Burnout and How to Complete the Stress Cycle

[Spring Butterfly]

Super good podcast on stress and releasing stuck emotions.

Brené with Emily and Amelia Nagoski
on Burnout and How to Complete the Stress Cycle

https://brenebrown.com/podcast/brene-with-emily-and-amelia-nagoski-on-burnout-and-how-to-complete-the-stress-cycle/

[treesgrowslowly]

Thanks for posting that Spring Butterfly.

One of the things I've tried to change in myself is that when I feel certain emotions (happiness, joy, calm) I felt anxiety because I know that this emotion will end.

I feared dealing with being kicked out of feeling happy and being back in a fearful state again. I knew that happy would never last very long. My abuser hated it when I felt happy.

The years before my NC that was a constant experience for me.

I had to learn so early on in life to prepare for the next attack. I could never truly rest in the happy emotions and let them be felt.

I like that this podcast talks about emotions having a start middle and end. That really helps when I practice discharging my emotions.

As the survivor or parental PD abuse I find that my thoughts regarding feeling sad or mad are: "this emotion will never end" and my thought about happy and joy are "this feeling could end any minute".

It is a form of emotional abuse when a parent denies the child opportunities to feel emotions come up stay and leave at their own pace.

It is emotional abuse when the parent interrupts that over and over in their own child and makes the child fear the natural ebb and flow of feeling emotions.

I am still working hard to fix these things.

Anyone else recognize that relationship to their emotions?

Trees

[SparkStillLit]

I definitely do. Like you, I am a bit more muted about happy, and careful how I let it out, even though it's my natural setting. I'm more apprehensive about gloom and thinking it's got no end. I guess I know that within myself, gloom has an end, but I don't really get to let all the happy out. Around me, gloom prevails.
Emotions were never allowed to be felt as they actually were. Everything was forced and false. I then let myself into something else unnatural, not knowing how this works.

[Pinkos]

I definitely do. Like you, I am a bit more muted about happy, and careful how I let it out, even though it's my natural setting. I'm more apprehensive about gloom and thinking it's got no end. I guess I know that within myself, gloom has an end, but I don't really get to let all the happy out. Around me, gloom prevails.
Emotions were never allowed to be felt as they actually were. Everything was forced and false. I then let myself into something else unnatural, not knowing how this works.

Treesgrowslowly - YES! I definitely relate to feeling like "this emotion will never end" when I'm upset/angry about something. The state of being in an emotional flashback is so painful esp because it feels like it will never end because that's how it felt to me as a young girl/teenager. That I was trapped in a dark pit and would never get out.

SparkStillLit - Your comment about never feeling like you could just be and having to put on a forced/false emotion or persona resonates a lot. My forced persona was trying to be the jokester. I think it helped me cope with the tension I always felt. So I would try to make them laugh and deflect attention away from myself. It was performative and exhausting. And inappropriate at times I learned later on when I used the same social skills with co-workers/friends etc  But I don't do that anymore now that I'm NC and I've worked really hard to stop this habit in other areas of my life as well!

[treesgrowslowly]

Pinkos that is great that you see it and now you don't use that coping mechanism as much anymore. I can totally relate. I really can't stand it when people want to argue because it brings up so much anger.

I wanted to diffuse that tension any way I can.

Now I spend very little time with people who are argumentative because I know myself a bit better.

Those emotional flashbacks are really challenging. Thanks for saying that.  I wish more people understood that part of recovering.

Trees