When you were a small child, your painful emotions may have felt too overwhelming to feel. If you experienced physical, emotional, or sexual abuse, your little body was not big enough to manage the painful feelings. If you were neglected, unseen, misunderstood, invaded, smothered, shamed or ridiculed, it may have felt too painful to manage. If you were a highly sensitive child with parents who did not understand high sensitivity, you may have felt too much emotion to handle. You might have had to learn ways of not feeling so much emotion.
What did you learn to do as a child and adolescent to manage your feelings?
* Did you learn to numb out, taking your focus out of your body and into your head, thinking rather than feeling?
* Did you learn to use food, alcohol or drugs to numb out?
* Did you learn to numb out in front of the TV or computer?
* Did you learn to leave your body or to dissociate in other ways?
* Did you learn to live in fantasy or daydreams to not be present in your body?
* Did you learn to be a perfectionist, an overachiever, always being busy doing rather than feeling?
* Did you learn to get angry rather...