Like a lot of survivors, we have a hard time to recognize emotions.
For different people of us, some emotions were “forbidden”, while they were expected to always “feel” others.
(We are aware that a lot of people who were not programmed or did not survive abuse are also feeling numb, or pretend to feel something they don’t, but as we write from our perspective, we are writing this from the point of view of someone who was…)
For instance, our main presenters were forced to always smile. We remember how often we were reprimanded not to look sad by the family and even by their friends – all were in the group. We weren’t even aware of our sadness then – we were in our habitual numb/”happy” mode.
For us, one of the most important things to learn when trying to find out what we were really feeling was to learn to differ between programmed emotions and genuine emotions.
Programmed emotions are what we call those we had not only to display, but were also expected to feel (by the abusers).
For the presenters, this was happiness, gratefulness, “positive thinking” etc.
For others of us, this was rage and contempt.
For still others, it was “love” and arousal.
We were supposed to actually feel these things, and, as far as I know, we did a very good job.
Nothing we are too proud of, to be honest.
Our precondition: Habitual numbness
Sadly, numbness is our (presenters) usual state. Most of the time, we only feel shadows of emotions, doesn’t matter whether “good” or “bad”. Actually feeling anything is terrifying to us.
This enables us, of course, to “wear” feelings like masks, as our actual feelings are not getting in the way. We know how to copy the feelings that were expected of us very well indeed. We know what they feel like, but we don’t have to feel them to show them to outside.
Only, we were expected to.
We were not only expected to act it, but also to actually feel it (more convincing, of course). And we tried to. We have become very good at convincing ourselves to feel something we don’t actually feel.
To go through the motions of feeling a feeling without feeling it.
(It was that or else, as usual.)
How we recognize programmed emotions
First of all, it is important to differ between these kinds of emotions and emotions resulting from trauma. Obviously, these overlap, or rather, this habitual numbness and the programming emotions on top of it are of course achieved by trauma or constant intimidation, humiliation etc.
We are talking here about recognizing the result – which are not the emotions from the trauma (which are shoved safely into the “shadow realm”), but those we tried to adapt.
Some things we have noticed about programmed emotions is that at first glance (and we were never allowed to look further), they feel very very strong, even overpowering.
But once we dared to look closer, we found that they also feel wrong somehow, foreign, weak, and, most importantly, hollow.
Like a shield over a vast space of emptiness.
We have learned by now that for us, genuine emotions feel as if they go all the way down. In most cases, they don’t make it all the way up to the presenters, as we said, but they go deep.
The programmed emotions are the opposite – they are only on the surface, and don’t go down at all.
Recognizing genuine emotions
After we cut off contact to all of those who abused us, our presenters very quickly dropped this act. It was amazing to see. They have always disgusted having to do this.
What is more difficult to let go, though, is the numbness. Feeling, for our presenters, is fucking terrifying. And thus, they mostly don’t.
It is as if all their emotions are under transparent lids. They could know what’s going on there of they looked, but they usually don’t, and they also don’t feel it.
Most of the time, they also block others’ emotions, even when they are overwhelmingly strong. That’s why we often have a hard time figuring out what we actually feel.
One sure sign that we feel very strongly is that the emotions start to appear and are suddenly completely gone.
We have found our body, another thing we never listened to, and also some of our “habits”, to be very good sources of information on that topic.
Recently (after writing this), we have discovered that writing tips for authors of fiction can be a great resource to figure out body language - there are charts and tables for what emotion can be displayed by what kind of body language. Can only recommend!
We’ll write a list here with things we have noticed so far… mostly about feelings that are always there, somehow, and that are problematic for us – fear, anger, and sadness.
(These are the ones we feel comfortable writing about at this time, at least… or have dared to look at, in contrast to some of the others.)
Fear underlies our numbness, and, like that, is also always there. When we are even more terrified than usual, we notice that
~ we need to or do go to the toilet every few minutes
~ our pulse is higher than usual
~ we eat a lot without being hungry
~ we distract ourselves (read and/or watch fictional stuff)
-> and both with eating and distraction, it feels as if the world ends if we don’t do it
~ we start to tremble and hyperventilate
~ we feel as if we are floating
~ our movements become sloppy
~ we run into things more than usual
~ drop things, knock things over etc.
~ sometimes we also start to cry randomly (which is, as always, choked immediately. But it’s there)
~ some of the girls come up and paint our face (make us look really feminine, dress in something nice and not baggy for a change, which weirds us out… but we have our suspicions about why they only feel safer if they are “beautiful”)
We can allow ourselves to see this one pretty well by now, also difficult not to notice when it’s acute, but when it’s underlying and festering, to us it looks somewhat like this:
~ we become very logical and cold
~ deeper, more relaxed voice
~ bring things in order, arrange things, tidying up, cleaning (also a sign of fear for us, though)
~ very controlled and deliberate movements
~ sometimes, we tremble a little
~ very self-confident all of a sudden…
(This is, obviously, before we explode – which happens mostly inside, though, too.)
Now that’s one we are really afraid of. Like fear, though, it is always there.
~ starting to cry (which is always choked immediately)
~ distract ourselves (similar to fear, but listlessly and not really caring about what we distract ourselves with)
One that goes for all of these three being stronger than usual is feeling as if we have to cut. Very sure sign. (And we try to treat it as such. A sign. Information. Not an imperative…)
We hope that this can help someone… and we’d love to see additions if any of you want to share!
