# How to healthily channel my emotions.............?



## rainbowarriorz (Jan 9, 2013)

Hiya. 
There may be another thread similar to this one, but firstly, I cannot be bothered to search for it, and secondly, this is one I'm hoping to get personal advice on. The thing is, I kind of sense that the advice I'll get on here will entail doing something I've been avoiding for the past year; asking for help. But I digress.
So, I've always been the type to bottle up her feelings and have random outbursts. Today was one of them. What triggered it was this huge fight between my dad and my little brother. Dad punches brother in the face (its not something that usually happens, so don't worry about any domestic violence ahah), and I basically flip out at him because of the blood. I rarely freak out in this way, but it was insane emotional and I just sort of screamed and shouted and cried. It was like I was letting go, finally, in front of my family. I was making them see me and after the whole ordeal was over, I felt light. Especially in my chest, I felt like there wasn't anything holding me down - I felt cleansed and pretty much in a good mood for most of the rest of the afternoon, although still a bit tense - but whatever. I felt "light" and that's all that matters. 

But I don't want to be like this. I don't want to let off steam and get everything out of my system through angry, emotional outbursts. I know the most healthy thing is to be direct, but in a home of people who can barely handle themselves, how the hell do I keep myself sane? 


I'm not sure what I'm looking for in this. I guess just to be comforted - I don't know. Does anyone else ever feel like this? Or have this sort of emotional incompetency? And if there is anyone who has gone through this sort of thing and lived to tell the tale - please let me in on your secret.


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## rainbowarriorz (Jan 9, 2013)

Oh shit. Am I an emotional vampire? O_O


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## Crystall (Mar 30, 2010)

Im not sure how old you are but I know how you feel being frustrated with your family. I experienced this a lot as a teen... You should never bottle up your emotions or they will come bursting out. Talking about what's bothering you with someone does help you avoid getting screaming mad... But somebody punching my brother in the face would make me mad too. If you're feeling frustrated or sad it can easily turn into anger as a self defense mechanism and those emotions are a perfectly healthy and natural response to your situation when someone is treating you bad. Not sure if this helps you at all. :/


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## RaidenPrime (Aug 4, 2012)

I would say your outburst was appropriate given the situation...I wouldn't worry about it...


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## KateMarie999 (Dec 20, 2011)

I used to have this problem. If it's a regular occurrence (your outbursts, not the punching thing), try going into your room, locking the door, and crying like a baby until you feel better. After I went through some intense emotional pain, I had to do this VERY often. I just let all the hurt and pain flow out of me without holding it back or bottling it. Now it's 3 months after the painful incident and I feel so much better.


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## armoorefam (Feb 15, 2012)

It sounds like the event brought the sudden outburst, but there are other issues that are keeping some internal pressure up. 

I am an INFP peacemaker type, so I probably make it a bit more elaborate than most types would in trying to settle relational stressors. I tend to seek co-operation and team building, so feel free to ignore anything that doesn't fit you. You also have to really be open to listen and change yourself. Otherwise you can surely be operating out of manipulation. You have to absolutely set your own specific goals aside.

It may seem contrary to my advice in that last sentence, but my recommendation is to sit down and make a 'possible to do' list and an 'impossible to do' list. For instance, your impossible to do list may include 'moving out' if you are too young to do so. It clears the head and directs your energy toward reasonably actionable solutions and helps you to emotionally let go of wasted energies letting your imagination go down rabbit trails that you cannot actually follow. I have learned this step because I can waste a lot of time fantasizing away stressors that never do any good at actually reducing the stressors. Maybe you can relate. It also keeps me from seizing on one plan and lets me stay open to there being lots of options. There is less temptation to manipulate to a target action. See it as brainstorming only. Not judging what is to be done.

Fact Finding - NFs are often pretty good at understanding other types, but they can also have huge blind spots and too much idealism to have 20/20 vision of family stress. Go to each family member and see if you can just open up one to one communication. Resist the urge to accuse or get emotional. Consider yourself an objective investigator on a fact finding mission. If you have an angry type in your family that you are completely mystified by, put that person at the bottom of your list. I have one like that and I am so unsure about reading his reactions that I haven't made that step with him myself. SOmetimes the most innocent things will set him off. sigh. We seem to be so different in type that I cannot predict his reaction at all. The problem is that if you have someone on your list like this, they are the one you need most to communicate with the most. Genuine listening can really help you understand people and not read your own type in to their actions and words. Be aware that often people don't even understand themselves and may need time to think over their answers and revisit them at a later time when you have a quiet moment together.

Now, revisit your original list. Add to or remove actionable solutions. If you have a practical, sensor feeler friend, run the list by them. They are good at having their feet firmly planted on the ground and can see consequences your imaginative, idealist personality may not see. So many times. this has saved me from doing something that totally blew up in my face despite my imaginings of how perfect that option was. When I have ignored a realist's advice, more often than not I have found I was wrong and they were better able to see the pitfalls.

Caution - If you are like me, my emotions get all in the way when I try to make my own defense so don't see any of these times to communicate as a "I will make them see how bad they are treating me' 'dates'. Take your time to reflect before moving forward in any sort on confrontation if you feel you must stand up for yourself. Then you can go in to it with a lot of calm focus. You are sharing your feelings and you want to keep the other person listening not moving in to a defensive position if possible. Let them know how things make you feel and let them voice their own feelings and advice. If the advice doesn't fit something you can do, explain why. If it is something you can do, pull out that list and add it right then and there. Show them that you are trying to find a win-win solution and what you have thought of so far. Bring them in on your team. You may find that you will win support and collaboration instead of feeling isolated and you may find that your genuineness to trying to understand can help them try as well. If nothing else, maybe they will come out of it understanding you a little better. It sometimes doesn't work based on type of the other person, but it can be well fitted to your own type which is a start at least. iF at the end of all of this you find there is no middle ground and you must stand up for yourself and take one of those actions on your list that is more confrontational, stay firm and know that you have the right to hold on to something important to your own inner health. These types of events in your life, while very painful, hold a lot of growth for you as a person. Learning when and how to defend yourself emotionally will help you have inner peace even when the winds rage all around you.


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## Aelthwyn (Oct 27, 2010)

I certainly know what you mean about feeling lighter. I think this kind of disturbs or confuses some people who somehow don't understand. If I express something intensely, then I've let it out, it's done, and I don't go on brooding over it afterwards - usually, and can then feel much lighter, much happier, much more clearer of mind, etc. Once I've raged and cried, I will often feel empty for a bit, but then it passes and I suddenly feel hope return and can be perfectly reasonable - quite the opposite of what I was just yelling (because now it's out, it's off my chest, it's not buzzing around in my mind trying to get out). 

Personally I don't believe it's 'wrong' to have outbursts. Society tends to feel uncomfortable with dealing with people's intense emotions, and so it's thought of as not good to ever show them, and there seems to be this underlying idea that everyone_ Should_ be able to express their feelings in small relatively calm ways and never need to get intense, but honestly I don't think that is necessarily more healthy nor a realistic expectation. Not all outbursts are the result of holding back small expressions. Something happens that affects you strongly and you react strongly to it - makes sense to me. 

Bottling things up is consciously holding back expression and avoiding dealing with it by pretending everything it fine while you internally stew about it and then letting it all out at once in an ungainly way. However, this is something I rarely do. It's perfectly possible to express your feelings as they come up and still have gigantic outbursts sometimes simply because a feeling triggered on the spot just happens to be really intense. Also, sometimes it is good to wait and not express negatives every time in the instant the feeling is triggered because sometimes you need to process it first and it may work itself out, or you may express it better after understanding it first. It is also not always a good time to expess something and it's better to wait till the right time. But that is not what I would call bottling your feelings up. 

Now, I have found that there is a fine ballance to be maintained between expressing how I feel to get out that emotional energy, and letting myself get carried away so that I'm actually working up more emotion about it than I really felt to begin with. Sometimes I find it can turn into just being about the emotion itself and not about the thing that caused it - does that make sense? 

To take a positive example: say you get some really great news and you're filled with excited energy - if you're in an environment where you feel comfortable and don't have to worry about others you can bounce, dance around, squee with delight, etc. and doing so can really get you feeling like you're floating on air. It can seem like your energy is multiplying and everything else looks brighter as you focus on this great thing. 

But if you're in an environment where you don't feel free to do any of that, you just have to feel yourself swelling up inside, feel like you're going to burst and it comes out the little cracks - a slight spring in your step, a ridiculous smile when no one's looking, a tiny awkward squeek from a whispered scream, a dance you only _feel_ as little tiwtches in your muscles. When you can't do the things that stirr up that emotion, when you have to turn your attention to something else, often the high won't seem to last as long or get quite as intense because you're tempering it with other things. 

The same thing goes for anger or sadness. I think one does NEED to express it because it really does make you feel lighter and sort of free you from the feeling, but HOW you express it can either rile you up more or simply allow it to pass. For a negative example, here's something I've discovered with myself. If I'm frustrated I really do Need to rant about it to someone, and occasionally I even need to throw or hit something because that emotional energy has to be released somehow, BUT I've noticed that if I let myself start swearing I will get more angry than if I choose not to, and there comes a moment when I know that if I hit this again I will want to keep hitting it, but if I don't let myself the anger will soon deflate. It's at those points that it ceases to be about the thing that frustrated me and instead becomes about indulging the emotion itself. The intensity itself of both good and bad feelings can feel pretty good at the time, and 

So, my advice to you is to pay attention to yourself when you express your feelings, and think about it afterwards - something I think most INFPs do a lot anyways - and note when you're expressing real feelings and when you're just fanning the flames. Also pay attention to the times that you don't express how you feel - why are you choosing not to? Is it something that you know is going to keep 'festering' inside? Or is it just because this isn't the time and place, or because you know it's not really that important and you'll get over it soon enough? 

AND it's important to actively cultivate your thoughts in a positive direction. Inwardly brooding over things, rehashing negative experiences and composing negative retorts over and over inside is not dealing with the feeling and will only serve to make the feelings worse. Expressing feelings is good. But choosing to wallow in negative feelings and not let go of them is not. One can do this both internally and outloud. Just be carefull that you're not working yourself up needlessly. Ssometimes stoping yourself from constantly thinking about something that's bothering you can actually help reduce the feeling of frustration with it. Focusing on things that effect you positively not only prevents you from multiplying your ngative feelings, but also gives you the positive emotional strength to deal better with the things that Do cause negative feelings. 

It's also good to be aware of how other people will respond to your expressions. Now, I'm not saying that you have to put aside how you feel to make them happy, but expressing your feelings is both about helping You get them out and about communicating with others - which means it's good to consider how they'll read your message. Some people really do need to be yelled at from time to time, and will take it 'right'. Other people will take it completely wrong in which case you might do better yelling about them to yourself or someone you trust to get out that emotional energy, but then talking to the person you'd like to yell at in a way that they will handle properly.


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## rainbowarriorz (Jan 9, 2013)

armoorefam said:


> It sounds like the event brought the sudden outburst, but there are other issues that are keeping some internal pressure up.
> .


 Thank you for your advice, its very sweet of you to have taken the time. What you said about the list really does seem to make sense and is actually very relatable to the situation I am in at the moment. As much as I would love to, confronting my family is something that I just couldn't possibly do. We do not discuss feelings and emotions - we are just not that type. We get into arguments but we don't talk about sensitive subjects, such as how we feel. I've tried it once with my oldest sister when I told her I had tried to commit suicide - we haven't mentioned it to each other once and I haven't told anyone else since. I hardly feel like it happened, but ermm I don't, at least try not to, think about it as much. Thank you anyway,I'll keep your advice in mind <3


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## rainbowarriorz (Jan 9, 2013)

Aelthwyn said:


> So, my advice to you is to pay attention to yourself when you express your feelings, and think about it afterwards - something I think most INFPs do a lot anyways - and note when you're expressing real feelings and when you're just fanning the flames. Also pay attention to the times that you don't express how you feel - why are you choosing not to? Is it something that you know is going to keep 'festering' inside? Or is it just because this isn't the time and place, or because you know it's not really that important and you'll get over it soon enough?


The problem is sometimes that I can't help but reply words and exchanges in my mind. Sometimes even on something so small and stupid, that the other person has already gotten over, but I can't seem to let go. It's just such a horrible feeling, being angry, like a hot bubble in my chest and I just want it to go away. I basically wait for the feeling to disappear but I'm not great when it comes to doing it positively. As in, I haven't sorted it out within myself - I've just left it to go away. Thank you for taking the time to write this, I will honestly take it on. I think I'll try to practise talking to myself internally, figuring out why I'm so upset and what direction to take with it. I haven't got a very developed Ti. Thanks! x


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