your dominant emotion?

[SWM]

do you have one? a dominant emotion that is. 

like some people are just angry about everything, the slightest upset turns them into a ferocious maniac. alternatively some people are bundle of laughs seeing the funny side of everything and turning everything in to jokes.

what is your dominant emotion?

[corwin137]

One of the more relevant questions, both for us and "patients".

Couple things come to mind.  The first is that this answer changes.   Of the last couple years, hurt or afraid.  Prior to that afraid, or ashamed.

That leads to the second item.  There was a time that I don't think I was as in touch with how deeply ashamed (less than, defective, etc) I felt.  So, when IDing in groups and such, I noted "ashamed" whether I was noticing it or not.  Really helped me get in touch with how ubiquitous it was for me at the time.

A third thing does come to mind though: I'd argue most people don't know what feelings are, or how to name 'em.  More detailed thoughts about that are beyond what I'd write here though.  Let's just say that I have some objections: depressed, "like shit", tired, upset, frustrated, anxious... don't go with any of those for reasons I again won't opine about unless someone really is curious for some reason.

To lighten the load, my most hated thing is the "feelings faces" posters.  This one however, gives me a great chuckle:

[SWM]

yeah! that made me chuckle!

i have to agree, and have thought about the lack of good words to describe how people are feeling. you know some times i used to think "is it just me". "is it me that cannot get a handle on what i feel". working with people on that level i realised that it is not just me. many people cannot get in touch with the present feelings, and if they do connect with it, the diffculty in describing these feelings is the next obstacle.

this problem is not just one that i found in describing emotion, infact describing emotion was quite easy considering. trying to describe my experiences was even more problematic, those experiences that were considered schizophrenia and those experiences that i now consider spiritual are unfortunately without any concrete descriptive terms. even now i would struggle to convey the qualities of my experiences. unforutnately i have to describe much of my experience under a generic label of "symptoms" which i personally dont like, but is the only way that i can communicate what has happened with out confusing people.

there are many reasons why this forum was created and one of them was to generate further understanding about psychosis and schizophrenia, for myself but also for other people experiencing this often terrifying psychological upheaval.

[iNuha]

Corwin137, hehe.