends."

in other words, for me at least, there is always the immediate emotional response when with other people, and i try to acknowledge that there is always a bit of subjective truth to whatever emotional intelligence or reasoning is behind such responses. this is different than the actual 'played-out' emotional RESPONSE, which in the case above came almost immediately, but sometimes takes weeks or years.

i feel like i just made this more complicated, but in the end, what i'm trying to say is that coming to grips with one's immediate emotional reactions is key to 'showing' or displaying one's emotions in a more effective, productive manner.

I find the whole 'emotional sharing' thing to be a tightrope sometimes. And it also depends on your friends' personalities.

There are some people in my life who basically wanted me to have an emotional enema every time something was wrong, and I mean there's just some things you gotta face alone or just aren't worth blowing out of proportion, right? I've had other 'friends' who reply with a simple "sucks" when I mention something's upsetting me.

I very rarely talked about anything with anybody prior to turning 18, even my own family. Then I started and went way overboard and turned into an emo twit that even I couldn't stand and my friends hatedi t. I overcorrected a bit too much and people still complain that I hold too much in.

IMO, the best thing to do is think, what types of things would I hope my friends could feel comfortable coming to me about, and when would I consider it overboard? and apply it to your own actions.

i forgot to mention that in high school people actually DID call me Data
not only did i wear a burgundy blazer with shocking frequency, but i have yellowish-green eyes

creepy :-/

(i'm over it, of course, but geez, it did stick with me)

he's my fave character on TNG!

oh man I'm sorry LL

i'm pretty private about my feelings in general. but then when i do get emotional i just start crying uncontrollably, not just when sad or hurt but also (especially) when i'm angry, or when i'm overjoyed, or whatever.

anger is definitely the most difficult one for me to channel. these things are learned early on; e.g. "no one is allowed to be angrier than dad"

also expressing emotions is important but fuck being 'productive' about it.

Having a bipolar spouse, I've learned that I need to stay on an even emotional keel to counterbalance her highs and lows. The last year or two, I've started to feel that keeping my own highs and lows artificially tamped down is taking its toll on me. I feel brittle.

hey NO hard feelings at all abbles -- i didn't take it personally then, so i will not take it personally now :)

mostly i just want to work on being a warmer more emotionally available person. not because i am female and this is expected of me, but because i am genuinely like that inside and i think it should be represented by the way i am outside. it's tiring being so guarded all the time.

sorry to be all ~feelingz~ but this seems to be getting the better of me these days
i've been giving lots of stuff away too, so it feels like there's this final ROAD ahead of me when really i am just trying to get rid of some unnecessary clutter.

still, that was hard-won clutter, and it meant something to me. now it will have a new home, and i feel ok about that.

but

who will i be without these things? without my flower hats? my many books? my beautiful old shoes?

why are you giving away your things

it's tiring being so guarded all the time.

otm

why are you giving away your things

and can you give some of them to me?

because i have too many things and not enough room to store them all. i've already sworn off of yard/tag sales and thrifting until i can weed the collection. really i am taking things that i saw a purpose for, but never used (1950s prom dress, fred and ginger dance dress) and giving them to worthy recipients (and only fully worthy). but it's SO HARD. i feel like part of me is dying, tbh.

who will know that i collected these swesome things once i get them out of my house? no one, that's who.

what are you looking for?

think about it -- i gotta get up early. will check back and let you know if i have something that might be just what you need.

who knows?!

you will know that you collected them! if you like, you can take photographs-- you could do something like a photoshoot of yourself and/or some of your friends with the stuff as props - wearing the dresses, using the stuff that you're giving away. After all, they are things you are rightly proud of having found and bought and curated into a collection, so maybe if you used them as a curated collection, something separate from the stuff you're keeping, they would be easier to part with? I think about this sometimes because my grandfather was a book collector and was ruthless about selling things and weeding his collection out and I find it really hard to imagine going to the great effort of sourcing a rare book, wanting it desperately during that search, and then being able to turn around and sell it when the price looked good or you needed more shelf space. And I think maybe some of that lies in how one understands being a collector, having a collection - that it's not just about desire to acquire versus desire to own, but something else (possibly to do with my difficult relationship with imaginary-future-me).

i don't know that this would work tbh! I'm not much of a photos person, and while i find it super hard to declutter i don't tend to actually miss things once they're gone. But i think maybe some of why I get worried about giving/throwing things away is that I feel I haven't got as much enjoyment/use out of them as I feel I should have and so i feel a strange guilt. So if you can get one marvellous use out of the lot of them at once, maybe then it would be easier to part?

that is the most excellent answer imaginable.

Yeah, I agree with the one marvelous use/photograph them strategy -- mostly I've done that. It's just that as the stuff I don't care about gets easier to give away, the stuff that reminds me of where I've been is still staring at me and I know it's not useful anymore, but they all have stories, but it's all so self-indulgent and narcissistic. Still, I still feel like these pieces are part of my history, and I can never get that back if I lose them. Like I will be floating away.

In fact, my wedding dress was just a dress I had sitting around that I had never worn because where would I have had the opportunity to wear this dress? And it meant a lot to me to be able to wear something I already had.

Anyway, I can't really dress up my friends because I don't know anyone else who would fit into these dresses. I've worn a lot of them on Halloween and to shows, occasionally, but the purses and shoes mostly just sit there.

* the square black patent leather handbag with a working silver clasp that I found at a Goodwill in 2000 that, when I opened it up and smelled it, revealed itself to be my best friend's purse from high school. Her mom had given it away when she cleaned her room. It still smells like her! This was a magical moment for me.

* the black crocheted dress I found on a trash heap in front of an old woman's dilapidated old house in NC when she was being forced to move out -- after I cleaned it up, I have worn this to so many things, to work, on vacation

* these beautiful shoes
http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5021/5682211186_6cce2d75be.jpg

oh, the bff's purse? she originally got that in like 1991 when we went to a different thrift store together, and i got one similar -- the only difference was that hers smelled a little, so she sprayed it with perfume. so it is like double extra significant.

I don't know anyone else who would fit into these dresses

Kenan?

When give away clothes, I love imagining some cab driving from Somalia finding some sweater I never wear and having it make his day. With records, same scenario but with some kids who've just moved here.

No, see, that's kind of horrifying to me on both counts

And I think maybe some of that lies in how one understands being a collector, having a collection - that it's not just about desire to acquire versus desire to own, but something else (possibly to do with my difficult relationship with imaginary-future-me).

First of all, this whole post was brilliant.

But second, when c# used the word "curate", it got me thinking. What if you could stand as a STEWARD of those precious things that needed rescuing, and facilitate them going to more appreciative places than they were in when u found them? You can use them to build relationships instead -- reach out to people who are the right size, have certain tastes, maybe people you barely know, and instead of having to have the saved item be part of YOUR story, maybe you become part of the other person's story because you gave them a thing? You are weaving yourself into the tapestry of lyfe, man. Does that sort of thinking find any traction w you?

I already do that, for the most part. I am giving the above-posted shoes to someone who I know will (1) love them and (2) wear them right. There's just a core bunch of things that I feel unable to give away, not to mention that I don't meet a lot of people who want to be given emotionally laden gifts of old things, like double-old. I like the idea, but doing it is REALLY HARD for me.

That's actually what prompted me to revive this thread. I have been giving some things away. And it has been not feeling good.

la lechera do you have an etsy account?

Nope

Well, maybe? I think I have bought things before. Never sold anything.