The World of Emotions

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My therpist would like me to experience the world of emotions.

I think NTs believe very strongly that emotions have magic power to make everything better. They understand, on some subconscious level, that emotions are driving all their decisions and behavior. They think getting in touch with (acknowledging that you feel) your feelings is healing.
I agree.
If I know how I feel about something, I know whether its important to work on it or if I should drop it.
As for being driven by my emotions, it doesn't happen all the time, but sometimes it does.
It seems chaotic so I try to avoid it.

How often is your behavior driven by emotions?

I feel that sometimes my behavior is driven by my emotions, and sometimes not.

I think that sometimes my behavior is driven by my emotions and I am not aware of it. Otherwise I would put less than 25% of the times because so much of my decision making is practical. I do get afraid of things, and anxious when I am about to do any public speaking.
A lot of times I feel lonely because I know the people around me don't understand me (and they should - I'm a mental health worker!) and shun me because I'm not as touchy feely as they are. I don't know if lonely is an emotion.
I was sad when my cat died. I'm not sure why I wasn't sad when my grandmother whose favorite I was, died.
I think physical relationships cause emotions, but I am not sure how. I haven't had very many of those.
I have had cause to be happy a couple of times over the past few months. That resulted in what some would call stimming. I am not sure if I felt happy because I got overloaded too quickly.
Not sure I think the world of emotions is very productive.

I should be a World Expert on Emotions, because of my PsychoDynamic Therapy, but for me, emotions seem to be either feeling incredibly 'down', like depressed in a way, but without the clinical recognition of it, or stressed, anxious and 'flaky', or angry, raging and stuff.

When someone says 'pensive' or 'wistful', it sounds like something out of 'literature', and I am not sure if I have ever felt those fine gradations of emotion. I know how it feels like to be 'happy' - when you're 'up' and you have energy, your thoughts are surging ahead in a positive way, and you're really into whatever it is you're doing, whether it is programming code, reading up on stuff you're interested in, or anything.

I don't feel 'empty' about this, in fact I prefer feeling 'neutral' and sufficiently disengaged from anxiety and stress to be able to function.

I suppose I don't know if I really get 'emotional' or not, because reacting to things going on around me doesn't seem 'emotional', as some people get upset when they watch certain kinds of film for example.

I was trained to say the right things, but I am not sure that I ever really felt them. I have nothing to compare myself too, really.

My emotions drive my behavior almost all the time. I have a theory, though, for this. I was raised in a home where emotions were everything...i was always asked "how do you feel about that" etc. And emotions were constantly being expressed. I think I simply learned that emotions are what you should make your decisions by, and that's a conditioned response that's awful hard to turn off.

I haven't voted on the poll because I am not sure how to do so. When I really think about it, I am not certain if, or how emotions affect my actions, or decisions. I am also not sure as to what degree they are affected by logic, though I am a highly logical thinker. I honestly do not know. I usually feel as if I am doing everything instinctually. I don't feel as if I am a puppet, or a pawn, but I feel as if certain instincts have been embedded within me and certain instincts are not. It is obvious to anyone who knows me IRL that I lack basic survival instincts, but I am able to do other things that most people can't do at all, in an instinctual way. I can convey emotions through music and poetry, but the process of creating sometimes seems more driven by instinct that by anything else. I have often felt like an animal and a lot of my behavior, notably when emotionally hurt in some way, can be compared to that of an animals. I react to emotional pain with aggression, in a way similar to an animal reacting to an injury (they say never try to handle an injured animal).

I can't answer with a straight percentage because there is a difference to responding 100% instinctively/letting your emotions dictate every action - taking guidance from emotion but keeping a firm rational grip - and ignoring emotion to the best of your ability.

The best balance I've found for myself is to let emotion guide at the deepest level, or when making a major choice, like what city to move to or what school to go to. Then let reason take over when it comes to day to day execution of the plan, like whether it's really worth getting upset that I missed a connecting flight on the way to said city and have to spend the night in an airport.

I just can't comprehend how people can supposedly have control over their emotions. I mean I am usually emotionless, or highly emotional (sometimes displaying the wrong emotion for the situation) and have no control over it. Of course my doc says I have no internal calming mechanism and no way to regulate my emotions, so maybe it isn't possible for me to comprehend it.

Depending on your brain chemistry, I could see how you might have a lot of trouble with regulation, but barring severe brain damage, I don't think it's possible to have zero control. If you were in a situation where you knew you would be killed if you screamed or cried, would you still do it?

My family highly disapproves of emotion, so they taught me fairly early to keep control. It was a choice between expressing honestly and getting verbal disgust/physical restraint, and figuring out how to regulate and getting respect/privileges/approval. So that was how I learned it, but I probably have a genetic predisposition to control.

I try to never act on emotion. I can openly admt to having a dark side that would leave a body count if ever indulged, and have a problem with oppositional behavior that I control in a manner that nobody ever sees how much effort I put into controlling it. Even when dealing with very benign situations, my emotional response rarely matches the situation, so I very rarely act on emotion. When I do, I almost always make a mess of the situation. The only emotion I seem to be able to act on with little repercussion is the desire to preservate.

That's really not the same thing, but to be fair: I honestly do not know. I cannot picture that type of situation. I usually do not cry and if I do it is often over some very odd things. I really only scream during a meltdown, or a major Tourette's attack, so in those situations I would probably be killed.

Same here. I really don't know how much emotion effects my thought and behavoir.

When I see someone who is really angry/agressive, I do get a very strong empath and I get a feeling of shock, but I honestly don't know how much it affects me. Do posistive emotions effect me? I am normally somewhat posistive if I do feel something, but if I am somewhat positive to everything, what effect does that have?

I voted 'less than 25%' under the assumption that it meant 'how often will your emotions carry significant wieght in a decision? In my case, it's only occasional. My emotions only influence me when they are very strong.

I sometimes wish I was more emotional. For one, it would make understanding other people a little easier, but sometimes I just feel dead. I remember my grandmother had cancer for over 6 months and was in hospital the whole time. About every week or 2, my mother would see her (about a 1 hour trip there, another hour back). I never went to see her, because I was always doing something at the time. I kept thinking, 'I'll go next time!' Of course, the next time, I just said the same thing again.

Then one day, my father came home and said that my grandmother died. While everyone else seemed very upset about it, I felt disturbed that I WASN'T feeling anything. Don't get me wrong, she was one of the best people to ever be in my life and I loved her very much. And that's what made it upsetting. My grandmother, one of the people who accepted me, quirks and all (when even my family didn't); she dies and I feel nothing.

If there was something that I learned from it, is that when one of my other grandmothers (I had three ) was hospitalised with emphysema (spelling??) I didn't waste time. I saw her first opportunity I had. She's made it through, but she can't do much without breathing difficulties...

Sometimes my Emotions influence my behaviour, but most of the time, they don't. I make an effort not to let my Emotions run my life. I need to keep an even keel.

Sometimes my emotions influence my behavior. But some of the time it doesn't.

No one has control over their emotions (I think). Emotions, as far as I know are the result of chemicals, which get processed without our control. However, we can have control over response to emotion.

Emotion regulation is a recent term which has been used to categorize how well people restrict their response to emotion to a socially acceptable means of expression. If your response falls within the range of socially acceptable behavior, then you are well regulated. If it falls outside of that range OR if someone gets distressed, then you are said to be poorly regulated.
Example: it is not particularly dangerous to cut yourself as long as you are not stupid about it. Most cutters aren't. Nonetheless, the medical and psychiatric professions pay a huge amount of attention to and invest a huge amount of money in preventing people from cutting. Consider that tattooing is just as, if not more dangerous than cutting (allergy, infection), and that doesn't even raise eyebrows.
The reason is because the cutting makes other people distressed.

What is called stimming seems no different than cutting (perhaps some difference in purpose?) or even than the jumping up and down people do when they win a prize on a game show, which IS socially acceptable. Stimming makes people uncomfortable because they associate unpleasantness with it, and they want to be comfortable, oops, I mean they want you to be more comfortable. Hence the idea of helping you regulate your emotions via training or medication.

OK, I'll stop now.