Okay, there are a tons of topics rolling around right now, surely there needs to be one more.

I'm working on difficulties I'm having identifying and naming feelings. Could you all help me out - maybe help me come up with as many feelings as you know? I realize this is ridiculous, but multiple choice is _way easier_ than fill-in-the-blank, as we all know, and I'm working with a serious language deficit in the "feelings" department.

..or to just point me to a site that's useful.

Wynne,
I totally get what you're talking about! When I first started therapy I told my 1st T that feelings were "yucky." Then we started discussing them and I ran into the same problem: feeling-blindness. Stay away from them long enough you forget what they are. Fascinating question, looking forward to all the answers. Here's my shot:

Happy Sad Angry scared content anxious frustrated joy confused proud dissappointed satisfied giggly silly triumph despair resignation curious nervous confident weary energized panic calm remorse gratitude numb excited bored (I think that's it for me. Wait until you see how fast they come and go!)

AT

I just googled feeling and after looking through a few pages found these which I think are helpful.

http://www.yplab.com/?m=200711&paged=2

http://www.ams.ubc.ca/files/Image/Speakeasy/Smiley_FEELINGS_1.jpg

I also don't think I can identify my feelings much past bad, scared, terror, shame, embarrasment, guilt, fear, happy, gratitude, tired, exhausted.

good luck with it

Hi Wynne, welcome to the forum. I've seen you here but this is my first chance to say hi. That's a cool task. There's actually some research--brain imaging research--that says, naming feelings actually creates a change in the brain...and I wish I could find the reference for it. (It's highlighted in a photo of one of Allan Schore's books.)

And, here's a neat factoid. Exothalmic is a term that refers to folks who have difficulty in naming their emotions.

I may have taken a few liberties and stretched the meaning of the word but here's a few:

feeling uplifted,
deflated,
feeling mischievious,
feeling heavy,
bitter,
feeling playful,
joyful,
spiteful,
inconsolable,
feeling lighhearted,
needy,
isolated,
feeling you belong,
disgusted,
teary-eyed,
giggly,
shy,
feeling fragile,
vulnerable,
feeling alive,
spirited...

There, how's that.

Shrinklady

quote:

Originally posted by incognito:
I just googled feeling and after looking through a few pages found these which I think are helpful.

http://www.yplab.com/?m=200711&paged=2

http://www.ams.ubc.ca/files/Image/Speakeasy/Smiley_FEELINGS_1.jpg

Oooohhh that first link has a really pretty picture in it. I like!

The second site is fascinating, more for my reaction to it them itself (though it's nifty iffen you like smilies). I do pretty poorly naming an emotion when I'm shown a stylized face - like, if it really _were_ a test, I would never have come up with the words below the faces. I use smilies themselves all the time, of course (enough that I get frustrated at the range of smiley available on these forums - said with lots of respect to the forums *pat pat* They try!)

Shrinklady,

Many thanks for the welcome and much gratitude for your shiny forums.

Brain imaging and I have a rocky history (off and on, breakups, recriminations, quite ugly when you get down to it) but I'm quite interested in the term "Exothalmic" and where it comes from or what it means. Other than a label that refers to folks who have difficulty naming their emotions, do you (or anyone else) know where it comes from? What it was originally used for? My basic research turns up only a fair bit on goiter...

So again, many thanks for the list and the response, Shrinklady. Pleased to meet you.

Apologies for the multiple postings, but I've been trying to give this exercise a go myself (of course) since I posted it. It was really hard, and in the end I popped on an episode of a TV series I own and started jotting down what I thought the emotions the characters were feeling were, if they weren't already on The List (composed by compiling everything AG and Shrinklady listed, and the words on incognito's first link). It's way easier for me to try to identify these "feelings" things when they're on somebody else than trying to imagine myself feeling them. Went way quicker once I got going!

Here's some of what I came up with:
Feeling...

outraged
indignation (subset: righteous)
protective
doubtful
useless
off-balance
attacked, put-upon
defensive
regretful
puzzled
sarcastic
comforted
concerned
apologetic
hurt
hopeless
hopeful
chagrin
grateful
inspired
exasperated
defiant
suspicious
astonished
connected, in sync
cut off
alone/lonely

What I'm not quite sure about is this: where do emotions or proper emotion words end and actions begin? It seems like some of these things are practically actions, not what I think of as "feelings." But my thoughts on feelings aren't all that advanced as it is, so I'm not quite sure of course. What "counts"?

Wynne,
You don't ask easy questions (especially because I still have a lot to learn in this area.) but I'm going to take a shot. Emotions are the reactions that arise from your limbic system, the right side of your brain in response to events, thoughts and other people's interactions with you. They're not right or wrong, they just are. They are the way you respond. An action is what you chose to do in response to your emotion. Sometimes how we feel informs our actions, especially when we test it and decide that our emotions are accurate reflections of reality. There are other times we have feelings, which are legitimate in that we ARE feeling them but we decide that they are not an accurate reflection of reality so we take an action that may run contrary to how we feel.

I think that the reason it can sometimes be difficult to discern the difference between emotions and actions is that some of our emotions get so closely tied to an action that we can have a "knee jerk" reaction. You go straight from experiencing an emotion to taking the action with NO pause inbetween to think or reflect. Its like your right brain kicks in but gives the left brain no opinion. This often happens in people who experienced childhood trauma because they didn't really have the ability to step back and analyze their situation but they did learn out to act in such a way to ensure their survival. So when they feel scared, they pull away. They don't think about it, they just move seamlessly from feeling to action. I think alot of what therapy has been about for me is learning to tolerate an emotion long enough to think about it and what it means and realize that I have choices: there is more than one action to take in response to an emotion,sometimes a lot of choices. I hope this makes sense as I'm groping for what I'm trying to say.

AG

Yeah AG, it makes sense. I guess I'm trying to figure out if you can _feel_ "sarcastic", or if "sarcastic" is a label that can only be applied to an action. I wonder the same about words/emotions/actions like "protective". Is it a word that describes an action, or one that describes the feeling that motivated the action?

It's much less helpful hair-splitting than the answer you gave, which I think answers a really useful question: What's the distinction between emotions that people feel and actions that people take?

I imagine the first question's issue comes up because I was watching people (TV characters) exhibit behaviors that I then tried to classify, rather than trying to describe my own internal state - where I'd know quite well if you could have a feeling like that!

So my follow-up question above may be as much an artifact (if that makes sense) of my process for coming up with words as a reasonable concern with the difference between words that describe emotions and words that describe actions.

[I've also noticed that my list suffers from being filled with words that tend to get used to describe _other people's_ feelings, rather than your own. I think there's a pretty clear distinction here, but I can't figure out what the difference is other than on a case-by-case basis. Like, who would ever say _they_ were feeling "chagrin"? Or "indignation"? Seems like we'd say "embarrassed" and "upset"/"angry"/"enraged", rather.]

More emotion questions here. I've noticed that, since I've been working on paying attention to how I feel and naming emotions, that it seems like I'm a lot more "emotional" than I'd noticed before. Like, today, today has been a day pretty fairly filled with rage, frustration, and anger. I don't remember getting like this so much, or feeling it quite so out-of-control, pre-therapy.

I'm not really liking it at the moment. Is it a therapy thing, or just me paying more attention to what I'm like? Do you all ever get this?

Wynne,

It is most likely a combination of both. You are noticing your emotions more which will naturally make you feel them more deeply and therapy digs up old emotions as well, ones that you weren't able to process when you were younger.

I think the digging up part gets better with time and as you learn how to handle through them without getting completely overwhelmed. Feeling and naming your emotions though is a more permanent condition and as my T and a lot of other people around here keep telling me, this is actually a good thing. (I am still doubtful but trying to be open minded.)

I have often felt that my emotions were out of control because once I opened the closet door and all of my skeletons came tumbling out all over the place I can't get the door shut again. It is a mess and stinky and yucky but little by little T helps me clean up and either put things away or throw them out.

River, I love your analogy, and my first response was "No! Must...crawl...back...into...closet!"

'Course, having lived in the closet for a while, I agree that it kinda sticks.

But in all seriousness, I am also skeptical that this is better. I also seemed to be more functional before all this pesky 'emotion' stuff started happening (continued to happen?).

Wynne,

I understand your skepticism completely. I'm feeling the same way. Since I've been opening my closet door I can't seem to do anything else. I'm just going through the motions and not doing a very good job of it.

They say it gets harder before it gets easier. I'm so ready for the easier part to get here.

OW

hey guys. i haven't posted for awhile. i know all about what you're talking about here--not being able to shut the closet door once it's opened. i, too, have been through the emotional stuff where i was feeling out of control with the feelings, especially anger and confusion. but with some time i have actually been able to sort through some of it and am actually feeling much better, much stronger than i have ever felt before. my T is great, but i only see him a couple times a month usually. it has been alot of work, but i feel like the benefits have been worth it. of course, i don't pretend to understand HOW it happened. LOL. and i'm sure i still have alot of work to do, but the depression seems MUCH MUCH lighter now.
anyway, hope this is encouraging. just hang in there.