Is it normal not being able to control emotions?

Post Reply New Topic

It's not weird, especially if it's a recurring situation - where your plans have to repeatedly take a back seat to someone else's. Is the car your boyfriend's or was he going to borrow it from them? If it's his, why did he let them use it when he'd made plans with you, and does he do that a lot?

Frustration in one instance can be easy to get over, but if it's repeated and makes you feel powerless and that your choices aren't considered, then it's perfectly normal to get angry and emotional over it. (My unrecognized anger comes out as tears, and I think that's common for a lot of people.)

Strong emotions have a purpose, in my experience. I find it helpful to objectively follow them to their source, because I think they're trying to tell me something about situations I experience. I am an INFP which means my feelings are introverted, internalized - quite often so internalized that I'm not very conscious of them until I stop and consider them, even analyze them. Then I can begin to understand my emotional responses.

If it is your boyfriend's car and he let them borrow it when he'd made plans with you, and if this is a repeating pattern, then you need to talk to him about this. If he makes plans with you, you should have a reasonable expectation of him following through on them, and being reasonably assertive about defending those plans if someone else wants to change them.

Seriously? People are supposed to control what they feel? How? Do most people do this?

I think that's a goal of cognitive behavioral therapy, to be able to look at your feelings and your reasoning for your emotions and then being able to look at the situation with different reasoning and thinking and therefore different emotion.

I'm the precise opposite ... I never seem to be able to give in to emotion, and that feels abnormal too. It affects my behaviour but I have to pay attention to notice how, it seems like it all operates way off in the distance, like it's somebody else almost. I definately am able to reason through and change how I feel about things, that's actually quite easy once I see and understand how I feel, and why.

Once in a blue moon, I get a strong emotion that is very present and real but even then there's often a sort of wall between me and it. In the last year or two I've had a few occasions where my eyes water which is a new thing.

I've always had this problem, especially with anger - I tend to be sensitive and easily hurt, too.

No, it's not his car. They share it. So, it's not his fault there was a bit of a misunderstanding. However, he is quite good at cancelling plans. It doesn't happen very often and when it happens he doesn't try to be mean or anything. He's just not good at planning. I, on the other hand, am an extreme planner. I need to plan everything in order to function. I need to know everything in advance. I don't like being spontaneous and I don't like it when my plans change. Sometimes I feel like I'm too hard on him though. Like I expect too much of him. Do you know what I mean?

Yeah I think its normal, I myself have trouble controlling my emotions I can get moody at times overly happy or feel the need to cry or get extremely angry and frustrated sometimes all at the same time so in order for me to control them I try and bottle all my emotions up. With my emotions bottled up I may come off as emotionless however I am able to be more efficient at acting NT this way. When my emotions arent bottled up it is difficult to control them.

I think it's true.

Autistics feel too much, see too much, think too much and so on.

So it's more a problem of you needing a clear plan, and others not always being able to live up to that. Still you need a way to get those feelings of frustration out of your system. Hopefully without disrupting your relationships more than you have to.

One thing that helps me with my emotions is journaling. It gives me an outlet, and makes it not so likely for me to have outbursts that are out of my control.

A lot of people think of a journal as something "pretty" that you might want to share. For me it's deeply personal and private and is where I do a lot of venting of things that I don't feel a need to express to others, but I need to get out of my system. For me it's a kind of sanity saver.

I don't use a fancy journal, just plain lined yellow writing pads. (I save the filled pages that I want to keep in file folders - shred them if they're just venting about something and I don't feel a need to save them.)

I wish I still did that on a regular basis. It really was a sanity saver for me. I would write on whatever was near at the moment. I've been trying to get back into it and now I have a bunch of loose-leaf scribbles all over.

I can't control my emotions either........if it is a negative emotion I have to do something about it. Self-talk, like thinking something positive or neutral to change a negative thought does not work.....I have to take action!

Yes, I definitely need a clear plan. I want to know everything that's going to happen and all the rules for the situations. Some people really think that makes my life boring, but I think it makes life safe. Does that make sense?

I do have a journal actually. I write in it occasionally and I've been doing so for a few years. It has helped me quite a bit but it doesn't always help. Also, I've been experiencing increasing amounts of anxiety over the past few months so I guess that could explain some of my meltdowns over minor things as well. Even though I get angry even when I'm not anxious. Okay, I feel like I'm rambling now.

Do you people get angry with yourselves when you feel you get upset over minor things (even though you can't really help it) or is that just me?

<--- Tends not to get angry or upset over minor things.

What I do is to break the "power up" cycle that my body goes throu whenever I get a strong emotion, it's generaly the following:
1. Event occurs.
2. Mind get flooded with thoughts.
3. Muscle tension.
4. Increase in 2 and 3, build up.
5. Release.

By relaxing the muscles (for me vital area is the stomach) and empty the brain (I close my eyes and focus on the black that I see) and then slowly goes back and go over the event calmly, if neccessary I repeat the procedure and try to find what exactly in all of it that sets me off.

It's quite easy to pratice, all you need is a memory that pisses you off. ^^

Det finns några av oss som krälar omkring här, men det är inte många, iallafall inte som postar.


Planing is great, everyone should always do it. I tend to like people that are spontaneous, mostly because I'm not, and I enjoy my own irritated reaction.


Yes, I get all paranoid if I'm going on a bus or train and I'm not at the station already, because I know s**t can happen along the way and I'm not calm unless I'm there, have checked the schedual about twenty times (and keep doing it ^^), planed for every single possible senario and dubble checked all vital things.


That one is just you, there's no point in getting angry, it doesn't change anything, I can however get annoyed at some of my more human habbits like hunger and need to sleep, so I guess that's kind of related.

Uuuugh. I JUST woke up from a nightmare in which I couldn't find my money or wallet and the bus was going to be leaving the station in a few minutes and people were all over the place and my efforts to find my money/walley/bus pass were frustrated. And then for some reason a bunch of Hawaiian men started dancing and singing.

In reality I double-check my wallet right after walking out the door to make sure I don't get caught empty-handed when I got to the bus stop.

Yes, I've had awful meltdowns over things that I later regretted and felt mortified and guilty about - sometimes for years.