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I can't handle negative emotions

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  • August 31, 2017 at 4:22 pm #166440
    Anonymous
    Inactive

    This is partly relevant to another post I have submitted, but I refuse to feel negative emotions and I know its not healthy.

    Any time something negative comes up in my life I try my hardest to force indifference upon the subject. I pretend not to care about people who’ve upset me and this is is because I can’t really handle the emotions that come with caring. I obviously do care about people but I can not deal with jealousy or sadness or anything like that so my only solution is to not care.

    The exception to this is anger, I am angry a lot. Sometimes I know exactly why and sometimes I don’t.

    This is the first time I’ve asked for advice and told my concerns to anyone.  I’ve spent a lot of time googling but to no avail so I hope this will help.

    August 31, 2017 at 8:23 pm #166442
    Marina
    Participant

    Hi Jesse,

    I used to feel a lot of similar emotions, specifically anger, fear, regret and guilt. I would get caught up in my emotions where they would drive me to tears or lash out in a rage, and I end up hurting people especially those closest to me. I felt imprisoned and trapped.

    What I’ve learned over the years is that my ego reacts to events based on how I perceive them (usually cause of past conditioning). I judge the event as either negative or positive, and based on my judgement my reaction follows. In other words, when something comes up in my life, my ego creates stories that I believe to be true and react accordingly (e.g. anger, fear, etc.).

    For example, I’ll use a really simple scenario:

    It’s raining outside – my ego will say something like “the weather sucks, now I can’t go for a walk in the park…there goes my day. Why can’t anything go right for me??” The section in quotes is the story; it’s our judgement of the event. When we believe the story, then we react with anger or whatever. But if we drop the story, then it’s just raining outside. We just accept what is.

    Through practicing awareness I was able to witness the thoughts (stories) instead of getting caught up in it.

    Hope that helps

    Marina

     

    September 1, 2017 at 4:39 am #166486
    greenshade
    Participant

    Hi Jesse,

    welcome to the forums!

    Would you like to share a little bit about when you started trying to force indifference? How old were you, what were the circumstances?

    Best,

    M

    September 1, 2017 at 10:39 am #166540
    Anonymous
    Guest

    Dear Jesse Thine:

    I read both your short posts.

    In this one you wrote: “I refuse to feel negative emotions”- if only we could successfully refuse to feel painful (aka negative) emotions. Oh, how wonderful that would be, to be free from pain, free from distress and discomfort. Unfortunately, this is only possible very short term, at best.

    You wrote: “Any time something negative comes up in my life I try my hardest to force indifference upon the subject. I pretend not to care… my only solution is to not care.”- I tried that too, unsuccessfully. There two solutions: to refuse negative emotions and to not care are not effective solutions; they simply don’t work.

    You wrote that you spent a lot of time googling- what have you been googling?

    anita

    September 1, 2017 at 2:52 pm #166566
    Ian
    Participant

    Take Robert Wright’s class on the science of Buddhism, he teaches and discusses a lot of the skills that would help you in confronting your problems with anger. It’s free.

    This is assuming you’re not dealing with problems as a result of past abuse or some other significant problem, if that’s the case then see a therapist.

    https://www.coursera.org/learn/science-of-meditation/home

    One element of Buddhist beliefs is that there are different components to your thinking that make up your thoughts and feelings. One component will always suppress the others. So if you’re working on something difficult one day like a calculus problem and then you walk into a room that has a nice chocolate cake, the hunger part of your mind will suppress the part of your mind that wants to work on something challenging. Once you’ve finished with the cake then the working part of your mind can return.

    For you the component that triggers anger is overactive. This means that it takes little stimulus for that part of your mind to take over and suppress the others. With practice you can learn to see the anger coming and ignore it and not react to it. Over time it will take more and more of a stimulus for anger to become dominant. But it does take practice.

     

     

    September 1, 2017 at 8:57 pm #166630
    Anonymous
    Inactive

    Sorry about the confusion with the accounts

    September 1, 2017 at 9:06 pm #166622
    Anonymous
    Inactive

    Greenshade –  it has always happened, anything from my friends saying something bad about me I force myself to think that I don’t care about them and if our friendship ended I wouldn’t care. More recently and more often I experience it with my girlfriend, we have a perfect relationship but the I have problems with jealousy and anger so whenever I feel those emotions because of her I force myself to think like if she breaks up with me or cheats on me it doesnt matter and I’ll be fine so why bother being jealous. And that’s really my only solution because if I sit in the jealousy and let it take its course I get really angry and lash out at her and its just not fun for anyone and I wish I could stop.

     

    Anita – I just googled things like how to not be jealous and why I force indifference on myself to stop feeling sad or jealous or angry and nothing really came up which eventually lead me here. I am just trying to learn how to either stop feeling so unnecessarily jealous and angry or how to manage to control it to the point where it doesn’t make me royally angry and forces me to lash out.

    Thank you all so much for all your insight, I have never really opened up to anyone for various reasons but I really appreciate all of your help. Thank you

    September 1, 2017 at 9:06 pm #166626
    Anonymous
    Inactive

    I am JesseThine by the way, I accidentally logged onto a different account and don’t feel like retyping that whole thing

    September 2, 2017 at 8:00 am #166684
    Anonymous
    Guest

    Dear Jesse Thine:

    You wrote in your last post above (under the name Dario Silerio): “I am just trying to learn how to either stop feeling so unnecessarily jealous and angry or how to manage to control it to the point where it doesn’t make me royally angry and forces me to lash out”-

    This will take a combination of insight, skill and practice, over time. Insight is about becoming aware of the origin of your anger. Usually the origin is in our origin, that is, our childhood. Do you remember being angry as a child? If so, what was it about?

    anita

    September 2, 2017 at 9:00 am #166690
    Anonymous
    Inactive

    I don’t know, I don’t have a great memory.

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