I have trouble bonding...I feel nothing for anyone...I feel nothing at all or intense rage.
My limbic system is very affected.

When I was a kid I locked my feelings away to take away the pain. If you can't feel emotions you can't feel pain right? Eventually it was so hard to tell if I could feel anything that I started to cut myself. I needed something to remind me I could still feel anything.

Hey Neo. Welcome to the forum.

Yes, I have felt both ways, both oblivious to my own feelings and hyper-vigilant of other people's feelings. Still do, sometimes, but I can work through it with fair efficiency these days. I think. My support network is an important tool in working through it. Others can often spot my symptoms quicker than I can.

Inside my personal skin, I believe the problems identifying with my own emotions is repression, where I stuff my emotions so they don't, "get in the way." Being able to recognize them in other people is a tendril of my hyper-vigilance. Recognizing a dangerous person's bad mood brewing can an essential part of staying out of harm's way.

Welcome to the forum, Neo.

Yes. I was the eldest boy in a family abandoned in a war zone overseas by a father, so I had to take his place as a kid in a crazy adult world. Then when he did come home he beat me to re-establish himself as the house alpha male.

So I had to repress screams of terror during battles in my town to calm my mother and sister and run get help for us when people tried to break into our house. Troops literally took my house over for a day, occupying my house during a tough episode in the war. I grew up to be good in a crisis, so I became an emergency room hospital chaplain. But I also had this problem you mention, which therapists for PTSD call "dissociating."

I have flashbacks nearly every day, struggle with sleep and nightmares, have panic attacks, have a startle response, am hypervigilant, so I wrestle with PTSD symptoms regularly. But the symptom that has made me the saddest over all has been this one that therapists call "dissociating." To survive only not to feel is a very unfair reward for being brave as a little kid.

It took therapy and going back to the place I remember locking away my feelings and then letting myself feel those feelings. Lots and lots of journaling and I was in a support group where the first thing everyone did was check in on how they were feeling. I found all these things helped me reconnect with my feelings. It took lots of time but so worth it. I also had to learn to disengage from others feelings at least from an analyzing standpoint and focus on me.

I seem to have an alter to contain an emotion, if that makes sense?
(TW)







Sort of...One angry kid, one social kid, one scared kid, one loving kid, one persecutor kid...one sexual kid. Each has a predominant emotion, a predominant defense mechanism, and a different mindset.

...I used to think everyone ' heard ' voices arguing in their heads?

...hey, I'm never alone for the holidays... :p

I did feel that way for a few years and honestly I have no idea what snapped me out of it. I think for me it was that I was over medicated and I was neither happy or sad and I was not properly raised to acknowledge my feelings. I was also a repressor for a long time.

Have you been to therapy or counceling for this? It is what helped me. The more I opened up the more I felt. There was a time I was angry at myself for feeling but in the long run its the best thing I ever did because I am growing and I can recognize happiness, anger, sadness, etc.

sorry, it is was helped me the most

You might want to try getting some legal pads and pens and start keeping a daily journal. Just write about whatever is on your mind at the time, be it good or bad. There is something therapeutic about physically writing down your thoughts. The act of writing seems to take the thoughts out of your mind and onto the paper. Then you can categorize the thoughts and make some sense of them. It Worked great for me.

Thank you all for telling me about your experiences!

I'm seeing a cousellor, but she's not an actual psychotherapist. She tried to find me one but because of my massive trust issues it never worked for me, I can't even really bring myself to open up to her, but at least I like her.

I also write a lot, though usually short stories and poetry. Maybe I'll try keeping a journal, thanks for the tipp.

Yep its called dissassociation (is that how it spelt?) and a major hallmark of PTSD . Its a pain in the arse. I feel like I can't engage in life fully, cos I'm numb most of the time. And when I do feel anything its extreme and I cant put a name to the feelings, like you. Its only later when I have calmed down and can analyse the trigger do I get an intellectual understanding of it. It sucks. (((hugs))) best, Manda xx

That's an aspect of dissociation as well? My counsellor said that dissociation is like 'spacing out', when I feel disconnected from myself and reality. Or is that something else?