I 'feel' my emotions

[Duxwing]

Does anyone else have the experience of actually physically feeling their emotions? Not on the outside, like a cold hand, but on the inside, as three-dimensional volumes with texture and temperature that can be felt without touching, so to speak. For example, I experience catharsis as as cool, fresh release along my adrenal region. Emotional pain feels like extreme pressure near my head's front sinuses and my eyes, and grief feels like the same has filled up with lead. In addition, I can feel them wash over or into me, and I can push them in or out.

I can also annihalate emotions with each other or call them up at will in order to do experiments on myself. I find the experience bizarre, as I'll often find myself attempting to push unwanted emotions out my mouth (literally). Perhaps I'm an INFP, but this seems more like Si getting up in Fi's business than Fi itself being dominant, for I'm still mostly logical, but with no solid grounding I've got no hole to throw my emotions into without having a hunch that I'm hurting myself somehow.

Anyway, does anyone experience emotions like this?

-Duxwing

 

[Ex-User (5841)]

I doubt it's a tertiary function competing for attention. This sort of thing usually occurs when the dominant function competes with the inferior function.

A link from Snafu that explains this: http://personalityjunkie.com/the-inferior-function/

INFPs have tertiary Si. If you're convinced you're "feeling", perhaps it's really Se competing with Fe. You appear to be describing Se to a T (meaning INFJ).



This may also be of interest: http://www.intpforum.com/showthread.php?t=14102&highlight=sacrifice

 

[Ink]

You just sound like a well-rounded INTP to me

 

[Etheri]

In strong emotional cases, especially bad emotions (hurt, pain and such) will sometimes have physical effects. It might also happen in other cases, but then physical effects are far more subtle.
I'll typically feel nauseous and generally bad, physically and mentally exhausted and such due to emotional pain. (Especially the dizzy neasea is very noticable as physical effect). Sometimes i'll also get feelings in my stumache, both good and bad ones, but i've never had /whatever people describe as love/, by which I mean i've not felt it induced or directed towards specific people.
And then there's also heat effects, feeling very cold / warm all out of a sudden. The uneasy kind of hot / warm. I'm not sure if i can directly link it to emotions, tho.

I wonder if my body sends me physical signals rather than emotional ones as I typically can't put physical symptons asside as easily?

 

[TriflinThomas]

And then there's also heat effects, feeling very cold / warm all out of a sudden. The uneasy kind of hot / warm. I'm not sure if i can directly link it to emotions, tho.

I always get hot when I get angry or frustrated (I mostly get frustrated, I'm rarely angry). I could be perfectly fine, and then something gets to me and I get hot all of a sudden.

 

[skip]

When I was a competitive athlete we were encouraged to feel physical manifestations of feelings just like the OP's description of them, I guess so we could call them up when we needed them, or something like that.

 

[Ink]

When I was a competitive athlete we were encouraged to feel physical manifestations of feelings just like the OP's description of them, I guess so we could call them up when we needed them, or something like that.

Did it work?

 

[Roni]

I call this 'mindfulness' because the first time I experienced it was during a structured relaxation exercise using "mindfulness techniques" according to my post-disaster-recovery-debrief psych.

I saw/felt my dread/fear/anxiety for my son in Afghanistan as a hard, black sphere in my bowel; my grief for a friend who'd died a few months earlier as triangular blue weight across my chest; and my confused pain/affection for someone who'd later be revealed to be a jerk as a hotter version of the triangle pushed up through my throat and prickling behind my eyes.
The psych didn't ask me to discuss any of my feelings. She just asked me to "curiously observe" and "breathe around" them.

Visualising the black sphere (representing a constant fear I was powerless to address) was far more useful to me than the 6 weeks' therapy I'd had specifically aimed at that fear. It made me isolate the tension and get on with life. I became a big mindfulness (as I understood it) fan.

Now I often make myself 'feel' my emotions, although rarely as such concrete shapes and colours. It's especially useful for the kinds of feelings I used to avoid with logic. Eg
- when considering action against workplace bullying I "breathed around" the fears (tingling across my chest and down my arms to my fingertips) instead of deciding the risks of taking a stand weren't worth it; and
- when reviewing a failure I "curiously observed" my shame/embarrassment/stupidity (greenish/nauseous smear across my stomach) instead of deciding I didn't need to try again.

It's a deliberate technique for me though, not something that happens naturally.

 

[DarkRoom]

Personally, I seem to be much better at shuttering my emotions away through sheer force of will than experiencing and describing them. Wouldn't recommend it, though; if I do it too much, I start to have panic attacks. Most inconvenient.

 

[Duxwing]

Personally, I seem to be much better at shuttering my emotions away through sheer force of will than experiencing and describing them. Wouldn't recommend it, though; if I do it too much, I start to have panic attacks. Most inconvenient.

I don't experience panic attacks unless I'm under stress, but I'll keep that in mind. Perhaps I could create a means by which I could 'vent' excess emotions, much like eliminating other wastes from my body. Wait a SECOND! Could emotions be bodily wastes? The tears in first grade, my description of them as spent machine gun bullets; of course! How could I have been so blind? Emotions can persist beyond their useful life and must therefore be eliminated in a manner much similar to urination or defecation lest they begin to exert toxic effects upon the psyche. So... in practice... LOGIC NECESSITAES ILLOGIC! *breath* Holy cow, I need to take a nap; my mind just blew with that revelation. I'm sorry if I startled any of you with the shouting.

-Duxwing

 

[DarkRoom]

Yes, superfluous emotions definitely need to be excreted or exorcised in some manner. I have a tendency for maladaptive coping mechanisms but I'm working on it; walking instead of wine, that sort of thing.