Get older.
Get older.
Working on it.
Weird.
It sounds like a BS answer, but it’s true. My personal experience is that the older I’ve gotten, the less I’m affected by the world around me. My best guess is the experience of time can lend coping mechanisms, under the proper circumstances I’m sure.
Oh yeah, for sure, my emotions have all gotten less. Less high, less low, I’ve just chilled out in every direction
To you and @Dr. Wesker , how old are we talking about? Roughly after how many decades this becomes something you notice- and does it keep building up?
I’m in my mid 30s and I can agree I don’t feel anywhere as intensely as I did ten years ago, but for me this is a bug, not a feature. So I’m really curious about how others have fared in this regard
The box method of breathing for several minutes helps me in immediate situations. And I’ve found doing this on a regular basis helps it become a habit which in general helps me deal with emotions better.
As someone else posted, medication. If your psychiatrist thinks it is warranted.
Therapy can be a godsend. Don’t be afraid to hop therapists at the beginning either—find a good match.
And something that helps me immensely: I use this as a mantra: “I will not always feel like this. Tomorrow I will not feel like this. This will pass.” Treat these strong emotions as a wave you need to ride. But that wave will eventually subside and you cam comfort yourself with that fact.
Exercise
years of depression has a numbing effect 👍
Reviewing pros and cons of your actions helps
Hold it inside until I can get home and take an hour long bath immediately after work or have a manic breakdown the moment I get through the door in front of my s/o
Olanzapine
I quit drinking. I’ve had anhedonia for several years now since I got sobe. I have no emotions except occasional anger, but it only lasts for a few seconds.
Dude. Are you me? I’m 3 years sober and I’m still struggling to enjoy things. I find that I get angry/frustrated very easily.
I hope it goes away eventually, therapy seems to be helping.
Med. I. Cation. Specifically Prozac. It works great for me, but we’re all different. Since I’ve been on it, it’s changed my life. So many things were attached to my mental health that I never knew.
I tried a bunch of different antidepressants. Lexapro, Zoloft, Prozac, Lamictal, Abilify. None of them helped, just kinda made me feel number and more tired. I gave up for a few years. Then I tried Celexa and it worked. It was like night and day. Holy shit, life is so much better now.
So try not to feel discouraged if you’ve tried medication and it didn’t help. There’s a ton out there, and more being developed all the time.
Yeah, I went through a bunch. I haven’t tried that one yet, but it turns out I’m very sensitive to medication, because Vraylar made me feel insane.
Now they want me to do some sort of drug test, “geo mind” or something like that, which will help me narrow down what medications to try next.
But 20Mg Fluoxetine is taking really good care of me rn. It gives me a bump like Adderall, which is great for my ADHD, and I feel so calm and not like I wanna just piss everyone off all the time - which is how I have been my entire unmedicated (or heavily self-medicated with alcohol) life.Like I said, things I never knew we’re related to mental health are better now.
Thanks for sharing your story, I really hope a younger version of me sees this, and decides to talk to a psychiatrist instead of drinking too much.
It’s less about the intensity of your emotions and more about how you deal with them.
Let’s say you got really angry in public. It’s fine to get angry, sometimes there are good reasons for that. But there are multiple ways to deal with that anger. An unhealthy way would be to run amok and harm innocent people in order to vent. A healthy way would be to calm down, reflect on what makes you angry, and then either make an effort to improve your situation or remove yourself from it.
You can’t help feeling a certain way, but you can choose how you react to your emotions. Try to pick the option that is the least destructive to yourself and those around you. If emotional regulation is hard for you, you can learn coping skills from a therapist.
Techniques to manage the intensity of emotions sit between the parts you’re describing.
I agree that Inbetween the feeling rising up and our reaction there’s a choice to be made. Highly intense feelings overwhelm and reduce our choices in the moment.
Understanding what’s underneath or behind our feelings is one excellent way to do this which sadly doesn’t work for everything, especially the most intense feelings
EMDR therapy.
Why would I want to do that? I wanna feel everything at the appropriate volume.
What if the appropriate volume is “lower”?
I used to be very empathic, I cared so much about the world and everyone in it. Making sure people were taken care of, and hoping for the best for everything. I would get depressed when bad things happened and I couldn’t do anything about it. But as I’ve gotten older and the world has gotten so much worse and it keeps getting worse and worse. I find I’ve adopted an “It is what it is” attitude about nearly everything. I have zero faith in humanity and it’s ability to over come the downward spiral we are in, and doubt we will still be here in 100 years, and frankly have gotten to the point were I feel that might be for the best. Time for the universe to hit reset and start again.
