Becoming Better At Expressing Feelings

What do you want to change or improve?

Expressing feelings. I’d like to express my feelings more easily and often.

What is the present state, what’s happening?

I stuck. My breath changes to stopping. I get tense. I can’t say what I feel.

Is it only negative feelings or positive ones too?

Both. I feel shy about telling good stuff too. I definitely have trouble if someone is making me feel bad.

Has it always been like this? Is there times you can express your feelings better?

Hmmm…. If I’m having a really good time, laughing, dancing, etc… then I can just say playfully of what I don’t like…

 

Well… Just a week or so after I wrote the questions up, I had a few instances, I was so mad at some people, I thought it was not smart what they’ve did and found it unfair… AND I COULDN’T confront it. I just left. Thinking I’ll never talk to them again. Then I paused… Used my app, Youper, and it kept asking me questions similar to the ones I was asking myself… And this is what I’ve found. The pattern and triggers of my confronting others, and expressing feelings and emotions. Ready?

Let’s say I order margarita pizza and it comes with onions, then I’d ask the waiter to change it to what I asked for.

Same thing happens with a friend, let’s say one instance that happened, we supposed to play pingpong at 3pm, I asked and confirmed. And then 3pm I’m there, but my friend is playing with someone else. I wait 10 mins and then I leave, decide will never play with him again. I couldn’t say “hey, can we play now as planned?” I was just so so mad. Angry. We’ll talk about this anger in a bit. I wanted to cry, and I let some tears fall too.

So what I figured is, whenever I wanted to confront or tell my feelings in my family, I wouldn’t be listened or valued of my opinions or definitely not feelings. My brother would literally yell me or hit me with somehow if I confronted him. So, now fast forward years later, I can’t share my good feelings about someone, because OMG, it’s so much vulnerability, is s/he gonna take it or ignore it or reject it? Isn’t it safe to say how much I appreciate them and the time I’m spending with them? Well, yep, that’s my safety zone.

And when it’s a negative feeling, confronting it, body tense, breath short, terrified, because a hit is coming…. or a yell… I’m in the fight or flight mode on. And I become angry. Because I’m not confronting the behavior of my dear friend, my anger goes to the person. I blame her/him for being unfair, rude, bla bla personal blaming. And then I leave. I stop talking.

So here’s I have some sensory experiences stored in my mind about confronting and expressing feelings and probably thoughts, I keep repeating this pattern. I choose to write or text because it’s safe, I mean literally, no one can hurt me.

First, I’d do NLP erasing those negative feelings from my childhood memories. Not all memories, but just making them a positive one. Then ask myself, what resources do I need, to confront someone with things I disagree with? And then fill myself with that resource. Then future pace…

I mean, what does confronting mean?

What happens when you disagree with someone?

Okay, I’ll work on it more later… Keep on tune 🙂

Becoming Better At Expressing Feelings