emotional tmi

geez, the Occupy movement is a major blessing in the family holiday relations department. We can discuss and argue politics rather than facing embarrassing and vaguely humiliating questions about personal life stuff.

allowed to not have to spend thanksgiving with emotionally damaged family members

if this were true thanksgiving wouldn't exist

nah, my family is pretty un-emotionally damaged ... they are just well-meaningly nosey.

lol POLITICS is the like the last thing i want to talk about instead of my personal life with family xp

it's kinda lol actually, because my mom and my cousins' moms will do pre-emptive damage control with the other relatives, like, "don't ask (cousin A) about (personal topic x), it is still a very sensitive subject!"

And eventually it got to the point where I would say, "if we're going to get on that topic again, this conversation is over." or, if it was in person, i would say that i was going to go home.

This is what I did about the "Why haven't you found a church to join?/Your life will never work out until you give it to God in prayer" conversation.

i've been on the up-and-down rollercoaster pretty much my whole life. (what has been helping me lately with that is running.) anyway, i got emotionally tmi and dramatic with my boyfriend last weekend. then we worked some stuff out. then this morning he got up before me and made me breakfast. <3 ;_; <3

so glad to not be going anywhere for holidays (force me to make solid plans jenny!)

Hmmmm what did you have in mind? How about Christkindlmarket then ice skating in Millennium Park? (I might just watch you skate.)

^^^jealous

Oh man - Chicago has a Christkindlmarket???

jenny, we can take this off thread! i would love to go ice skating, though!!!!

what has been helping me lately with that is running.
oooootttttmmmm
it's like boom boom boom boom step step step step trampling on the bad feelings

lol POLITICS is the like the last thing i want to talk about instead of my personal life with family xp

God yes. My parents are Tea Partiers/53%ers so there is no "discussing" politics. Just right wing talking points shouted at high volume and me getting drunk in self defense.

my grandfather (RIP) was a politician for 13 years; politics was inescapable.

i have a lot to say about that ^^ topic but it's not really appropriate to talk about on public forum

not to be all cryptic or w/e -- sorry

i have one aunt who is a recent Glenn Beck convert, an uncle who's a lawyer, and another aunt who is a fervent Kucinich/Green Party supporter. it can be quite lively.

Oh and 97% of my extended family are racists. So yeah fun times. I'll talk about my personal life all ding dong day.

How do you convert to following Glen Beck? Concussion?

Struck by lightning iirc

a career in hospital administration?

i really have no idea. i'm just glad she's not my mom.

though the thanksgiving they argued about "Obamacare," i was at the other table with my cousins talking about our miserable break ups, so ...

pearls of wisdom from the thanksgiving dinner table

everyone should come to chicago for the holidays and we will all go ice skating together
no one will insult you or your lifestyle
no one will talk to you about glenn beck

also: no one will ask you when you are getting a real job

sounds tempting!

I will take you for the best Polish borscht ever.

I'm sorry. I can't shut up about this fucking soup.

I've never had borscht! Liquid beets didn't really appeal--is is THAT good even if you don't love beets as much as LL does?

This is a topic I can really hold forth on. YES IT IS THAT GOOD.

There are different kinds of borscht. Polish borscht is a clear broth and I think this one was beef based (though Wikipedia says it is often vegetarian). I don't like chunkier Russian borscht and cold borscht can kiss my butt. I do not like beets very much at all, much less to the extent of our beet-loving LL.

See I could talk emotionally about how much I love beets for a really really long time. Those are the most welcome feelings, the feelings of love for things I love.

Ahhh okay! A beef-based soup is exactly what Laurel's doctor would have ordered if he knew I was asking! I will drink all this Polish beef borscht with you.

See I could talk emotionally about how much I love beets for a really really long time. Those are the most welcome feelings, the feelings of love for things I love.

― the MMMM cult (La Lechera), Wednesday, November 16, 2011 4:28 PM (6 hours ago) Bookmark

<3 <3 <3

also bell that is horrible, your mother going through your stuff. as far as where she is getting the stuff she said to you about finding a man, she's probably projecting and has boundary issues and it really has nothing to do with you as a person.

THE MOST REASSURING THREAD IN THE WORLD

for the ironically self-negating reasons that make posting itt hard if you relate to its premise, i do not totally wanna get into this, but just i hope you're good LL i am so feeling every post of yrs above.

I hear you, and without asking for details, I get it. In fact, I wanted to revive this thread and resisted because I didn't want to be the one to do it. :)

yes.

i just figured that ilx is the sort of place where there might be others who have experienced this. i can't really, um, talk to anyone about it y'know

i mean i think there is some kind of emotional release going on in the act of searching ilx for EMOTIONAL, ha ha. i hadn't read this all before. i think we are sorta in the same ballpark, i am not a big fan of the posterity of oversharing on ilx, but webmail if you ever want emotionally uptight high-fives.

idk if you were theoretically gonna bump this thread with more progress updates on your social & emotional blossoming, but i hope it's all good or working out for you at the moment. i always think of that moment in annie hall when woody allen sleeps w/diane keaton & lays back and says well, there goes another novel, like there are potentially pluses to an unexorcised backlogue of feelings, so either way can work.

apparently there was a point when i wanted to note progress, but really i no longer have any interest in discussing my progress or providing updates to my emotional state.
it remains a horrifying idea to even consider tbh.

the difference is that i no longer care. i think mookieproof suggested that maybe it's ok to not want to be an open book. that's what i'm going with atm.

yes, for real. & it is generally bad to spend too much time trying to fit a square thing into a triangle shape, you sometimes just have to go w/the way things are. there are safeties to not telling people stuff, anyway, so even if it isn't perfect it can be a lot less discomforting, & a lot more autonomous, than having to be sensitive to some of the things that can be raised w/oversharing, etc.

even the concept of oversharing is extremely subjective

Did someone call my middle name?

Hi, guys!

hugs for all my emotional friends

As a man with no real handle on his emotions, I have no idea what it meant, but I was about to go to bed a couple weeks ago and paused in reading a book to pet my cat a little and something came over me and I had tears in my eyes and I gave him a big hug.

kind of lack of information, but sometimes even in tmi world we don't know how to express where these come from

hugs for all my emotional friends
A chaste swift pat on the back for the rest of us ;)

we're all emotional, just in different ways

I had a awful childhood, routinely beaten and molested well into my teens, which I dealt with by instinctively shutting down my emotions so I couldn't feel any pain. It worked in that sense, but I also lost with it the ability to feel love or affection. Couldn't really feel much of anything actually. Was just sort of there, floating aimlessly through life.

Spent years in support groups and counseling trying to work my way out of the abyss i'd been thrown into against my will, worked so hard to try and carve out a decent life from the hand I'd been dealt, and came thisclose to a breakthrough. I did about 80% of what I needed to do, but the 20% I didn't do prevented the other 80% from working, and now i've slipped further behind then i was when i started out. I wish I could get my emotions back, but they won't come.

that is a lot of information -- i think we may have opposite problems?

also i am sorry you have been through a lot of horrible experiences
i hope you have continued to work through whatever you need to work through

Wow, I'm really sorry dude. Didn't have things even close to that bad, but had a similar thing with shutting down emotions... my feelings are really intense, so bad stuff is magnified.

What helped me was going back to past experiences and feeling those emotions again ... you recapture yourself from those moments. It wasn't pleasant, but it was necessary. If you shut down one emotion you shut 'em all off.

Not sure if you've tried that, but it helped me ... but I can't imagine the kind-of pain you'd have to relive by doing that. It seriously was the only thing that helped, no therapist or other person could ever do that for me, and it takes courage to put yourself through it.

In order to go back to past experiences, you have to be able to remember them. I uaually can't. There's a good reason for that - just the thought of trying to remember them is beyond scary. It would destroy what little is left of me.