If you struggle with identifying your emotions, how can your close friends best support you when you’re going through a tough time?

7 comments

1. Tell them to me, at least that what i would want.

2. Take me out to do or eat something

3. I don’t have a problem identifying the emotion. I am in a pickle because I’m her rock. The one that she doesn’t have to worry about and can depend on to be there when everything else in her life seems to be spiraling out of control.

4. It’s not that we struggle with identifying our emotions, as men we struggle with expressing our emotions. We’re very clear on what our emotions are and what we feel and what we think. We’re human beings. What we struggle with is expression of those emotions because the world tells us that guys aren’t supposed to have those feelings and that if we express those feelings then we are inferior.

   I would say that the way a best friend could support you and that would be to not be judgmental or make a guy feel like their interior for expressions of their emotions.

   It blows my mind that so many people think that men aren’t capable of feeling the same exact emotions as women. Human beings regardless of gender are capable of feeling the same exact emotion because there are no emotions that are inherently to one gender or the other. We’re all literally human beings who have the same range and capacity for emotions.

   It’s only societal conditioning that dictates who expresses what.

5. It’s difficult for me to know I am feeling something unless I recognize my actions have changed from normal. I have trouble putting names of emotions to the situation also. My wife knows me pretty well and is understanding when I am not acting like myself. I am also quick to self analyze when she lets me know I am being a dick.

   My suggestion is to let friends know to point out when you are not acting normal. Be ok with criticism.

6. So I had this problem for a long time. I could get frustrated about something small and that would snow ball into a week of being sad. My therapist said in my case I had a very young emotional maturity. I didn’t progress it as I grew up. So I expressed my emotions like a 14 year old. And what I had to do is write down every emotion and what got me there. So an example ” I stubbed my toe. Now I’m mad” or ” I remembered that one time I told the person something stupid and now I feel embarrassed.” And the longer you do it the more you learn to recognize what you are actually feeling. And you can actually see a pattern. The longer you do it the more you’re able to articulate everything. That had helped me alot.

7. There was a study done a while back where they took something like 100 of the most violent inmates at a prison and taught them the differences in emotions (there’s a book about it which your BF might benefit from, I’ll try to dig up the name). They found that by simply teaching them WHAT different emotions were they were able to differentiate between how they felt at the time and violent incidents dropped some insane amount like 95%.

   Basically what they figured out was these guys knew 3 states. Happy. Neutral. Rage. By explaining what irked, irritated, frustrated, mildly miffed, etc meant the guys could (with help at first) identify that “okay, someone stepped on my toe, thats annoying…annoying doesn’t require murder”

   Obviously what I just wrote is not an exact representation of what the study was all about but the point is that there exist resources where he could learn, pretty quickly, about different emotions on his own, without judgment, and it should help him identify them.

   OR

   He’s somewhere on the depression/anxiety spectrum and needs some professional help because to him everything is just a different shade of numb.