By David Joel Miller, MS, Licensed Therapist & Licensed Counselor.
Managing feelings.
Photo courtesy of Pixabay.com
Your feelings palette – What feelings paint your life?
Most of us are familiar with the pallets artists use to hold and mix their paints when doing a painting or other artwork. The more colors on the palette the more opportunities the artist has to create an inspiring work of art.
Palettes are also defined as “a range of qualities in a non-visual art.” There are palettes for your taste buds and palettes to decorate the house. Designers use palettes of fabric or of looks and textures to make the things they design more appealing.
What we forget about, all too often, are those other pallets that get used to make life a better place, those feelings pallets you use to make that life within a place.
Alexithymia
Difficulty feeling what we are feeling and struggles to describe what you are feeling is sometimes referred to as Alexithymia. The simplest description of this condition is “I ain’t got a word to describe how I feel.”
Alexithymia is not technically a diagnosable disorder, despite the huge number of people who have this problem. People with trouble recognizing what they feel and then a vocabulary that allows them to describe that feeling fall on a continuum from very mild to extremely severe. Using tests specific for Alexithymia the best estimate is that ten percent of the U. S. population may have a severe form of this condition.
Alexithymia and Mental Illness.
Alexithymia overlaps certain mental health disorders and people with those conditions are more likely to have Alexithymia and the resulting difficulty identifying, naming, and working with feelings. Those with an Autism Spectrum disorder are more likely to show symptoms of what might be called Alexithymia.
Alexithymia also overlaps depression and anxiety and the more depressed or the more anxious someone is the harder it may be for them to recognize feelings. Disorders that cause numbing as in the Stress disorders, PTSD and Acute Stress disorders and dissociation can also have features of Alexithymia. Alexithymia has also been reported in those with an eating disorder.
People who have difficulty recognizing and naming feelings when they feel them also have difficulty in recognizing what others around them feel and may be perceived as uncaring and unfeeling.
There is a difference between not recognizing that you are feeling and the ability to name or describe a feeling. Some people know they are feeling something they just do not have the feelings vocabulary to describe to themselves and others what it is they are feeling.
Many men were socialized to have this condition. There was a time when feelings were suspect and people tried very hard to never ever have feelings. This resulted in a lack of learning about feelings and an inability to recognize what you feel and how to respond appropriately.
If the only feelings you have are “Good, Bad, and ANGRY” you will be angry a lot. You also may have difficulty recognizing what makes you feel “good or bad” and how to regulate your emotions.
Learning to recognize feelings when you have them and learning to develop the skills to increase or decrease feelings when you need and want to, is an important part of anger management training.
How can you learn to control your anger if you do not recognize when you are or are becoming angry?
Learning about feelings.
Learning to recognize and identify feelings is a part of most counselor training programs. To date I have written about 60 posts on various feelings and emotions which you will find under:
Posts on Anger and Anger Management are at:
I think one reason feelings are so troubling to so many people is that if you do not know anything about feelings you have a hard time recognizing them. This goes for all kinds of other things as well. How can you find something if you don’t know what it looks like?
I wrote about this in a post about the “expert effect” which you will find at:
Expert effects Memory and the Purple Glass.
Periodically this year I would like to publish some posts on various feelings in the cause of “Emotionally Literacy” an effort to improve people’s ability to recognize feelings and make them your friends.
I hope you will all join me in these discussions.
Staying connected with David Joel Miller
Seven David Joel Miller Books are available now!
My newest book is now available. It was my opportunity to try on a new genre. I’ve been working on this book for several years, but now seem like the right time to publish it.
Story Bureau is a thrilling Dystopian Post-Apocalyptic adventure in the Surviving the Apocalypse series.
Baldwin struggles to survive life in a post-apocalyptic world where the government controls everything.
As society collapses and his family gets plunged into poverty, Baldwin takes a job in the capital city, working for a government agency called the Story Bureau. He discovers the Story Bureau is not a benign news outlet but a sinister government plot to manipulate society.
Bumps on the Road of Life. Whether you struggle with anxiety, depression, low motivation, or addiction, you can recover. Bumps on the Road of Life is the story of how people get off track and how to get your life out of the ditch.
Dark Family Secrets: Doris wants to get her life back, but small-town prejudice could shatter her dreams.
Casino Robbery Arthur Mitchell escapes the trauma of watching his girlfriend die. But the killers know he’s a witness and want him dead.
Planned Accidents The second Arthur Mitchell and Plutus mystery.
Letters from the Dead: The third in the Arthur Mitchell mystery series.
What would you do if you found a letter to a detective describing a crime and you knew the writer and detective were dead, and you could be next?
Sasquatch. Three things about us, you should know. One, we have seen the past. Two, we’re trapped there. Three, I don’t know if we’ll ever get back to our own time.
For these and my upcoming books; please visit my Author Page – David Joel Miller
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