Author Topic: A 'rip' in MY universe---lack of emotions  (Read 6034 times)

isittoolate

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A 'rip' in MY universe---lack of emotions
« on: February 09, 2007, 05:12:27 PM »
Hello everyone

Did anyone here see a movie about an airplane that flew through a “rip in the universe” and ended up in another world? They had to find that “rip” again, fly through it to get back to their real world.

I had a very strange experience when my daughter was a baby. Joe and I were standing at her bassinet, arms around each other’s waist and watching her sleep. To my left I saw a “rip”, a “tear” into another ‘place’ and I was so filled with love for my baby and so overwhelmed by this deep feeling that I had never had before.  (or again)

Then the “rip” closed and the feeling was gone, but I never doubted that I loved my baby, yet now it was back to without that deep feeling. I loved Joe, but it was without that deep feeling.

I know I still love her but I also know that I will not be devastated about our relationship if it ends, or any other relationship. I expect I love in my own way.

I am sure now that to some people, from my past, I might have appeared distant, maybe unfeeling, maybe disinterested.

My childhood was so filled with dysfunction, rage, anger, beating, rejection, absenteeism of parental love, concern, support that I just might have “shut down” and entered my own world within the real world.

When I read that Shame is the master emotion, controlling all others, except anger, I somehow felt that all my other emotions were tucked away in a locked box somewhere within me, and I cannot access them, to understand them

I cannot write about my emotions as you others do! I don’t know what they are.

Does anyone think I am crazy?

Love
Izzy



Leah

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Re: A 'rip' in MY universe---lack of emotions
« Reply #1 on: February 09, 2007, 05:29:51 PM »

Hello Izzy,

Not at all.  I did not know the words for my emotions either and have spent four years searching and reading for the labels
and meanings, so that I could express my experiences and feelings.

As we were brought up in dysfunctional families, expressing our feelings in words was unheard of - literally.

Sometimes I have felt like a little child learning to talk for the first time, and then remember my age as a woman, and feel sad,
that I lost out so much in my life.

I wonder whether your 'rip' experience was fear of that all consuming love you felt, fear that it would be taken away from you,
just as a toy was taken away from you as a child or some other love you felt.

Take care ((( Izzy ))) you are doing so well.

Love Leah xx

Jun 2006 voiceless seeking

April 2008 - "The Gaslight Effect" How to Spot & Survive by Dr. Robin Stern - freedom of understanding!

The Truth About Abuse VIDEO

Dazed1

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Re: A 'rip' in MY universe---lack of emotions
« Reply #2 on: February 09, 2007, 06:54:09 PM »
Hey Izzy,

I agree with Leah.

You ain't crazy, my friend.  You are very sane, smart and funny.

"My childhood was so filled with dysfunction, rage, anger, beating, rejection, absenteeism of parental love, concern, support that I just might have “shut down” and entered my own world within the real world.

When I read that Shame is the master emotion, controlling all others, except anger, I somehow felt that all my other emotions were tucked away in a locked box somewhere within me, and I cannot access them, to understand them

I cannot write about my emotions as you others do! I don’t know what they are."


It's totally understandable that you locked your emotions in a box.  I think that this "rip" is you opening up to your emotions:  you're looking for the key to the box in which you locked away your emotions.  THAT'S SO GREAT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I disagree that you can't write about your emtions.  You have done so, maybe in a different way than others, but hey, Izzy has her OWN style!!

I think your discussion of the "rip" shows that you are venturing into a new and deeper connection with your emotions.  I think that your post shows that you are already making a deeper connection to your deep emotions. 

So happy for you.

love,
dazed


Gaining Strength

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Re: A 'rip' in MY universe---lack of emotions
« Reply #3 on: February 09, 2007, 07:17:27 PM »
Does anyone think I am crazy?

Not at all.  Deeply, terribly wounded but not beyond healing.  it is not too late. 

You do have emotions they are just hibernating. - GS

pennyplant

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Re: A 'rip' in MY universe---lack of emotions
« Reply #4 on: February 09, 2007, 07:20:44 PM »
Izzy, I think this recognition you have of what has led to your burying your emotions is a good start. The fact that you recognize what was really happening when there was that rip of emotion as you gazed on your daughter and then it closed up again shows that the emotions were still in there after all that time and all that pain.  I would bet my last dollar that they are still in there now!!!  I don't think love dies.  Not real love like you feel for your daughter.  It is still in there.  What is unknown is what it will take to coax it out again to stay.  That is the variable in this whole thing.  Perhaps it will always lay still and quiet.  Perhaps not.  I would say to keep coming back to it every so often.  Check in with it.  Remember things from the past the caused your emotions to hide themselves.  Examine those memories from every angle.  You might start to feel something.  It might be painful.  That pain you can bring here.  You won't be alone with it.  All of the emotions have to come out and be felt.  Old ones, bad ones, all of them.  The love and happiness and contentedness will come out too, though.  It's all part of the same thing.

Pennyplant
"We all shine on, like the moon, and the stars, and the sun."
John Lennon

isittoolate

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Re: A 'rip' in MY universe---lack of emotions
« Reply #5 on: February 09, 2007, 08:15:41 PM »
leah
Dazed
GS
pennyplant

Thank you all. If I were normal, I might become all weepy because of your posts and support. So, to be honest, I read them and say to myself, "How nice!" I wonder if I am constantly in a survival mode?

A 'take' I have on that 'rip' when my baby was so little & dependant is that it was a 'sign' to me of some kind that let me know my feelings, but put me back in survival mode, as I would need it for the future, as when Joe became abusive, I left with her and raised her on my own, and had to deal with such a dysfuntional, critical family. (is that a run-on sentence?  :D)--I paved the way for illegitimate children in the family. All the criticism that came from siblings (not my brother) was paid back in spades when their grandchildren were born on the wrong side of the blanket. (I just thought of that now, after all these years, and how I just 'froze' at the news and wondered if I was due an apology, each time it happened. :shock:)

Thank you Dazed".......your emtions.  You have done so, maybe in a different way than others, but hey, Izzy has her OWN style!!"

Thank you GS.."You do have emotions they are just hibernating"  I expect so, that all of them have distant cousins that I can use when needed.

Thank you Leah.." for admitting you, too, have a problem in identifying your emotions and your take on my 'rip'.... fear that it would be taken away from you, The latter is definitely food for thought!!!

Thank you PP..."What is unknown is what it will take to coax it out again to stay."  My mind wanders to that outcome more times than I can count.

It seems likely that all my life I denied emotions and got down to the matter of survival. THERE came that word, Denial.

xx
Izzy
« Last Edit: February 09, 2007, 08:17:14 PM by isittoolate »

Hopalong

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Re: A 'rip' in MY universe---lack of emotions
« Reply #6 on: February 09, 2007, 11:11:31 PM »
I think maybe you disassociated, Izzy.
Strong feeling, even that you felt so powerfully for your infant daughter, may have been so threatening in your early life that you learned to amputate it before it even got to the surface of your awareness. Your little one just called to something stronger than your fear.

But people who have been badly abused DO that. And many many many of them get curious later in life about what they may have missed. As you are. And with caring therapy and searching, they can re-integrate, find themselves emotionally healing and risking expressing more--without danger.

With some pain, at times, but you're no stranger to that. With only the kind of pain that accompanies healing.

I really admire you for asking yourself the question, where did my feelings go?

Hops
"That'll do, pig, that'll do."

Leah

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Re: A 'rip' in MY universe---lack of emotions
« Reply #7 on: February 10, 2007, 08:55:31 AM »

(((( Izzy ))))

Thank you for my beautiful red rose - what a lovely surprise.

Has made my day.

Bless you.

Leah xx

ps. would love to be able to include flowers and pretties like you - have tried, but can't seem to work out how to do it.  Clever girl you.

Jun 2006 voiceless seeking

April 2008 - "The Gaslight Effect" How to Spot & Survive by Dr. Robin Stern - freedom of understanding!

The Truth About Abuse VIDEO

Gaining Strength

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Re: A 'rip' in MY universe---lack of emotions
« Reply #8 on: February 10, 2007, 09:40:59 AM »
Izzy - Hops makes so much sense here.  I ask the following question not for you to answer me but for you to think about for yourself - what happened in your FOO when you expressed emotion?  What happened with Joe when you expressed emotion?

I went through a few years when I felt that I had lost my emotions and then i began to fear that they were to painful to be able to bear when they came out.  But somehow, overtime they did and they were not too  much.  And now I have forgotten that they were once too much.  I hope for you that you will slowly regain that sense and that it will begin with good, soft emotions.  That is my hope for you. - your friend - Gaining Strength

isittoolate

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Re: A 'rip' in MY universe---lack of emotions
« Reply #9 on: February 10, 2007, 03:21:51 PM »
hi Hopalong
Leah again
& GS again

Dissociation is a psychological state or condition in which certain thoughts, emotions, sensations, or memories are separated from the rest of the psyche. For this reason, it is sometimes referred to as "splitting." (That in itself can make a degree of sense, Izzy)

However, when taken further, it leads to DID (formerly MPD) and fugue states, and amnesia---not that I wouldn't mind some anmesia! I have never been that far gone, but I've found nothing that suggests a ˝ way stopping off point.

In Three Faces of Eve, her trauma was a forgotten episode about her dead grandmother--having been forced to kiss the dead body? I remember my grandparents dying---- although with no emotion.

In Sybil, I forget the trauma that made her split, I forget, as well, if these were based in true fact.

Another trauma is sexual abuse, and I have no memory of my father doing anything to me, but sexual abuse can lead to urinary dysfunction and I wet the bed until age 12.

(I do have an incident though that always baffled me. I was 4, and my mother had gone crazy, --to the hospital to have my brother. I slept in the same room as my father. He had a double bed and, in the opposite corner, I had a cot. I had a nightmare about a big hairy brown bear that was after me, I was trying to get away when one of his claws scratched my back, Then I was awake and dad was putting me back in the cot, said I fell out of bed, and it felt as though I had been on the floor. I had a scratch on my back when I woke up the next morning.) Why would I remember that? EDIT: OMG It just came to me that I "see' dad putting me in bed as though I were standing in the bedroom doorway! ALWAYS HAVE!

I found a long article on children's dissociation--very technical-- re father's dissociation and mother's dissociation and the effect on children. i won't go into detail as I can barely understand it, and these tests were on boys, not girls. AS well the parents tendency to dissociate was not linked to MPD.

A positive trend  emerged between children's dissociation and children's ratings of parental inconsistent discipline.

parental dissociation, child dissociation, and parenting qualities are interrelated

Retrospective studies have consistently found a link between severe childhood punishment and later dissociation

it is likely that these general parenting practices ( parental inconsistency and rejection) serve as stressors for children who then cope using the psychological and behavioral responses that are most natural for them. For some children, stress automatically elicits anger and aggression. For others, stress is dealt with more readily through dissociative processes. A highly stressful environment, then, may provoke repeated and increasingly facile dissociative responses in the predisposed child.

Only 4/27 are even close to me in how I perceive myself.

9. I forget right away what people say to me.

10. I find myself concealing my activities from others.

19. I wish I didn't watch my every move.

20. Even when I have missed several meals I find that I am not hungry.

27. I see myself differently than other people see me.

Leah, I will gladly help you, throught PMs if you want to know how to do the images.

GS,
I cannot remember expressing emotion as a child--------------except once I shoved a broomstrick down my N sister's throat. Mom stopped me from killing her, <tee hee> The judge would have let me off! I was 3-4

As far a Joe, he only overreacted when he was drunk. I remember how happy he was when I told him, for the first, that I loved him.

I am getting older now and some things escape me.

love to all
Izzy
« Last Edit: February 10, 2007, 04:50:13 PM by isittoolate »

isittoolate

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Re: A 'rip' in MY universe---lack of emotions
« Reply #10 on: February 10, 2007, 07:28:49 PM »
The 'only 'nice' thing I recall my father doing, was when I was driving a beat up VW beetle (all I could afford when I left Joe--$15.00 down to hold it) and even I knew at a point it was 'dangerous'.

My father went car shopping, re prices, then to my bank and set up a loan agreement for which he co-signed.

It cost him nothing, but I could borrow the money and update my VW beetle to a safe one!

Even then, I swore I wouldn't let him down. I made every payment.
-------
****

The worst thing my mothert ever did, was when we lived there at first while I found an apt and a job, after leaving Joe, I would spend time at my sisters'. Once she telephoned me there and said my Unc;e (her brother) favourite uncle, was there and "maybe I better stay where I was".

I knew she didn't want me there, but I went there anyway, and found every evidence that my daughter and I lived there, was tossed into our bedroom and the door shut--- I was "not" there!

At dinner, my uncle asked me directly about Joe and my mother jumped in really fast and told hime a lie---that Joe was transferred and looking for a place for us--what to do? Tell the truth and show my mother as a liar?--or let it slide. I let it slide!

all for the sake of CONTROL & appearances!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! eh?

Izzy

AND EDIT: Just had an email from daughter asking where she left off?--so I expect another update! Having an N father, the two kids are in therapy, while the 3rd, I might have mentioned lives with N dad and is becoming, if not already, an N.
« Last Edit: February 10, 2007, 08:07:57 PM by isittoolate »

Hopalong

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Re: A 'rip' in MY universe---lack of emotions
« Reply #11 on: February 10, 2007, 09:33:38 PM »
Hey Izzy,
I'm so glad your daughter is writing to you. Hope her news is better this time, she was going through a lot of stuff.

I hope you have a good sleep tonight and a happy day off tomorrow.

Hops
"That'll do, pig, that'll do."

Dazed1

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Re: A 'rip' in MY universe---lack of emotions
« Reply #12 on: February 10, 2007, 09:51:25 PM »
Izzy,

Your bear dream and the scratch on your back really got me.

What about seeing a T and exploring this issue of your difficulty accessing your emotions?

I think a good T could really help you with this and it would be done is a safe and supportive environment.

Also, that was a great article.  Where is it from?

In view of all the junk you have had in your life, you are amazingly resilient.

Love to you,
dazed

isittoolate

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Re: A 'rip' in MY universe---lack of emotions
« Reply #13 on: February 10, 2007, 10:37:31 PM »
Thank you Hops

and Dazed1
I, too, wonder why that bear dream sticks with me, especially since I am looking at myself (& Dad holding me by the shoulders and knees and I am in a white nightgowm) as a whole, as opposed to many memories like seeing my hands and arms and the broomstick in my sister's throat but I am attached to what is happening.

The site is
http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0902/is_n3_v22/ai_15452822

and after I reached the Final page (13) I chose "Child dissociation and the family context"

In view of all the junk you have had in your life
made me laugh--it is really a junkpile of everything.

you are amazingly resilient. I'll bet that comes from not being able to attach an emotion to the action--- It's like telling a story I once read a long time ago, and forget some of the details.

Good Luck on the article when you get to it.

xx
Izzy


isittoolate

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Re: A 'rip' in MY universe---lack of emotions
« Reply #14 on: February 11, 2007, 08:34:10 PM »
Thanks tt

I happen to be one of those people who think that Dr. Phil knows as many answers as we do--that he is just a performer and making money from it.

I knew one of the 'girls' who was on one of his shows. Her REAL story was far worse that was allowed on TV. She was mixed up with that guy who had married 7 times and she was the one who had him arrested for bigamy--- as 2 of his marriages overlapped.

I am no smarty, or I wouldn't be here, but I know what he his going to do with every situation. I would never waste my money on one of his books.

On the same note, I never watch Oprah!

xx
Izzy